Palestine

Starmer’s authoritarian turn – with Ash Sarkar

15 min listen

Since the government’s decision to proscribe the group Palestine Action, arrests have mounted across the country, raising questions not only about the group’s tactics but also about the government’s handling of free speech and protest rights. On today’s special edition of Coffee House Shots, Michael Simmons is joined by The Spectator’s James Heale and journalist Ash Sarkar to debate whether this is evidence of an increasingly authoritarian bent to Starmer’s Labour. Has the ban made prosecutions easier, or has it created a chilling effect on freedom of expression? And is this further evidence of the overreach of the attorney-general, Lord Hermer? Also on the podcast, with Keir Starmer’s majority secured

The oppression of Sally Rooney

Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? It is a dissection of one of the most curious pathologies in the world: the desire to have been oppressed; a glorying in being repressed. Kennedy, like a few other brave writers (Ruth Dudley Edwards, Malachi O’Doherty, Kevin Myers) has the courage to point to an under-examined seam in Ireland’s history. Specifically he takes aim at the mawkishness that exists in contemporary Irish affairs. The desire to be the first victim, perhaps the greatest victim, of all victims, anywhere in the world. You see

Portrait of the week: Palestine Action arrests, interest rate cuts and an Alaska meeting

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘The Israeli government’s decision to further escalate its offensive in Gaza is wrong… It will only bring more bloodshed.’ Police arrested 532 people at a demonstration in Parliament Square at which people unveiled handwritten signs saying: ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’; the group was proscribed by the government in July under the Terrorism Act of 2000. J.D. Vance, the Vice-President of America, stayed with David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, at Chevening House in Kent before going on holiday in the Cotswolds at a house rented for £8,000 a week. Work began on removing 180 tons of congealed wet wipes near

The Romans would have been baffled by the Gaza protests

Why are people in the UK protesting about the situation in Gaza? Surely it should be because the helpless Gazans cannot protest about their plight, caused by Hamas, because if they did, Hamas would kill them. But in that case, why isn’t it Hamas that people are protesting against? Or are they in favour of Hamas and therefore hate Israel for wanting to destroy Hamas? But wouldn’t that free Gazans? The whole situation would have baffled the Romans. Romans protested only when their own interests were at stake. On one occasion around ad 50, the emperor Claudius was confronted by a mob in the forum, cursing him and pelting him

Will the junior doctors regret picking a fight with Wes?

13 min listen

The dispute between the British Medical Association (BMA) – a trade union for doctors – and the government continues, following the five-day strike by junior doctors. Doctors argue that pay is still far below relative levels from almost two decades ago, combined with the cost of study, the cost of living and housing crises, as well as challenging conditions within the NHS. Nevertheless, with an average pay rise of 5.4% for resident doctors this year, support for the strikes appears to be falling – both with the public at large, and within the BMA. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has hit back at the BMA and said they ‘will not win

Letters: The case for recognising Palestine

State of emergency Sir: As someone who spent time undertaking research in Israel and Egypt, living for almost a year on Kibbutz Re’im, one of the communities attacked on 7 October 2023, I find myself in agreement with much of the description in your leading article ‘State of denial’ (26 July) – but not the conclusions. Many of us are aware that Israeli intelligence knew what was being planned for 7 October, but did nothing to prevent it. Why? The horrors that have happened since have played into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters as they seek to create a Greater Israel, with no room left for a

Portrait of the week: Recognition for Palestine, victory for the Lionesses and no name for Corbyn’s party

Home Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood in September, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced, ‘unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution’. He had convened a cabinet meeting to discuss Gaza, although parliament was in recess, a few days after a meeting by telephone with Germany and France. President Emmanuel Macron had said that France would recognise a Palestinian state in September. Some 255 MPs, 147 of them Labour, had signed a letter to Sir Keir calling

Rod Liddle

Israel has gone too far

If any other country in the Middle East had behaved as monstrously as Israel has in recent weeks, the jets would be lined up on our runways ready to do a bit of performative bombing. Never mind BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) and diplomatic pressure. I mention this because those of us who support Israel, and have done so largely uncritically since 7 October 2023, need the scales to fall from our eyes a little – for the good of Israel, as well as the good of those starving Palestinians. I have been to Israel many times, as a journalist, as a holidaymaker, as a friend. I accept without demurral

The political climate at Glastonbury was not especially febrile

Everyone who wasn’t at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid leftiness, characterised by an angry punk duo named Bob Vylan calling for the death of the IDF. But that’s just the tabloid hysteria talking – betraying also maybe a hint of envy towards those lucky enough to have bagged one of the £400 tickets. The truth is, the political climate was not especially febrile. Sure, the jaunty red, white, green and black of the Palestinian flag was very en vogue, but a few years back it was the blue and yellow of Ukraine and the EU. A few decades before

Let Kneecap play

During the Troubles, some 2,500 people were victims of kneecappings – punishment shootings, dished out by paramilitaries, for perceived crimes ranging from fraternising with British soldiers to drug dealing and rape. The term is something of a misnomer. The torture entails a low-velocity gunshot to the knee from a handgun. That isn’t guaranteed to destroy one’s kneecaps but could cause tissue or nerve damage and joint fractures. At least 13 victims had to have their limbs amputated; one in five was once estimated to limp for the rest of their lives. Until recently, a mention of kneecapping was a reminder of the terror that plagued Northern Ireland within living memory.

