Palestine

Tony Judt: a man of paradox who made perfect sense

Tony Judt was not only a great historian, he was also a great essayist and commentator on international politics. Few in this country will be familiar with his journalism, however, since it was largely published in America by the the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. Thankfully, this situation can now be remedied through this collection of his writings, ranging from 1995 to his untimely death in 2010 from motor-neurone disease. As was often observed during his life, Judt was a man of apparent paradoxes. A secular Jew, who as a teenager had been a left-wing Zionist, he was castigated for criticising the actions of Israel. A

Portrait of the week | 20 November 2014

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global economy.’ He then offered £650 million to a ‘green climate fund’. In a speech in Singapore, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that fines for banks over rigging foreign exchange rates showed that ‘it is simply untenable now to argue that the problem is one of a few bad apples. The issue is with the barrels in which they are stored.’ Official figures showed that the number of British Army reservists has been boosted by a recruitment drive in the past year from 19,290 to 19,310. Friends of the

Baroness Warsi uses her retirement to provoke British Jews

If anyone ever wondered what the over-promoted, incapable and incompetent Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was planning to do in retirement, now we know: provoke British Jews on Twitter. Today, after four Jews, one a British citizen, were butchered while praying in Israel, Sayeeda Warsi used the opportunity to taunt British Jews. Not just the Zionist Federation but a former British Jewish communal leader as well. In Sayeeda Warsi’s world you see, Jews who protest that it is wrong only for Muslims to be allowed to pray at a site in Jerusalem holy to both Muslims and Jews are morally equivalent to Palestinian Muslims who use meat cleavers to butcher rabbis while they

This opera is simplistic and dangerous. So is banning it

My father’s house was razed In 1948 When the Israelis passed over our street I’ve never forgotten the opening lines to John Adam’s 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. Crisp, elegiac, this  ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians’ rises up to a moment of anguished dissonance as it spits out the word ‘Israelis’. It’s beautiful. It’s also the most egregious romanticisation of Palestinian terrorism outside the muralled bunkers of the Gaza Strip. In the Metropolitan Opera’s new production, a chorus of shrouded Palestinian women form a funeral procession as they intone their complaint, eventually parting to reveal a 5-year-old boy, cradled in the arms of his weeping, widowed mother. Marking the start of a libretto

Recognising a Palestinian ‘state’ in Parliament is not only pointless, it’s dangerous

Today in Parliament, MPs are voting on a backbench motion (supported by a one-line whip from the Labour party) proposing that Britain recognises Palestine as a state. The motion attempts push a new status quo on Israel-Palestine, without the agreement of the partners on the ground. This is not just an arrogant move, it is a pointless one – not least because the Cameron government has already said it will ignore the vote.  What is of concern, however, is that the whole move displays a startling degree of naivety in Westminster. At the same time as the West has declared war on Isis, it is odd for British MPs to be publicising

What is to be done about a world where everything is for sale?

Next time you read about an auctioneer’s gavel coming down on a $150 million painting bought by some flunkey representing the ruling family of Qatar, don’t ooh or aah, but think of those monsters in Iraq and Syria who have their children pose on video while holding up the severed heads of innocents. And no, it’s not a stretch — without Qatar’s gold Islamic State would not exist, not even in the movies. Let me put it another way: had Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover given White House dinners for Al Capone, the outcry would have been heard all the way down to Patagonia. Yet, as reported in these here

In Palestine, homosexuality is a capital offence. Does Peter Tatchell not realise this?

Peter Tatchell has been awarded an honorary fellowship from Goldsmiths University for ’47 years of LGBTI activism’ and campaigning. I’m not sure I agree with these baubles, but if anyone deserves one, it’s probably Tatchell. A good man, by and large. Tatchell has in turn passed on his honorary fellowship to Palestine, as a statement against the ‘occupation’ by Israel. Right on! Right on! Let’s just briefly compare the treatment of LGBTI people in those two territories, then – Free Democratic Palestine and the Vile Fascist Entity. The Palestinian National Authority awards the death penalty for homosexuals. In Israel homosexuality has been legal de facto since 1963 and de jure

The nun who took down an Isis flag – and stands up for east London’s Muslims

Not so long ago disaffected youngsters would take to a life of crime and hard drugs, a trajectory which would often kill them. These days, some young men from our Muslim community sign up instead to the so-called Islamic State, and the dream of a distant Caliphate. Why? Well, forget theology or even the prestige which comes from being a warrior — if Sister Christine Frost is right, it all comes down to housing. Sister Christine has worked on the Will Crooks Estate in Poplar, east London, for over 40 years. She accidentally got into the news in early August when she removed the black flag of radical Islam which

Owen Jones is lying about Israel. Plain and simple.

Owen Jones’s column in the Guardian is headlined ‘Anti-Jewish hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is.’ Sadly the article falls well short of that headline’s aspiration. At one point in the piece Owen singles me out for criticism: ‘Take Douglas Murray, a writer with a particular obsession with Islam.’ (I suppose ‘obsession’, rather than ‘interest’, say, is intended to suggest something untoward. But I confess that I am indeed especially interested in one of the major stories of our day.) Owen goes on to say of me: ‘“Thousands of anti-Semites have today succeeded in bringing central London to an almost total standstill” was his reprehensible

The black flag of ISIS is flying in London

There is a phrase used of, and by, jihadists: ‘First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.’ Well there’s a fine example of this on display at the moment in East London. Even the Guardian has picked up on it. At the entrance to a council estate near Canary Wharf, amid the banners of the hilariously misnamed ‘Stop the War coalition’ (‘End the Siege on Gaza’) the Black flag of Jihad is flying. Yes, that’s right, at a major council estate in the East End of London the black flag of ISIS is flying. Here is an excerpt from what one might hope is the Guardian’s learning curve: ‘When the

Hamas censors British journalists. Why don’t we care?

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

If Miliband really cared about defending British Jews, here’s what he would say

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,

If the Edinburgh Fringe thinks it’s fine to give in to bigots, I might have to give up on the Edinburgh Fringe

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

Podcast: The lure of the crowd, anti-Semitism and Cameron’s uncertain future

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

Watch: Douglas Murray and Ben Soffa from Palestinian Solidarity Campaign discuss anti-Semitism

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 reminds us that sometimes sport is the only place for politics

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

‘They started it!’ Joan Rivers weighs in on Gaza conflict

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.

Cultural boycotts are ineffective and wrong

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

If Britain was being shelled, as Israel is being now, how would we respond?

Glaring, the ennui over Israel. The way we drag our eyes to the page, and sigh, and want to read something else. Sympathy is hard. Even anger is hard. It’s just… bleurgh. Israel drifting away. Never mind whose fault it is; that’s a whole other point. But it’s happening. It’s off. No longer does it exist in the popular imagination as our sort of place. Once, I suppose, foes and friends alike regarded it as a North Atlantic nation, but elsewhere. Then a western European one, then, briefly, a southern European one. When was it, do you think, that Israel stopped being regarded as fundamentally a bit like Spain? Early 1990s?

Hamas TV teaches children to kill ‘all Jews’

Anyone who hasn’t seen Hamas TV is missing a treat. Of course the low production values are part of the fun. But for the Palestinian audiences, most entertaining of all seems to be the sight of watching Palestinian children being taught to murder every Jew. Often by an adult dressed up as a giant bumble bee. Because one of the most popular characters in the death-fest that is ‘Al-Aqsa TV’ is indeed ‘Nahul’, the giant cuddly bee. Anybody who still thinks that Hamas is a legitimate ‘resistance’ organisation, or that the recent Hamas-Fatah unity deal could in any way help bring about a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian border dispute,