Israel

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The joy of our deluded politicians

There are a number of joys in life that do not get enough attention. One is the sheer, unadulterated pleasure that can be gained from watching a politician speak about something they know nothing about. This season Kamala Harris is giving especially abundant material for connoisseurs. Recognising that there is plenty she doesn’t know about, her campaign team are hoping that, Starmer-like, she can glide into office without having to say anything about what she might do once there. On the rare occasions when she does sit down and get asked questions, she is a master in her peculiar field. For instance, if Harris is asked about how her administration

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

No one will change their mind about Hamas

Earlier this summer, my son and I biked over to fashionable east Hackney where it’s normal to pay £4.20 for a coffee and £3 for a croissant and everybody complains about the cost of living. The croissants, by the way, must come from the Dusty Knuckle bakery. I don’t know if it’s the same in other parts of London, but here in the north-east we have our standards. ‘Israel is literally a fascist state. Literally criminal. Soon it won’t exist at all and that’s great’ We’d biked a fair distance, so we found a café that sold Dusty Knuckle croissants and settled in. My son read his book while I

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Starmer’s double standards

Sir Keir Starmer’s readiness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to support Ukraine seems to be qualified by his fear of offending the Biden administration. He wants to let Ukraine use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia but dares not, for fear of the White House. Surely if the special relationship were really strong, its junior partner would be confident enough to diverge occasionally. Think of Mrs Thatcher saying to George Bush senior, at the time of the first Gulf war, ‘This is no time to go wobbly’. In fact, however, Sir Keir is not even consistent: he is prepared to annoy the United States by making the worthless gesture of

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: UK cancels Israel exports, Grenfell fire report released and AfD victory in Germany

Home The government cancelled 30 out of 350 export licences for arms to Israel on items that it said could be used by Israel for ‘offensive purposes’ in Gaza. Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said: ‘A step like the one taken by the UK now sends a very problematic message to the Hamas terrorist organisation and its backers in Iran.’ Nine offshore wind farm contracts were awarded by the government; last year there were no bidders. The previous government had increased the maximum guaranteed price from £44 to £73 per MWh. The headquarters of GB Energy, a new UK government-backed energy company, will be in Aberdeen. Shona Robison, Scotland’s

David Hare

What’s gone wrong at the National Theatre?

Now we have a Labour government, it would be nice to feel repertory will return to the National Theatre. It used to be possible to come to London for a week and see six plays. Audiences loved it. New writing spoke to old in ways which enriched both. Today, you’re more likely to see Ibsen, O’Neill, Molière and Marlowe in the West End. What happened to the library of world drama? The new practice is to offer only a couple of straight runs, sometimes first-rate. So there’s nothing to stop any random producer saying: ‘Hey, the Lyttelton seems to be empty this autumn, can I hire it to do one

Monday

Jonathan Spyer

Iran and Hezbollah don’t want a war with Israel

Hezbollah’s response to the killing of senior official Fuad Shukr, when it finally came, was a more minor event than anticipated. For weeks, both the Lebanese Shia Islamist group and its Iranian patron have been threatening a terrible revenge for the recent assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. It is now clear, however, that neither Hezbollah or Iran wishes to risk a descent to all put war at the present time. Iran appears to have relegated its response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran to some point in the future. Hezbollah, meanwhile, sought to target two sites of high significance – the Mossad headquarters, and the HQ

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

John Mearsheimer on Ukraine, Israel-Gaza and the US election

44 min listen

Professor John Mearsheimer joins Freddy Gray to discuss the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, and the influence of both on the US election. The Israel-Gaza conflict has led to internal divisions within the democratic party, how will Kamala Harris deal with this? And as the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of ebbing, what does he see as the west’s role in the war?  Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons.

David Abulafia

Labour’s outrageous attack on academic free speech

In an extraordinary outburst, a government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a ‘hate-speech charter’. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long as we retain free speech, people are free to describe it that way. But doing so raises worrying doubts about what the new government thinks free speech means.   Universities have a special role in the promotion of free speech. They are, or should be, places where those teaching and those taught can try out ideas,

Sunday

Jake Wallis Simons

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon bring Jerusalem one step closer to regional dominance

As the dust literally settles across southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes, we are starting to see an answer to the question of whether this will be the escalation that leads to all-out war. Hezbollah has declared an end to the first phase of revenge for Israel’s assassination of its most senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who masterminded the killing of 241 marines and 58 French soldiers in 1983, in Beirut last month. Its planned attack on the headquarters of Mossad and Unit 8200, Israel’s fabled military intelligence directorate, has been averted. Casualties appear to have been very limited. Jerusalem’s spy chiefs have flown to Cairo to

Thursday

Paul Wood

Can anything stop a full-scale conflict in the Middle East?

