Mr S doesn’t imagine that Israel is among Bradford’s major trading partners. But George Galloway has put the matter beyond doubt with this outburst. It’s raving (and chilling), even by Gorgeous George’s standards. Isn’t there a word for this sort of thing?
Here comes Boris! After he announced yesterday that he will stand as an MP in 2015, the next Tory leadership fight has just begun. Now that Boris is back in the fray, and making Eurosceptic noises, he has an excellent chance of making it to No. 10 – to assume what he believes is his rightful destiny — the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Freddy Gray presents this week’s podcast, and talks to Harry Mount about how Boris’s parliamentary campaign might play out. Isabel Hardman also examines the possible constituencies he might pick. The other major political story this week was Baroness Warsi’s shock resignation. But was it
This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would be one thing merely in print — ephemeral, swiftly forgotten, to be stumbled across only by like-minded individuals en route from Charles Moore to Taki — but online I fear there may be sniggering. ‘What planet is he on?’ they will be asking on Twitter, but then, I suppose, they always are. The fact is, there’s been a question preying on my mind these last few weeks and I’m going to be bold, and ask it. You may snigger, you may mock and you may sneer, but that won’t make
‘Would you force anyone else to behave like this?’ the promoters of the UK Jewish Film Festival asked the artistic director of London’s Tricycle Theatre. Indhu Rubasingham and her colleagues dodged and hummed. They didn’t like the question and did not want to reply to it. The silence was an answer in itself. Of course the theatre would not hold others to the same standard: just Jews. Accusations of racism are made so often it is hard to see the real thing when it looks you in the eye. Let me spell it out for you. Racism consists of demanding behaviour from a minority you would never dream of demanding
I wonder if any readers have an answer to this question: Has anybody, throughout this whole conflict around Gaza, heard any reporter inside Gaza, at any time, preface or conclude their remarks with ‘reporting from Gaza, under Hamas government reporting restrictions’? I don’t watch television news all the time and so may have missed it, but I don’t think I have heard this said even once. Which is strange. When reporting from a dictatorship like Gaza it used to be the norm that reporters would preface or conclude any report with some variant of this formula. Doing so was a neat way to send the warning to viewers that you
In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips argued that supposedly anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. The most appalling aspect is the silence in the face of all this of the political class. Here’s her suggestion for what Ed Miliband should say if he really cared about the rise of anti-semitism in Britain: ‘I am horrified, not just because of the resurgence of the madness from which my own family so grievously suffered in the Holocaust, but also because we on the left bear no small responsibility for this current obscenity. ‘Hamas has placed its rocket arsenals below hospitals,
In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips argued that supposedly anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. Even more appalling is the silence in the face of all this of the political class. Here’s her suggestion for what David Cameron should say if he really cared about the rise of anti-semitism in Britain: ‘I am utterly appalled by the attacks on the Jewish people on the streets of Britain and in our public discourse. This hatred and bigotry is being fuelled by warped and distorted reporting about the Gaza war. ‘Newspapers and broadcasters are uncritically treating Hamas propaganda as fact.
Gstaad I am looking out of my window at the green landscape and forested mountains rising beyond, as peaceful a scene as there is in this troubled world, but this is Switzerland, a country that hasn’t fought a war in 700 years, resisting both Napoleon and Hitler through friendly persuasion and by having banks that don’t talk. No longer. The new big bully on the block, Uncle Sam, in cahoots with the vermin that is the EU, is forcing the Swiss to open up and spill the beans. What I don’t get is why the Swiss are lying down and playing dead. Sure, they have all sorts of referendums, but
When is a great international arts festival not a great international arts festival? When it can’t uphold even the most basic principles of free speech. Last night a play by an Israeli theatre company was forced to cancel its run at the Edinburgh Fringe as the result of the barracking of a group of anti-Israeli thugs. The show, The City, is now homeless and on the hunt for a new venue. Where exactly would they like these Israelis to perform, I wondered? Outside the walls of the city possibly? Would that be more conducive to their medieval vision of the world? Owing simply to their nationality – owing simply to their race
Hell, as one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters said, is other people. Unless, that is, you happen to be British and born after about 1980, in which case hell is the opposite: being alone for more than about five minutes. In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Ross Clark looks at the rise of crowd culture. We have succumbed to the lure of the crowd, he says. Lara Prendergast suggests social media is to blame. In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips argues that anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. The silence from the political class in the face
The mask has been torn away. Supposedly anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. In Paris, predominantly Muslim mobs screaming ‘death to the Jews’ have repeatedly tried to storm synagogues, torched cars and burnt Jewish-owned shops to the ground. In Berlin, demonstrators shouted ‘Gas the Jews’ while an imam beseeched Allah to ‘count and kill Zionist Jews to the very last one’. In Britain, physical and verbal attacks on Jews have doubled. One woman was assaulted by a group of 50 protestors who heard her discussing Gaza on her mobile phone. Shouting ‘get her’ they surrounded and pushed
In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips suggests that anti-Semitism is on the rise, fueled by the events in the Middle East. Douglas Murray and Ben Soffa, Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, discuss whether this is the case in this week’s View from 22 video special. Here’s an extract from Melanie’s piece. The full article will be available tomorrow: The mask has been torn away. Supposedly anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. In Paris, predominantly Muslim mobs screaming ‘death to the Jews’ have repeatedly tried to storm synagogues, torched cars and burnt Jewish-owned shops to the ground.
