Jonathan Sacerdoti is a broadcaster and writer covering politics, culture and religion
As Western leaders prepare to gather in New York this week to discuss international recognition of a Palestinian state, a stark signal from Washington demands their attention. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has openly stated that he does not believe Palestinian statehood remains an American foreign policy goal. ‘Unless there are some significant things
Tel Aviv, Israel Israelis last night once again found themselves seeking shelter as the Islamic Revolutionary forces in Iran launched their long-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s 15-hour offensive against their nuclear and ballistic missile facilities. The Israeli strikes themselves had come as something of a surprise, not entirely unforeseen, but unexpected in their timing. Perhaps as
Woken by sirens outside my window in Israel at 3 a.m. I made my way to the bomb shelter in the basement, reaching for my phone on the way. An unusual and urgent message appeared on the screen which had been sent to the entire nation: Home Front Command had updated its guidelines with immediate
While much of the Western debate remains trapped in tired slogans and false moral narratives, events on the ground in the Middle East have taken a decisive turn. In the past 24 hours, U.S. embassies have begun evacuating non-essential staff. Military dependents are being authorised to leave key bases. Multiple reports say U.S. officials have
The United Kingdom’s decision this week to impose personal sanctions on two Israeli cabinet ministers, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is a grave error – not only strategically, but morally. In concert with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway, Britain claims this move defends human rights and opposes settler violence.
The emergence of Yasser Abu Shabab and his ‘Popular Forces’ militia in eastern Rafah has become an unexpected fault line in the shifting landscape of Gaza. In recent days, a flurry of claims, counterclaims, and raw facts has begun to seep through the fog of war. Cracks are appearing in Hamas’s once unchallenged grip, and
Once again, the Mediterranean has hosted a familiar theatre of self-satisfied spectacle. This time, however, the curtain has come down swiftly. The latest vessel to set sail in defiance of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza – the Madleen, a boat bloated with virtue signalling and the vanity of performative compassion – has been intercepted by
Israeli forces operating inside Gaza have retrieved the body of Thai agricultural worker Nattapong Pinta, bringing to a close one of the many grim and unresolved chapters from the October 7th atrocities. In a joint operation by the Shin Bet and the IDF, based on intelligence gleaned from captured militants, the body was recovered in
There was great fanfare when Piers Morgan re-entered the world of television three years ago to front a new prime-time show on Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV. Morgan framed the move as a fightback against cancel culture, a return to free speech, and a declaration of independence from the constraints of legacy media. Piers Morgan asks for
When the White House uses a press briefing to lambast a foreign broadcaster by name, something seismic has shifted. That’s exactly what happened today when Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, publicly accused the BBC of treating ‘the word of Hamas as total truth’ and challenged the White House’s description of the broadcaster rushing out
In Boulder, Colorado, eight elderly Jews were torched alive in a park. They wore red T-shirts bearing the names of hostages seized by Palestinian terrorists over 600 days earlier. Some carried Israeli flags. Walking peacefully in memory and solidarity, they were attacked with fire as a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails created flames as high as
If the war in Gaza has taught the world anything, it is this: truth in war is rarely immediate. In the fog of conflict, facts take time, evidence can be manipulated and early narratives are often weaponised. Yet time and again, much of the international media – and too many public officials – refuse to learn this
For months, Israel has faced a relentless barrage of criticism over its conduct in Gaza – from western governments, UN agencies, and media outlets that once claimed to be her allies. Central to the condemnation are the humanitarian circumstances: civilian suffering, limited aid access, and Israel’s temporary obstruction of some relief efforts. What has gone
Last week marked the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing – the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil since the 7/7 London bombings. Twenty-two people were murdered, most of them children and teenagers, at a pop concert targeted with deliberate cruelty. Among them was Saffie-Rose Roussos, just eight years old – the youngest known victim of terrorism
British taxpayer funds, earmarked for humanitarian aid in Gaza, may have passed through Hamas-controlled structures, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 12 over the weekend. The core of the allegation is not that the UK sought to support terrorism, but that its aid strategy operated in concert with the very machinery that sustains Hamas’s rule.
Waking early on Thursday in London, I read the news on a half-lit phone screen: two people, Israeli embassy staff, gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. A man shouted “Free Palestine,” – of course he did – after he had fired his weapon and walked inside the building – where, in
As Israel presses ahead with Operation Gideon’s Chariots, its most ambitious military campaign in Gaza since the war began, the political landscape surrounding the conflict is shifting – and not in Israel’s favour. Britain’s suspension of trade talks, the summoning of Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, and coordinated statements of condemnation from the UK, France and
When I was a schoolboy, on the rare occasions I was required to line up against the wall to be picked for a football team, I would be picked last. It was fair enough: my abilities matched my interest level – zero. Not much has changed in the intervening decades, and thanks to my lack
The Nakba – Arabic for ‘the catastrophe’ and commemorated today – marks a profound moment of trauma in the Palestinian Arab consciousness. In 1948, following the Arab world’s rejection of the United Nations’ partition plan and their subsequent military assault on the fledgling State of Israel, around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. While Israel accepted the
We live in an age of liberation, in which we are told endlessly by some that freedom of speech, taken to its furthest boundaries, is the crowning achievement of democratic culture. And freedom of speech, alongside freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of (or from) religion, freedom of the press, of movement, of assembly and
