THIS IS NOT A GENOCIDE

Some words ought to retain their weight, and genocide is one of them in my view. The word has a clear etymology and commonly understood definition. It has a serious and sober history behind it, as befits such a subject. There is a vast scholarly literature that attends to the word in its legal, historical […]

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL IS WRONG

Critical – as though those who accuse Israel of every known crime against humanity, of being more Nazi than the Nazis, more fascist than the fascists, more apartheid than apartheid South Africa, are simply exercising measured argument and fine discrimination. —Howard Jacobson It would be ridiculous to think of any country as above criticism, especially […]

A MESSAGE TO THE GENTILES REGARDING SOLIDARITY

Since the atrocities of 7 October 2023 I’ve been wearing my Israeli flag lapel pin alongside my Ukrainian one. This tends to bring certain sorts crawling out of the woodwork, and on Saturday I got into a rather heated debate about Israel and Palestine. The woman in question told me the “worst” thing Hitler ever […]

REMEMBERING THE TWIN TOWERS

I spent a week in New York in 1998. My friend and I stayed with a woman who lived in Newark and worked in Manhatten. We took the PATH train with her into the city each morning, and our first glimpse of New York, before the train disappeared below the Hudson, was dominated by the […]

Spare a Thought for Kenji Goto

I recommend watching the Sky News interview with the ISIS defector who witnessed the murder of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, who was killed by Mohammed Emwazi. The defector’s job was to provide hostages with reassurances, in order to keep them calm. They would do many mock executions, complete with speeches, so that the hostage would […]