My column in
@Telegraph
today:
'In daring to point out one ugly and disturbing aspect of a mass movement, I had riled some of its supporters. But in calling that disturbing aspect out as anti-Semitism, I had invited spitting derision.'
I had a brilliant time interviewing
@AbigailShrier
- whose extreme intelligence, wit and courage changed the whole conversation
Abigail Shrier: Taking on the trans lobby has made me Public Enemy No 1
I interviewed
@YasMohammedxx
, half-Gazan, half Egyptian, married at 19 to an Al Qaeda operative, and now one of the most astute critics of Islam, the hypocrisy and anti-Semitism of much of the pro-Palestine crowd, and the idea that Hamas = Palestine
In Reuters and The Times, but *totally unreported* in NY Times and BBC six hours after the story splashed on the Tel website.
Weird thing to keep quiet.Hamas plot to attack Jewish sites across Europe foiled by police
My interview with political philosopher-entrepreneur
@VivekGRamaswamy
about how corporate woke is eating away at democracy. I thoroughly enjoyed engaging with his ideas and arguments
Me on
@bariweiss
on the collapse of Western authority, self and geopolitical understanding— and the predictably catastrophic results of our politics of retrenchment, appeasement and pacifism - thanks
@petersavodnik
for being a great ed
Musk appaz wants to downplay posts with links on X, because links take people away from X. But they do the opposite: they keep people like me coming back for more, using X as a curated news source. Without links it’s just tiresome grandstanding and pronouncements
My interview with
@AbigailShrier
— as usual this force of nature nails the truth and doesn’t care if you like it or not
The stifling pathologisation of children for basically being human is proving lethal,as per her new book Bad Therapy
via
@JewishChron
Only the Jews: massacred, terrorised and kidnapped — and the the biggest police forces in the West have to launch patrols to protect JEWS, not those of the religion of their attackers
People often rail about politics and culture wars and so on in conceptual and psychological terms, forgetting that these things map directly onto physical harm and safety.
Jesus. Braverman did not 'incite violence'. In calling out as haters those screaming "Hitler should have finished the job" and wearing Hamas outfits, how is SHE the one inciting hatred?I'd have thought anti-semites storming through streets are solely responsible on that front
This is indeed a tragedy, like all innocent lives lost. But it's a war, and they were working in a warzone, which carries terrible risk. Why is the world acting like it was some kind of sadistic murder? Oh, because Jews.
'the family who brought the High Court case are sending another child to the school in September and also planning a separate legal action.'
The crafty entitlement is ASTOUNDING
“Post-Feminist Feminism …is not about liberating women. It’s about pushing women out of college sports. It’s about telling girls they aren’t lesbians or tomboys, men struggling to find themselves.”
Love this piece, by the unstoppable
@realzoestrimpel
As the mob high and low rages and organises against Israeli 'genocide'... my column says:
'The Israel Defence Forces are the most moral soldiers in the world'
My thoughts today are with the women & young girls of Gaza.May they find the "second of safety" they desperately need.
My thoughts also go to the Israeli women,especially the soldiers:
what have you done,what have you become. Dears, when you realise it,you will be haunted forever
My interview with the very funny, extremely sharp and exceptionally wise
@JohnHMcWhorter
in today’s
@Telegraph
about his new book Woke Racism and why the ‘religion’ of woke is only holding back the people it purports to serve
More than half an hour for the police to come to a terrifying anti-Semitic pile-on.
Three attacked in Leicester Square ‘for being Jewish’ and 'speaking Hebrew'
My notebook in
@Telegraph
: why are so many women wrapped in keffiyahs, macho terrorist style, teeny bopping for the most odious rapists and haters of women the world has ever seen?
The women cheering on Hamas rapists are an insult to feminism
I get antsy when people - ok, men - start talking with certainty about ‘women’ and what constitutes ‘their long-term happiness’. Translation: women, stop lying to yourselves (and inconveniencing us) and go realise yourselves in the kitchen as mothers of seven
One of the biggest unspoken truths of modern Western society is that women have been brainwashed into acting in ways that are fundamentally against their own long term happiness and well-being in order to maintain the myth that men and women are the same.
It's tragic but...
Hamas is laughing its head off.Many smirks and chuckles.That's what happens when you make the whole world an evil fool and it merrily plays along. Hamas *always* knew it could fully indulge its sadistic taste for murdering Israelis and the world would still deplore *only* ISRAEL.
Me in
@Telegraph
: "While lefties bleat about Islamophobia, Jews like me look askance at the chanting and cheering in Muslim communities in response to Hamas’s murder of hundreds of Israelis."
I never had high hopes for the right and especially the far right. Who would, re the latter? But what a disappointment the global left has become - my column in
@Telegraph
So many excuses made for the unbridled antisemitism uniting elites,old lefties,rock stars,BLM-ers and many Muslims-it’s their ‘ignorance’,their ‘cowardice’;their ‘education’,it’s a misguided interpretation of postcolonial theory. No: it’s simpler and darker than all of the above
For many, ten days spent under lock and key in a quarantine hotel room would be deeply traumatic – never mind civil liberties, what about human rights?