The fact that the Middle East stands on the brink of a catastrophic war can be explained by a scene from The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie’s preposterous but entertaining series on Netflix about aristocrats and sarf London drug-dealers. The dim eldest son of a duke is in trouble with a vicious gangster, who makes him dress up as a chicken and cluck and dance while the whole excruciating spectacle is filmed. Eventually the humiliation is too much for the aristo: he gets the family Purdey and blasts the gangster in the face – even though he knows that there will be terrible consequences. The government has told Israelis to stock up

Saturday

Jonathan Spyer

What will Iran do next?

Following the killings of Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, Israel and the Middle East are poised and waiting for the next move. The two killings represent a significant humiliation for the Iran-led regional axis, which until this point had been projecting a sense of achievement and satisfaction.  Is Israel prepared to up the ante to the point of regional war? The October 7 massacres and the subsequent war may not have come at the express order or at the precise time wanted by the regime in Tehran. But events have proceeded largely in a way satisfactory to it. Israel appeared to be isolating itself diplomatically, unable to deliver a deathblow

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Stabbings in Southport, a £22bn ‘black hole’ and Tory leadership nominations

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the

Thursday

Arieh Kovler

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress won’t achieve much

Nearly ten months after Israel’s worst day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made history far away in Washington DC when he became the first world leader to address Congress four times. Even Winston Churchill only managed three. The last time Netanyahu spoke to Congress was in March 2015, as the Obama administration was finalising the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the ‘Iran Deal’. Netanyahu arranged the session with House Speaker John Boehner against Obama’s wishes, and made a charged and politicised speech urging Congress to reject the deal. The speech was seen as colluding with the Republicans to meddle in US domestic politics, and the damage it caused

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

Israel hits back at Houthi drone attack

Operation Long Arm, the code name for Israel’s counter-terror strikes in Yemen, sends a message almost as forceful as the payload of its F-15s. Iran may have an extensive network of proxies through which to attack Israel but the IDF will go whatever distance necessary to defend itself. In this instance 1,200 miles to Al Hudaydah, a port city controlled by Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthis, where a fuel depot was turned into a fireball on Saturday. If Operation Long Arm disrupts the Houthis’ activities significantly, the world will owe a debt to Israel, not that it is likely to be acknowledged It marks the first time

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Thursday

Angus Colwell

Israel says it’s ready for another war

According to my phone, I’m in Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. Except I’m not. The Israel Defence Forces have scrambled the GPS of everyone within about an hour’s drive of the Israel-Lebanon border. The same navigation system that tells my iPhone its location is the same navigation system that Hezbollah could use to identify targets in northern Israel. They’ve been firing across the border since 7 October, and the Israelis are fed up. They’ve evacuated 80 kibbutzim, nine villages, three community centres and two Arab villages. The phrase that ministers use to describe the displaced is ‘refugees in their own country’. The offensive in Gaza is winding down, and after that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: an election looms, Joe Biden crashes and England wins

Home A general election shook the nation’s political snowglobe. Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, was able to stop stunts for the camera after making a bungee jump at Eastbourne. Before the election, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister for the time being, commented on Channel 4 footage of a Reform UK supporter talking of him in racially abusive language: ‘My two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing Paki. It hurts and it makes me angry.’ Reform UK made an official complaint against Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission, claiming that the supporter filmed was an actor. England beat

Melissa Kite

We’re serviceless, stateless – and still off grid

You need a personal public service number to get married in Ireland, but in order to get one, you need to be married. It’s one of the most intractable double binds on offer here and it’s very frustrating when you’re trying to beat the Grim Reaper by getting hitched. I got a PPS number when I bought the house in West Cork. My solicitor arranged it. A different but equally bedevilling Catch-22 applied to that. So I thought, all right, I will. I better get married, make a will and prepare for the end In order to buy a house in Ireland I needed a PPS number. But to get

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: gambling politicians, gender rows and a free Julian Assange 

Home The Conservative party withdrew its support from two parliamentary candidates, Craig Williams (who was parliamentary private secretary to the Prime Minister) and Laura Saunders, both of whom the Gambling Commission had been investigating after allegations that bets had been placed on the date of the election. Two Conservative party workers and six policemen were also alleged to have been involved, one of the policemen being under criminal investigation. Others remained under investigation. Labour suspended a parliamentary candidate of its own, Kevin Craig, after being told the Gambling Commission was investigating him betting on failing to win the seat, which he now might. The candidates’ names would still appear on

Monday

Jonathan Spyer

Benjamin Netanyahu must decide what to do about Hezbollah

Tensions on Israel’s northern border are currently at their highest point since the outbreak of hostilities in October last year. On Friday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ‘One rash move – one miscalculation – could trigger a catastrophe that goes far beyond the border, and frankly, beyond imagination.’ The latest reports indicate that the US has declared it will give Israel its ‘full support’ in the event of war with Hezbollah. This appears to go hand in hand, however, with an American determination to prevent any Israeli action which might precipitate such a war. So what is the current situation? And where are things heading? The decision for escalation now lies with Israel After a