Europe

Completely innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered. ‘Terrorism’ hardly suffices to describe the savage rampage beyond the Gaza Wall undertaken by men from Hamas on 7 October. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when knowledge emerged of the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germans and their collaborators, humanity vowed ‘Never Again’. Yet the world has descended once more into ever lower levels of depravity. What is more, thousands of innocents are now being killed as collateral in the on-going counterattacks. The kibbutz of Kfar Aza and kibbutz Be’eri, where some of the most barbaric crimes were carried out by Hamas, joins the long list of places of infamy where

It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these babies, these ladies, these old people’. He added: ‘There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.’ He also reiterated a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.   Macron’s words drew a swift and sharp response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the president’s focus should be on

Italy has become the first European Union country to bite the bullet and set up a scheme to off-shore migrant asylum seekers to a country outside the bloc. Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni says she hopes the scheme, signed off in Rome last week with Albania’s left-wing prime minister, Edi Rama, will become a model copied across the EU.  It is similar to the Tory government’s troubled Rwanda scheme, but more practical and less vulnerable to legal challenge. Italy will process asylum requests in Albania where it plans to send tens of thousands of migrants a year. Britain, meanwhile, plans to hand the task of deciding who gets asylum to Rwanda

Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month.  In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’, a facile and frankly offensive refrain. It’s become a habit in recent years to virtue signal one’s solidarity with victims of terrorism or religious persecution: not only do we share your pain but also your identity. One suspects that had those non-Jewish demonstrators in Nice been confronted on their way home by a group of Hamas

Germany is facing one of the greatest political upheavals in its modern history. Polls indicate that the ruling coalition would gain only a third of the vote between its three parties if an election were to be held now. Meanwhile the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has emerged as the second most popular party. With concerns about immigration one of the hot topic issues, Scholz’s government is now considering a Rwanda-style plan to process asylum claims in partner states outside of the EU. Much is at stake. If it works, it will be a sea change on immigration policy that will affect the entire EU bloc. If it fails or

Suella Braverman’s description of pro-Palestinian protests as being ‘disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster’ has given the Province’s political class yet another reason – not that they need one – to chunter on at length.  The professionally po-faced, from SDLP leader Colum Eastwood to Stephen Farry of the Alliance Party, dutifully trod the path to X/ Twitter, or whichever broadcasting studio would take them, to intone about how off piste the Home Secretary had gone. They said Braverman’s remarks showed how ignorant about the reality on the ground in Northern Ireland she was.  For all the claims the Home Secretary doesn’t know what she’s talking about when it comes to Northern Ireland, she

France’s most infamous antisemite is back in the headlines. At the weekend, the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, declared in an interview that he didn’t believe Jean-Marie Le Pen was an antisemite. This came as a surprise to many given that the 95-year-old Le Pen, who founded the National Front in 1972, has been condemned on six occasions by French courts for just such bigotry.  Le Pen’s most notorious declaration was during a television interview in 1987 when, discussing the gas chambers, he said that although he didn’t deny their existence they were nonetheless a ‘small point of detail in the second world war’. The remark caused uproar

German chancellor Olaf Scholz still doesn’t get it. ‘Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf’ (the fish stinks from its head) is a popular German saying. It’s proven right by Scholz’s abysmal failure to lead since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s failing again with Israel, declaring the Jewish state is Germany’s ‘Staatsräson’, or raison d-etat, but never spelling out what this means. Scholz has flopped with his tepid attempts to explain what’s at stake for Germany and Europe in Ukraine and Israel and why Berlin should be the leadership power of the EU. This problem is partly due to Scholz’s nature. If you think you’re the smartest guy in the room

Pranked by a Kremlin-friendly comedy duo, Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, spoke for many when she confessed her ‘fatigue’ with the war in Ukraine. But there is some bad news for all the Europeans ‘tired’ of the conflict. Europe’s real job will only begin when the current war of attrition eventually congeals along more or less static lines, with or without a formal armistice.  The task ahead will not only involve physical reconstruction, budget support, or bringing Ukraine closer to EU membership. Much more importantly, it will involve guaranteeing the stability of whatever formal or informal settlement arises from the war.  The prospect of a sizeable US deployment in post-war Ukraine

Daugavpils You can tell quite a bit about a place by the number of national flags on display. One or two on public buildings here and there is a healthy genuflection to a moderate and comfortable patriotism. But groups of the same national flag every five paces, on every building and festooning the parks and boulevards – well, there’s something going on, isn’t there? You’re in a place where trouble is surely just around the corner, a place where the national authorities may not feel entirely secure. What sort of trouble? Well, one wouldn’t want to be over-dramatic, obvs, but in this particular case, world war three. The Russian invasion

Giorgia Meloni has just marked her first year as Italy’s prime minister. When elected, she was described as a far-right leader, the most right-wing that Italy has had since Mussolini. So after a year in office, were these labels justified? What kind of leader has she been? And has she done anything to justify the ‘far-right’ label still lazily applied to her? While running for office, Meloni asked to be judged by her words and policies, not by the fact that as a teenager she had joined Italy’s long disbanded post-fascist party. ‘Usually, Italian politics are somewhat comical,’ Giovanni Orsina of Luiss University in Rome recently admitted. ‘But by Italian

Emmanuel Macron has suggested the formation of an international coalition to combat Hamas similar to the one deployed against the Islamic State several years ago. The president of France floated the idea on Tuesday during his visit to Israel. An Elysee source later fleshed out the proposal in more detail. ‘We are available to build a coalition against Hamas or to include Hamas in what we are already doing in the coalition against Isis,’ said the source, adding that as well as operations on the ground, the coalition is ‘involved in the training of Iraqi forces, the sharing of information between partners, and the fight against terrorism funding.’  Isis is far

The EU’s response to the war between Israel and Gaza has been badly muddled. While Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden have been making their view crystal clear on Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas’s attacks, Josep Borrell, the top EU diplomat, has toed a different line. Borrell this week called for what was effectively an Israeli ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel’s more ardent European allies are furious. ‘We cannot contain the humanitarian catastrophe if Gaza’s terrorism continues. There will be no security and no peace for either Israel or the Palestinians if this terrorism continues,’ Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said. Her Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, echoed that