Israel

Awoken by sirens wailing over large parts of central Israel last weekend, I pulled on whatever clothes I could find beside my bed and shuffled down to the bomb shelter in the basement. The missiles, launched from Yemen by the Iranian-backed Houthis, didn’t distinguish between ideologies or identities. More or less every Israeli in the strike zone – left-wing or right-wing, religious or secular, Jew, Arab, Christian, Muslim, or other – did the same. Those without safe-rooms of their own rely on communal shelters, often meeting their neighbours dressed in pyjamas or wrapped in bath towels. Those who get caught away from home rush into the nearest building to be ushered

The war in Gaza has resumed with a new intensity, but it would be a mistake to see this as a straightforward continuation of what we have witnessed over recent months. This phase of the conflict suggests a shift in strategy – one shaped by Israeli military recalculations, a more accommodating US administration, and the failure of ceasefire negotiations to yield further meaningful results. Washington and Jerusalem are now aligned in their broader strategic objectives For some weeks, Israel has found itself in a strategic deadlock. The lull in fighting had given Hamas time to reorganise, rearm, and reinforce itself, while the humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza ended up helping

Imagine if, following an Allied raid on Nazi positions, the newspapers the next day told us about nothing but the civilian casualties. No mention of the fascists who were killed. No utterance of their names, no information about their ranks. Instead, just pained commentary on the suffering of the innocents who tragically found themselves swept up in this act of war. This is one of the most blistering assaults on Hamas’s terror army since 7 October We would think that strange, right? We would consider it a reneging on the journalist’s duty to tell the truth about war. Well, that’s how I feel perusing the coverage of Israel’s resumption of

‘Amnesty International and Harvard,’ says Alan Dershowitz of the 7 October 2023 massacre, ‘blamed it on Israel even before the first shot was fired in Gaza.’ It was true; the Israel Defence Force (IDF) did not enter Gaza until 27 October, but already there were ‘River to Sea’ anti-Israel demonstrations, anti-Semitic posts on TikTok, the first stirrings of the Tentifada movement on campuses, a deafening silence in the United Nations (especially from its women’s committee which was to take six months to denounce the mass rapine) and a worldwide attempt to blame 7 October on its victims rather than its perpetrators. On Saturday 15 May 2024 there were two consecutive articles in the Times, a full eighteen

Another week, another peace plan for a seemingly intractable conflict. This time it’s Gaza’s turn, with the launch of a new peace and reconstruction plan for the rubble-strewn Strip. The proposal, created by Egypt and endorsed by the Arab League (a 22-strong group of Arab states) at a summit in Cairo, provides an alternative to President Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ model. Trump’s idea to place Gaza under US control, depopulate it to redevelop the enclave, and decant its residents to nearby Egypt and Jordan was rejected out of hand by the Arab states. The US has signalled that it is open to hearing what an Arab plan for Gaza’s post-war reconstruction

‘“Shalom Hamas” means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose.’ So began Donald Trump’s furious social media post, an ultimatum wrapped in a linguistic dagger. The Hebrew word ‘shalom’ has a third meaning – peace – but Trump left that one out. Perhaps we can all agree: that option is no longer on the table in any outcome. Instead, what followed was a declaration of war, at least rhetorically. Trump threatened Hamas with total destruction if they do not release the remaining hostages and return the bodies of those they have murdered. He called them ‘sick and twisted’ for keeping the corpses. He promised Israel everything it needed to ‘finish the job’. He

Donald Trump’s AI-generated vision of Gaza – complete with golden statues of himself, bearded belly dancers, and a triumphant song declaring, ‘Trump Gaza, number one!’ – landed like a slap across the face of polite Western discourse. The reactions were swift and predictable. Outraged commentators called it tasteless, delusional, the fever dream of a man obsessed with his own mythology. Newspapers mocked its crudeness, its cartoonish spectacle, its lack of realism. Yet, in all the ridicule, something crucial was missed. This wasn’t just Trump being Trump. This was Trump speaking Arabic again – not linguistically, but in the deeply symbolic, visually driven language of Middle Eastern power. The video was not a policy

In those awful first weeks after 7 October, someone came up with a slogan that was taken as a rallying cry for those of us on the right side of the argument. As editor of the Jewish Chronicle at the time, I bought a job lot of stickers emblazoned with the slogan and handed them out to staff. It was this: ‘F**k Hamas’. On Saturday, when the jihadi group released Ohad Ben-Ami, 56, Or Levy, 34, and Eli Sharabi, 52, in an appallingly emaciated state, that slogan was an adequate description for how the nation of Israel felt. When waif-like Sharabi was paraded on the propaganda stage, he was ‘interviewed’

We asked for proof of deliberate starvation in Gaza. On Saturday, we received it. The images of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami – three hostages released by Hamas after 491 days in captivity – were haunting. Frail, skeletal, barely able to stand, they bore the unmistakable marks of prolonged deprivation. The sight evoked painful historical echoes: men whose suffering was etched into their hollowed faces and emaciated bodies, a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors. This was not incidental malnutrition. It was something far worse: starvation as a weapon, inflicted with intent. It was a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors For months, famine in Gaza had

Donald Trump’s decision to impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) could sound the death knell of this important judicial body. The US president condemned the Court’s ‘illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.’ Trump’s response came after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu last November over alleged war crimes in Gaza, as well as a warrant for a Hamas commander. As a supporter of the ICC, I regret that its credibility has – at a stroke – been grievously diminished by this exercise of prejudice The ICC, despite its obvious bias in this case, performs a crucial role as the legitimate forum in

Watching Arbel Yehud being freed in Gaza today, I thought to myself: this is what it must have been like at Salem. Here we had a diminutive woman being paraded through a baying mob of hollering men. They barked religious slogans at her. They shoved and jostled to get a better view of the marked woman. They thrust their mobile phones in her face to capture her terror for posterity. They’ll no doubt share the clips. ‘Look! See how scared she was!’ Mercifully, Ms Yehud was being marched, not to the gallows, but to liberty. She was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led pogrom of

Imagine waking up to the news that Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the brutal killers of British soldier Lee Rigby, were being released from prison. Picture the outrage as the British public remembers the images of Rigby being hacked to death on a Woolwich street in broad daylight, his killers unapologetic and defiant even during their trial. Imagine, too, if Axel Rudakubana – the teenage terrorist who stabbed three young girls to death during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class – walked free, boasting about his satisfaction with the murders. These scenarios are unthinkable. Yet, in Israel, they are a grim reality. This is a deal that ensures the cycle of

Israel’s critics want you to acknowledge its uniqueness as the only country to enjoy the triple distinction of being a colonial, genocidal, and an apartheid state. Whether Israel is, or was, colonial I leave to the historians and political scientists. The question of genocide will eventually be decided by the International Court of Justice. In respect of the third transgression, however, as someone born and bred in apartheid South Africa, I may be able to shed some light, and expose the deficiencies of this increasingly pervasive analogy. The reckless invective that labels Israel an ‘apartheid state’ is a grotesque injustice Israel is far from a paragon of virtue. But the sort