Britain can and MUST do better
@grantshapps
@michaelgove
@RishiSunak
Margaret Thatcher on events in Tianenmen Square, June 1989. ‘It shows communism stands ready to impose its will by force… we must take that into account on our views on defence…’. How she’d be squrming at the West’s response to Russia, China and Iran today…
My
@Telegraph
column.
That hundreds of Britain's political and legal grandees – including Tories – are demanding an arms embargo to Israel is pusillanimous and dangerous. They should be shamed, not taken seriously
We're not crying 'ism': these are not metaphorical issues of safety and we have left the domain of discourse: Jews are once again in real, physical peril: my latest
@telegraph
column
Me on the moral abomination that is the UN – which has hated Israel since the 1970s and, indulging China and Russia, seems more committed to destroying peace than promoting it
Dude, we thank you, but ‘hatred’ is not where it’s at. That’s schoolroom jargon.Where it’s at is something far more profound, an ancient worldview hinging around the desire to kill Jews,or justify doing so,and to take over the world and make it a caliphate,as per
@richard_landes
Netanyahu claims that Israel could control Gaza for an “indefinite period.” No. Palestinians have a right to determine their own future. Israeli military occupation of Gaza undermines efforts to build two independent states that advance respect for every human being.
This shows the strength of what
@DavidDeutschOxf
calls The Pattern: Labour frontbenchers willing to destroy their careers in order to – let's not mince words – defend the mass murder of Jews
A total delight to sit down with
@bariweiss
and talk Israel, morality, and both where the West has gone wrong and who can save it — and how.
Bari Weiss: 'History has come for Israel, it's come for Ukraine and it will come for the West next'
"Measles is surging again because Covid destroyed trust in the medical establishment"
No: measles is back because conspiracy theory destroyed trust in the medical establishment – and in sanity more generally
Me on
@bariweiss
substack. War is never nice, but the West’s abandonment of making credible the threat of physical force - an essential component to moral force - has got us here, with bombs raining on the gates of Europe, and with much worse to come as China and Iran look on.
Wow. Never thought I’d see UK worse/more craven on Jews than Austria/ the EU. We know where this money goes. The last few days have made it crystal clear. It’s no good lighting up the FCO. Stop the funding now!
What’s horrifying about not forcing 16-18 year olds to do something they really don’t want to do, and encouraging those who do want to do it… ? Or perhaps
@yuanyi_z
didn’t read it. Horrifying in its own way ;)
'The elected parties make actual laws, but it is the illiberal left now making all the other laws; those we increasingly must live by if we want to work, express ourselves in public and private, and keep our friends.'
Yes. Last night I had a finger wagged at me about the IDF’s zest for ‘collective punishment’ of Gazans.Israel never engages in ‘collective punishment’— which it neither has has time or taste for. Plus the IDF’s code of ethics, whose author I’ve interviewed, explicitly forbids it
You're addressing people who are honestly against Hamas's crimes. No such people are opposed to Israel doing what is necessary to end them. Ending "the occupation" or avoiding what many mischievously call 'collective punishment' means perpetuating those crimes. Being complicit.
"Professors are tying themselves in knots to avoid describing reality so that students will be politically pacified and not offended" | Writes
@realzoestrimpel
I think there are clear moral lines: the parallel is with Allied bombing of Germany: to defeat the Nazis, innocent civilians had to die. Few would argue we should not have responded militarily to Hitler’s regime. It’s the same with Israel and Hamas, horrible though that is.
There aren’t clear moral lines in this conflict. If you accept Israel has the right to protect its citizens against terror, innocent Palestinian lives will be lost; the question is what can be done to minimise loss of life & worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Awful, but true.
'The same unforgiving standards applied to racists by the hard-left are never used towards anti-Semites...'
My piece on Dickens, anti-racism and Jews for
@spectator
via
@spectator
My
@Telegraph
column: the hostage families, evacuees and former two-staters I met this week all say the same thing:
Israel has woken up to the total war with Islamism — while the West remains stuck in lethal lalaland, repeatedly hitting snooze
Me in
@Telegraph
: Britain should be THANKING the Israeli Defence Forces not taking every opportunity to undermine it by sniping and repeating vicious inaccuracies
Or alternatively you could stay in the modern world: carry on getting the plane, be there in under 2 hours, no need to wait and change in Brussels, generally for about half the price.
My column in
@Telegraph
: we're all tired of the culture wars, of woke this and right wing that, but alas, the issues remain important and very stubbornly there
Another false idea is that such a thing as ‘long-term happiness’ for any group a) exists or b) is a proper goal. In fact, being free and miserable/mixed bag or unfree and even more miserable are the two options. I choose the first.