How come the only Palestinians Louis Theroux met were non-violent sweeties?

Louis Theroux: The Settlers was never likely to be a programme with much of a narrative arc – and so it proved. In the first 30 seconds, Louis put it to a Jewish householder on the West Bank that his house was ‘quite deep in what are called the Palestinian Territories’. ‘You call it the Palestinian Territories,’ the man replied. ‘I call it the heart of Judea.’ And that, on the whole, was that. Louis travelled from one Jewish settlement to another, doing his best to challenge the inhabitants with his faux-naif questions and impressive range of quizzical expressions. And yet, of course, none of them budged an inch. The

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

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,

The grandstanding against the Hay Festival is short-sighted 

When the country’s largest literary festival parts ways with its main sponsor, it is not usually a cause for rejoicing among writers, performers, and the sorts of people who like to go to literary festivals. It is usually a disaster for the festival. Yet when on Friday the Hay Festival sacked (yes, it was that way round) the investment fund Baillie Gifford as its main sponsor, it was felt that a mighty blow had been struck against injustice. The decision was the result of a campaign that took exception to the colour of Baillie Gifford’s money, seeing the company as part of a disaster-capitalist enterprise that profits from the destruction of the planet by investing in fossil fuels, and that indirectly

Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: from the front line of the uni protests

On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30 tents and the portico was plastered in handwritten signs: ‘Students: You’re in debt so UCL can fund a genocide!’ Some protestors sat on chairs, eating biscuits. Others stood at the front gate chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’. ‘Do you want a tent, bro?’ asked one protestor. I explained that I was a reporter and was immediately whisked away to talk to a spokesman. ‘Spectator, Spectator … yeah, I think that’s left-wing. All good.’ A girl who had come along for the day received a keffiyeh tutorial and as night began to fall,

Downhill all the way: the decline of the British Empire after 1923

The British Empire, the East African Chronicle wrote in 1921, was a ‘wonderful conglomeration of races and creeds and nations’. It offered ‘the only solution to the great problem of mankind – the problem of brotherhood. If the British Empire fails, then all else fails.’ Stirring words – and not those of some sentimental Colonel Blimp back in London. They were written by the newspaper’s editor, Manilal A. Desai, a young Nairobi-based lawyer and a prominent figure in the large Indian community in Kenya. But, as Matthew Parker observes in One Fine Day, an ambitious account of the empire at the moment of its territorial zenith on 29 September 1923,

My futile morning guarding Churchill’s statue

On Armistice Day I made my way to Parliament Square with some vague notion of protecting Churchill’s statue. I’d discussed the need to stop it being defiled by pro-Palestinian protestors a few days earlier with a group I’m involved with called the British Friends of Israel, but in my head this had been a theoretical discussion, not something that involved me personally. Then Allison Pearson, a member of the group, announced in the Telegraph that she intended to stand in front of the statue armed with a rolled-up copy of the paper, and I felt shamed into joining her. Not that I was worried about her being knocked over by

The case for prosecuting ‘from the river to the sea’

As an international lawyer, splitting my time between London and Brussels, I dare say I might be considered one of Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’. Nonetheless, as the protests about the Israeli response to the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October have become more strident and legally problematic, I have also had cause to reflect on my heritage as a dual British-Israeli national.  Much of my mother’s side of the family arrived in Israel from Bukhara (then part of the Russian empire, now modern-day Uzbekistan) at the end of the nineteenth century. They were prosperous silk traders who originally settled in the Bukharan Quarter of Jerusalem, following pogroms in Russia. When I was young,

When righteous anger goes wrong

From abroad I’ve returned to a country where, in language to which the word ‘shrill’ hardly does justice, fellow British commentators have been letting fly on both sides of the argument about Gaza and how Israel should or should not respond to Hamas’s unspeakable attacks on 7 October. There’s just one thing both sides – the British Muslim banner-wavers and those who bay for a war of attrition in Gaza – seem to agree upon: that whatever the answer might be, it is, in the most important sense of the word, simple. It is not simple. Things so rarely are. The simple bit is who – in the immediate –

Lionel Shriver

What did Hamas think was going to happen?

Much misfortune the woebegone couldn’t have seen coming: a raging fire in the house next door that spreads to yours. The invention of some kooky technology called ‘the internet’ that puts your travel agency out of business. Yet other calamities are foreseeable. If you suddenly stop filing tax returns without a good excuse – like, dying – it’s a virtual certainty that the all-seeing computer will come after you. So when compounding fees and interest leave you skint, our sympathies are apt to be scant. What did you think was going to happen? Or to up the moral ante: if you slaughter 18 innocents in a frenzy for no apparent