World

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why did Australia vote No in the Voice referendum?

I’m in Sydney for the Voice referendum result – and it’s already over. No has won, by what looks to be a 60/40 margin. So an ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’ will not be added to Australia’s democratic apparatus after an Aboriginal-led campaign asking Australians to reject identity politics. The results had heavy overtones of Brexit: affluent cities voting Yes and the left-behind areas voting No. The Northern Territory, which has the highest concentration of aboriginal Australians, looks to have rejected the proposal by 65/35. Aussies have voted to protect the principle of everyone being equal before the law and in parliament. It’s hard to describe what the campaign

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, James Heale and Robin Ashenden

23 min listen

This week Paul Wood delves into the complex background of the Middle East and asks if Iran might have been behind the Hamas attacks on Israel, and what might come next (01:11), James Heale ponders the great Tory tax debate by asking what is the point of the Tories if they don’t lower taxes (13:04) and Robin Ashenden on how he plans to introduce his half Russian daughter to the delights of red buses, Beefeaters and a proper full English (18:36). Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran

Limor Simhony Philpott

Netanyahu must go – for Israel’s own good

Israelis were turning against the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu even before Hamas’s invasion. Over the past six months, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets against Netanyahu’s government and its controversial judicial reforms. Israel has been hit by strikes and road blocks and ministers have been heckled in the streets. In an unprecedented move, resistance even reached the army: some reservists vowed to refuse to serve in the Israeli army if the reform passed. Since the atrocity of last weekend, fury at the Israeli government has become even more widespread. When the war broke out, it was clear that Israel was caught napping. This caused an

Terry Barnes

Australia’s Voice referendum is tearing the country apart

Almost 250 years after European settlement, many of Australia’s Aborigines still face appalling socio-economic disadvantages compared to fellow Australians: lower life expectancy and school completion but high welfare dependency and incarceration rates, domestic violence, and endemic unemployment, truancy, alcohol and substance abuse. These are sad realities in such a prosperous nation as Australia. Government statistics show overall per capita spending on an Indigenous person – about three per cent of the total population – is higher that for other Australians, funding health, welfare, education and employment programmes in a national effort known as ‘Closing the Gap’. Yet despite the billions spent over decades, that gap remains intractably wide. Prime minister

Andrew McQuillan

Sinn Fein’s troubling ‘solidarity’ with Palestinians

Black Mountain, which looms above West Belfast, acts as a blank canvas for Irish republicans to plaster their thoughts across. Over the years, banners covering a range of subjects, from Irish unity to Brexit, have been draped across it. In recent days, a Palestinian flag was placed there by a group styling itself Gael Force Art, claiming it was in ‘solidarity with the Palestinian people who launched their biggest operation in fifty years against the rogue state of Israel’. Gerry Adams shared a picture of the flag on Twitter/ X. ‘The Mountain Speaks! Free Palestine,’ he wrote. Irish republicanism has always been a reliable well-spring of support for their Palestinian equivalents. In

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is sumo wrestling dying out?

For any young athletes harbouring ambitions of being a sumo wrestler, there was some good news this week. The Japanese Sumo Association (JSA) has decided to relax its height and weight requirements for young recruits, opening up the sport to those previously barred for being too short or too slight. Now all the beleaguered association needs to do is find them and keep them. Given that recruitment is just one of a host of problems the sport is facing, that won’t be easy. The rule change is in response to a precipitous drop in the number of applicants to train to be a rikishi (wrestler) and perhaps join the fabled

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

India vs Pakistan is the world’s greatest cricket game

An India-Pakistan cricket match is always about much more than just cricket. It is a sporting rivalry and grudge match like no other, a titanic clash in which it is almost impossible to separate sport from politics. That’s why hundreds of millions of fans will be glued to their television screens for this Saturday’s match at the Cricket World Cup tournament in India. The stadium itself will be packed to the rafters, with more than 130,000 spectators lucky enough to get tickets. Some reports suggest that tickets have been selling for as much as $300,000 (£250,000) on the black market. Security will be tight, with  thousands of extra police officers drafted

Dimi Reider

How Britain can save Israel – and Gaza – from bloodshed

The world changed on Saturday morning with Hamas’s attack on army bases and civilian communities in Israel. What began as a Palestinian military triumph became, within minutes, the greatest single atrocity of the entire conflict to date, by either party.  Every assumption of the status quo ante has been swept aside, including much of the international etiquette around calls for restraint: Israel appears to be hours away from launching the most overwhelming assault on a modern city since Vladimir Putin’s attack on Grozny, with unreserved Western blessing. This will likely unleash every rocket in Hamas’s arsenal onto Israeli cities, and might well drag other parties into the fray, from external actors like

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Hamas is not long for this world

There was long been a swell of sympathy for Hamas in the West. A certain leader of the opposition, you will remember, referred to them as his ‘friends’ and said that the UK government classifying them as a ‘terrorist organisation’ was a ‘big, big historical mistake’. He did not condemn Hamas this week. And he is not alone. The mass rallies on the streets of Britain in recent days have shown the level of support for a barbarism that for years has been quietly accommodated in this country.  If Gaza is an ‘open-air prison’, the true jailers are Hamas It is depressing how few people on that side of the argument have

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Horror in Arras: France comes under attack again

Emmanuel Macron’s appeal for France to unite has not been heeded. Barely 12 hours after the president made his address on primetime television, a 20-year-old of Chechen origin stabbed a teacher to death and wounded two others in a high school in the northern city of Arras.   The assailant, now in custody, is reported to have shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ during his rampage. Interior minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the knifeman was on an extremist watchlist, a revelation that is politically explosive. Yet again, someone known to be radicalised has been able to commit bloody murder. Just this week, the trial concluded of an accomplice of Larossi Abballa, who in

