Jonathan Sacerdoti

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Jonathan Sacerdoti is a broadcaster and writer covering politics, culture and religion

Sadiq Khan’s Eid message is a disgrace

London’s Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan published a video online earlier this week to mark the Muslim festival of Eid. Released under the guise of seasonal goodwill, this glib social media greeting is not merely problematic – it is an outright disgrace. Cloaked in the warm language of unity and peace, the Mayor of London delivered

Why Israel is ramping up its war on terror

The war in Gaza has entered a more consequential and unforgiving phase. Early this morning, Palestinian sources reported that Israeli tanks had begun advancing into central Rafah, following a night of intense airstrikes across the southern Gaza Strip. This military escalation came after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz announced the expansion of Operation ‘Oz veCherev’

The truth about the Gaza protests

A series of striking videos have emerged from the Gaza Strip over the last week. Crowds of Palestinians, chanting slogans against Hamas, have taken to the streets in a rare public display of dissent. Some have criticised the mainstream Western media for treating these images with restraint, claiming a missed opportunity to spotlight what could

The trouble with BBC Arabic

A peculiar incident occurred this month at an Israeli army base in the Negev: a wild caracal – a desert feline native to the region – bit two Israeli soldiers. Though minor and medically insignificant, the episode subsequently found its way across BBC Arabic’s platforms: X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Within a couple of days, the BBC had published

Who will stand up for Jews today?

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

Israel’s Gaza campaign is far from over

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

Israel has ‘opened the gates of hell’ in Gaza

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israel launched a surprise wave of strikes across the Gaza Strip, targeting key Hamas infrastructure and leadership. This escalation comes after Hamas repeatedly refused to release Israeli hostages under conditions proposed by Israel and backed by US mediators. Despite extensive negotiations, including direct involvement from Washington, Hamas chose

There is no more hiding from the chilling truth of 7 October

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, chaired by Lord Andrew Roberts, has now been published. It provides a meticulously researched, forensic account of the atrocities committed against Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Compiled by the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group, this report is an essential document, recording in stark detail the murder, torture,

Britain is facing a reckoning on anti-Semitism

It is difficult to fathom how an incident as horrifying as the kidnapping of Israeli musician Itay Kashti by three men in Wales barely registered as a blip on the national news agenda. In any just world, this crime – motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, religious fanaticism, and a chilling sense of political grievance – should

Why is the LSE hosting a Hamas book launch?

The London School of Economics’ decision to host the launch this week of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters – a book that attempts to sanitise and fails to properly condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has rightly sparked outrage. It is a shameless attempt to rehabilitate

Will Hamas take Trump’s Gaza ultimatum seriously?

‘“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.

No Other Land isn’t what it seems

The Oscars, an institution that claims to celebrate artistic excellence, this week played a leading role in a sophisticated and cynical propaganda campaign against Israel. The 2024 Academy Award for Best Documentary went to No Other Land, a film that, beneath the veneer of raw storytelling and supposed human rights advocacy, is little more than a

The BBC’s reputation is in tatters after its Gaza debacle

The BBC’s admission of serious editorial failures in its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is not just a scandal – it is a moment of reckoning. This is, without doubt, one of the most humiliating debacles in the corporation’s modern history, and it vindicates those who have long highlighted the BBC’s institutional biases when reporting on

The true meaning of Trump’s AI Gaza video

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

Who is responsible for the BBC’s Gaza documentary debacle?

In 2007, the BBC was engulfed in scandal for an embarrassing – if relatively trivial – misrepresentation of Queen Elizabeth II. A promotional clip for a documentary, A Year with the Queen, was edited to suggest the monarch stormed out of a photoshoot in a huff, when in reality, the sequence had been misleadingly spliced together.

The BBC’s Gaza documentary omitted something astonishing

The BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone at first glance seemed to offer a raw and intimate portrayal of life in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict. However, the programme, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was deeply flawed. The documentary, narrated by a Palestinian child, Abdullah Ayman Eliyazouri, presented a personal account of the

The Middle East’s language wars

When the Middle East gets me down, I sometimes rewatch the video of Donald Trump announcing the death of ISIS leader ‘Abooo… Bakarrrr… al-Baghdadi’ in 2019. It never fails to make me laugh when Donald declares the terrorist leader ‘died like a dog… a beautiful dog’. It’s funny to many in the West, because Trump’s

Why does Louis Theroux keep picking on Israeli settlers?

When is Louis Theroux going to make a documentary where he embeds himself with Hamas in Gaza? Or Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, or Qalqilya? Probably never, because he’d most likely come to a sticky end. His attempt to make a show about British Muslims who were sympathetic to Isis “fizzled out” Instead, Theroux is