Moeen Ali, the England cricketer, faces a possible reprimand after the International Cricket Council (ICC), the game’s governing body, censured him for wearing two wristbands, one saying ‘Save Gaza’, the other ‘Free Palestine’. International cricketers are, you see, prohibited from making political statements on the field. The English Cricket Board, which is not above making political statements (as its various boycotts of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe suggest), dissents from the ICC’s view, and says that Moeen’s stance is ‘humanitarian not political’. What, then, of ‘Save Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’? There is politics here. And, yes, it is partial. The ECB is disingenuous to suggest that this is a merely ‘humanitarian’ sentiment. But
I suppose viewers of Jon Snow’s Channel 4 News don’t expect impartial journalism, any more than viewers of Fox in the States expect their political opponents to get a particularly fair hearing. This is, after all, a journalist whose first reaction when the Malaysian airline plane was shot down over Ukraine was to express concern that the deaths might distract attention from Israel’s war with Hamas. Awful danger that the shooting down of flight MH17 will provide cover for an intensification of Israel’s ground war in Gaza — Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4) July 18, 2014 But what an extraordinary way to present the situation in the Middle East: Hamas as
With characteristic bluntness and admirable concision, Joan Rivers has offered her thoughts on the Israel-Hamas conflict: ‘Let me just tell you, if New Jersey were firing rockets into New York, we would wipe them out.’ She also lobs a few rockets at ‘college grad’ Selina Gomez for her pro-Gaza tweets: ‘Let’s see if she can spell “Palestinian”.’ Watch her rant above.
The Liberal Democrats have always been a party of contradictions. In the time I’ve been a member, as well as a journalist covering the party, few of its contradictions have baffled me more than the fact that it is called the Liberal Democrat party but it unequivocally fails to support the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. There has always been a strong link between British Jewry and Liberal parties, but the present day Liberal Democrats are broadly not trusted by the Jewish community. This is despite the best efforts of Nick Clegg and others to rebuild links. This was brought home to me only a couple of months
Scotland’s national poet Liz Lochhead has been at it again. Two years ago she was petitioning against a dance company from Tel Aviv, this year it’s an Israeli theatre company that’s set to play the Edinburgh Fringe. Both companies are ‘guilty’ of being in receipt of state funding. So, we have another letter and another long list of high-profile signatories calling for boycott. However, we all know – as Lochhead must know – that a boycott won’t, of course, happen (it’s about being seen to take a ‘principled stand’, d’oh). The nature of Incubator Theatre’s production is irrelevant – I gather it’s some ‘film noir-type hip-hop musical’. Suffice to say it’s
One event I regretted missing on my last visit to London was a party at the Polish Club, which has been refurbished and has a new Polish prince as its president and has good Poles and active members such as Ladies Belhaven and Hamilton, both friends of mine, keeping the home fires burning. I have often written about my love for Poland, a heroic country that has been betrayed by everyone throughout its history, but has always remained proud, refusing to play the victim, with 90 per cent of Poles belonging to the Catholic church in today’s greedy secular world. A Polish pope was the first to challenge the Soviets,
Peter Clarke’s powerful report on the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham schools is confirmation of the weakness of David Cameron in demoting Michael Gove. When Mr Gove appointed Mr Clarke to conduct the inquiry, there was execration — even from the local police chief — about how wickedly provocative it was to put a policeman with counter-terrorism experience into the role. But Mr Clarke was just the man and his inquiry has swiftly and efficiently uncovered serious problems of Islamist bullying and infiltration. Too late to reap a political reward, Mr Gove is vindicated. The next time this problem arises — and there undoubtedly will be a next time in another British city
The civilised world felt as if its heart had been touched by an icicle. Photographs of murdered children. Biogs of people like us; we could have been on that plane. We will be on similar ones, now reminded of our vulnerability to frivolous barbarians in possession of terrifying weapons. Grief and fear lead rapidly to anger: to the demand that something must be done to punish the evildoers and rescue us from insecurity. That might seem a comforting thought. It is also false comfort, for there is a basic problem. What can we do? When in doubt, think hard, in a long historical perspective. Paradoxically, that apparently arid discipline may