Anna Richards

Poland’s history will play a vital role in its election

On 15 October, Poland goes to the polls. The Polish people must choose between two narratives for the country, each inspired by a different era of history. For the ruling Law and Justice party, the Second World War has become a key theme of its parliamentary election campaign. This came about after the question of German reparations was revived by an exhibition on Polish war losses presented in the British parliament last month. Discussing a recent Polish radio poll which revealed that 58 per cent of Poles support war reparations, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, the Polish Secretary of State for Europe maintained that Germany, the aggressor, was ‘given the privilege to choose

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Russia is trying to break through Ukraine’s front line before winter

Ukraine is on fire. Russian forces have launched an offensive across the entire front line in their final push before winter. About a hundred combat clashes took place yesterday, one of the most decisive of which is unfolding in Avdiivka. A suburb of occupied Donetsk, Avdiivka fell under the control of pro-Russian militants for three months back in 2014 before it was liberated. Now Avdiivka is under attack again, with Ukrainian soldiers trying to stop the largest offensive on the city since the onset of the war. Avdiivka has been semi-encircled by Russian forces from the north, east and south for months, with little change on the ground. In the

Amrita Ajay

Gandhi’s rebranding by Hindu nationalists

Three quarters of a century after his death, Mahatma Gandhi is still everywhere in India: from statues that welcome visitors at airports to currency, state memorials, street names, commemorative institutions and hospitals, art galleries, political campaign posters, and various forms of popular art. This month – as India marks his 154th birthday – it was harder than ever to escape Gandhi. But it isn’t only Gandhi’s image that lingers. Affectionately dubbed bapu (father) by his followers, Gandhi’s values have served as the centre of India’s moral consciousness since the nation’s inception. But his principles have been used and abused by competing groups, particularly egregiously by Hindu nationalists. Gandhi’s core ideals were of truth, religious tolerance and non-violence.The BJP’sversion ofnationalism, meanwhile,

Limor Simhony Philpott

An invasion of Gaza is hugely risky for Israel

In a sign that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) is planning to ramp up the war in Gaza, Israel has called for evacuation of 1.1 million Palestinian civilians from the northern area of the Gaza Strip. The UN quickly condemned Israel’s announcement, claiming that an evacuation within the 24-hour timeframe given is ‘impossible’, and have called on Israel to rescind its order. The war, which started on Saturday following a surprise attack by Hamas, saw the biggest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The horrific details of what ensued included the murder of babies, the rape and murder of women and girls, and people being burned alive. Civilians, including

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s Jews are afraid

Emmanuel Macron addressed France on television on Thursday evening. It was an opportunity for the president to reiterate his support for Israel in its war against Hamas, but also to call for his country to remain united.   As Macron spoke to the nation, police in Paris were using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a pro-Hamas demonstration. Meanwhile, some 10,000 police in France have been deployed to stand guard outside Jewish schools and places of worship.   Through its uncontrolled immigration policy Europe has exacerbated tensions around the Palestine conflict The atmosphere is tense and France’s Jewish community are right to be frightened. No European country has suffered

John Jenkins and Udi Rosen

How Hamas fooled Israel – and the West

How to explain Israel’s intelligence and military failure? The obvious comparison – one Israelis themselves are making – is with the 1973 October War, when the country was sucker-punched by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance. That became known as a failing of the konzeptzia, the Hebrew term for the way we frame the world with all its attendant risks. It seems to have happened again. In the West, Israel is generally seen as either admirably or reprehensibly tough-minded, taking the hardest line against its enemies whatever the circumstances and punching back twice as hard. The trouble is, it’s not at all clear that this is true

Thursday

Michael Bryant

Is Israel’s siege of Gaza illegal?

In retaliation to over a thousand Israeli dead, the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has vowed to besiege Gaza. In a statement earlier this week, he said: ‘We are putting a complete siege on Gaza… No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.’ Israel has been as good as its word, even stopping medicine from entering the Palestinian enclave.   Israel is obliged under international law to minimise injury to Palestinian civilians Shutting off supplies to an area of 2.3 million people, nearly all of them civilians, raises grave questions about the legality of Israel’s action under international law. While international law generally accepts the blockade of enemy

Chana Hughes

Why should British Jews take their skullcaps off?

I was proud when my son, then aged three, wore his kippa (Jewish skullcap) for the first time. We placed the kippa on his head and told him what it meant to be a Jew. ‘Mazel tov!’ we said as we hugged each other, prayed, and sung. We wondered hopefully what he might become – a rabbi, a doctor, an accountant – and we laughed and sung some more. A blessing on your head, mazel tov, mazel tov! He’s now 17, and for the first time in his life was asked this week to cover his kippa up. An email from his school in London suggested that, in light of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How are Democrats reacting to the war in Israel?

31 min listen

This week Freddy speaks to Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, about America’s response to the developments in the Middle East. On the podcast they discuss the ‘squad’ (a section of Democrats who have been making pro-Palestinian noises), how America and Israel’s surveillance system allowed the attack to happen, and the importance of the conflict ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin has been blindsided by the Israel attack

Inevitably, some have tried to suggest the terrorist invasion of Israel was in some ways orchestrated by Moscow. ‘Russia is interested in igniting a war in the Middle East so that a new source of pain and suffering will weaken world unity,’ said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in the aftermath of the attack. But if Russia was involved, why has its response been so weak and uncertain? In fact, the Kremlin seems near-paralysed by the unfolding conflict. Of course, Moscow hopes that this crisis will distract the West from Ukraine and undermine its ability to continue to fuel its war effort. It is also trying to spin useful narratives, such as