Young people in the West have no real idea anymore what war is— why it is waged, and why it isn’t the same as genocide. It’s good they don’t know what war means, maybe. It’s bad they use this ignorance to compound their RAGING ANTISEMITISM
The death rate in Gaza is at a historic high, with thousands of children killed in just a few weeks.
Demanding an end to this inexcusable violence is a question of basic humanity. Silence is complicity. You cannot be silent in an unfolding genocide.
Me on the terrible hypocrisy of those who persist in treating women’s fate in Afghanistan as discourse rather than reality; as the West’s, not the Taliban’s fault.
Also, airhead
@GaryLineker
. You said the present Conservative government is like the Nazis. But you had nothing to say when Hamas massacred 1,400 Jews. Which ought to spark even your little memory to some extent. So yes. We do know your ‘thoughts’. Such as they are.
Come on - it’s nothing to do with trust in Britain’s healthcare system, which has proved remarkably good at vetting and administering vaccines — it’s to do with the *spreading grip of conspiracy theory*
'London is a real hotspot - we've got below 65% uptake of the MMR vaccine, and more broadly about 85% across the UK.'
Dr Chris Smith details a rise in vaccine hesitancy across the UK, as the trust in Britain's healthcare system falls.
Still NO MENTION in NY Times, Wash Post. Which is odd given that Hamas expanding operations to Europe means US is next. And they can't even insinuate it's the Jews, sorry, the Israelis, practicing deception this time because it's 'European authorities' reporting it
My interview in today’s
@Telegraph
with the perennially superb and courageous
@Ayaan
Hirsi Ali: ‘Britain should take the lead of the English-speaking world’
My
@Telegraph
column: she laughs mockingly in court as she’s charged. She lead chants to thousands associated with genocidal antisemitism, yells garbled Marxist nonsense and gleefully disrupts and destroys.
Thunberg is a thug.
The Islamists won elections in Bradford, UK, simply because they are majority. These are the results of uncontrolled immigration. Dark times ahead for UK.
I interviewed Judit Polgar in Budapest... and it was every bit as fascinating to meet the real-life Beth Harmon (minus the orphanage and drugs)...and the woman who beat Kasparov, as I had hoped.
The queen of chess makes her next move
Yes. The lines have also gone dead on improved variant-busting vaccines, and indeed on any forward vaccine policy at all from the Govt. It’s totally mad.
"people don’t like wearing masks, but they’re still needed in crowded indoor places. We need to keep going with vaccinations, which have almost ground to a halt, and use this summer to make our schools and workplaces safe from airborne infections"
The West should be THANKING Israel for single handedly taking on such a nightmarishly difficult global threat— not constantly trying to thwart it and insult it with petty and stupid accusations. Isis was a multi state job, and we didn’t constantly condemn those fighting it
This is what happens when Holocaust education- and morality tout court - has completely failed. The Overton window shifts in queasy ways and hey presto it’s fine to engage in holocaust denial/ mockery/ distortion
Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust is profoundly false, offensive and shameful. Drumroll please… This message was sent by Labour MP
@KateOsamor
to her constituents. As
@RishiSunak
would say: Is this “the face of the changed Labour Party”? Can you deal with this,
@Keir_Starmer
?
Chess is way more seductive and interesting, even to be bad at, than I ever expected. It leaps from board to metaphor to deadly power politics. My thoughts on A Point of View.
Belsize Park, West Hampstead, areas with large Jewish communities… I’m seeing a lot of this, and now don’t know if it’s the Met serving ‘community cohesion’ or the pitchforking-wielding mob
'The officials said they hoped Iran would opt for a smaller-scale strike.'
This is ABSURD from the mighty US about IRAN.
'Hope they would opt...?'
And:'HMS Lancaster is not expected to join US Naval movements'. No, of course it isn't. Winning is taboo.
Me in
@Telegraph
— Labour is once again being eaten alive by those who want to harm Jews— too many Muslim voters and the keffiyah-sporting Pro Pal bloc.
@DavidLammy
comments about UK trying to REWARD Hamas with a state doesn’t bode well.
Is Britain Exceptional? And how— or how not? This question lies below the big political rifts of our time - and there’s still time to listen on Sounds. Huge thanks to
@BenDowell
for making it Pick of the Week in Saturday’s Times
Yes, being in Israel now is hard and sad but it’s also a relief - nobody tearing down posters of hostages, blaming Israel for genocide and otherwise mocking the Jews for being brutally raped and murdered. Sometimes it actually feels we… belong there!
I haven’t even been in Israel a week but it’s felt like a year. I have decided to stay here for a while longer because there’s too much to do, and I can’t do enough. Too much to document. Too many hugs to give. Too big a fight to take on. I’ll be honest that I’m also scared to…
My
@Telegraph
column: all pretence at acknowledging Israel’s cause has gone, replaced with endless blame, antisemitism, and most puzzling, the urge to reward the Palestinian cause