Sunday, October 05, 2025

10/05 Links: Trump: Hamas faces ‘complete obliteration’ if it clings to power; Howard Jacobson: The left are 'responsible' for antisemitism rise in the UK; Eli the Survivor

From Ian:

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Central Obstacle to Peace between Israel and the Palestinians Isn't Politics
While Palestinians declare they want statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, they make abundantly clear that their real aspiration isn't independence but the destruction of Israel, regardless of its borders.

Hamas - an Islamist, jihadist, and fundamentalist movement - took over the Palestinian parliament in January 2006 democratically and Gaza in June 2007 violently. Hamas's religious ideology complements the national ideology of the PLO, injecting a religious element into the conflict. The result is that what might otherwise be a solvable problem of borders and demographics takes on almost cosmic meaning as a struggle between Islam and Judaism that began in the 7th century between Mohammad and the Jews of the Arabian city of Medina.

Given the strength of the religious element, and the weakness of the national element, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to accept a two-state solution. National independence has limited appeal, and anything short of a complete victory over the Jewish state fails to satisfy the need for a victory of Islam over Judaism.

Westerners tend to ignore the religious element when dealing with the Muslim world, viewing it as secondary or purely rhetorical. In truth, even groups like Fatah - which often employs secular nationalist rhetoric - are deeply informed by Islamic beliefs and ways of thinking. For Palestinians, national and religious aspirations are inseparable, and, for many, Hamas's affinity with Islam grants it greater legitimacy as a political movement.

Hamas and other groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have a fixed set of ideas about Jews and Judaism that make any compromise or mutual recognition with a Jewish state anathema. The advent of Islam in the 7th century CE rendered Judaism void. The adherents of this superseded faith do not constitute a nation or people. Therefore, there is no logic or legitimacy to the existence of a Jewish state.

Moreover, once land comes under Muslim rule, it ought to remain Muslim in perpetuity. Islamists believe this to be true of Sicily, the Iberian Peninsula, and Greece, but especially true of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and its holy sites. The Balfour Declaration and subsequent decisions by the League of Nations and the UN granting sovereignty to Jews in this land are thus an offense to Islam.

The spectacle of a return of Judaism - in which the Jews regain their land, pray where the Temple once stood, and act as a sovereign people rather than a scattered religious minority - strikes many Muslims as an intolerable offense. As long as Israel continues to exist in any form, the affront remains, and it must be combated through jihad.

This religious perception also underlies the hostility towards Israel among the rest of the Arab peoples and Muslims more generally. Thus, Palestinians feel that recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people would be a betrayal of Islam that would earn them the contempt of their coreligionists.
Benny Morris: Nothing from Israeli-Palestinian History Suggests Trump's Peace Plan Will Work
President Trump's peace plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza implicitly proposes Israeli-Palestinian peace on the basis of a two-state compromise. Yet since 1937, the Palestinian leadership has successively rejected numerous international and Israeli peace plans, believing that all of Palestine belongs to the Arabs, and that the Jews have no right to sovereignty in any part of it.

Trump's plan is a non-starter because the raison d'etre of Hamas is the destruction of the Jewish state and the Islamization of Palestine (as expounded in the group's foundational Charter of 1988). More importantly, Hamas - like Lebanon's Hizbullah - has from the first said it will never give up its arms.

Trump's plan nowhere explains how Hamas will be disarmed or who will do it. Few observers believe that any Arab force will engage in battle against Hamas to disarm it. Any who try to do so will immediately be branded by their own people as "collaborators" with Israel. It is also a matter of "honor," a very important concept in the Arab world; you do not give up your Kalashnikov in the face of a mortal enemy.
Two years later, October 7 remains an ongoing trauma for Israel and world Jewry
Only Jews are told to suffer in silence because others oceans away suffer more. For their friends, sympathy; for their enemies, suffering is always relative. It is only one side that offers a bridge of empathy, acknowledging the pain of Palestinians living in a battlefield. Still, it has never crossed the other way to accept the suffering of Jews and Israelis.

Others lie, saying that the suffering was self-inflicted, creating alternate realities that drive all to madness. They gleefully try to rewrite the events that left the wound on Jewry's body, and though it aches and bleeds, we're told that it was never there.

Jews bear the wound, desperate to have their experience acknowledged so as to affirm their sanity in a world gone mad, but acknowledging Jewish suffering is treated as ground ceded in a battle. When it suits such people, then October 7 was a necessary means toward a just end, to right a grocery list of grievances whose debt the entire world couldn't pay.

Those murdered, mutilated, or beaten were settlers, soldiers, or Israeli. No matter what, there is always another justification for the abuse of Jews. When the abuse is denied, and the victim devotes all their effort to maintain the truth, it is impossible to fully grasp what one has endured. The issue is the same when the pain is belittled because it is inconvenient to the war effort. While there are some righteous among the nations, by and large, the suffering of Jews is a Jewish concern.

It is impossible to make those who deny, justify, or diminish the ongoing trauma of October 7 understand why the wounds go so deep. They don't care that in Israel, everyone knows someone who was killed, or maimed, or has one degree of separation from those taken hostage.

Israel is a small country, and it is impossible not to have been impacted by the pogrom even in some small way.

Every day, the impact seeps deeper as October 7 continues to unfold. The Diaspora is not disconnected. Israel is smaller than the Jewish nation at large, but not by much. The ties that bind have become ties of loss for a great number of Diaspora Jews. Family, friends, colleagues; everyone has an October 7 story that no one hears.

I don't know when the Sukkahs were removed in Kissufim, but it had to have happened eventually, when the site was relatively secure and the residents returned home. They were temporary after all, but their end date had become uncertain.

In war, nothing is certain except for uncertainty, according to the common refrain bandied about in my reserve company. The Jewish people are still at war, and so the right time to address the trauma is unclear. When reminders are constant, when there is no time to mourn properly, when the merit of sacrifice is in question, when you are hounded and then gaslit about the persecution, then the point at which one can move on becomes obscured.

It is uncertain when October 7 will end, but that day is not today. It is still October 7.


Eli the Survivor REVIEW: ‘Hostage’ by Eli Sharabi
The first memoir by an Israeli hostage dragged into Gaza by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, is Eli Sharabi’s book Hostage. It was the fastest-selling book in Israeli history when it was published in Hebrew, and is now available in an English translation.

Hostage is a classic work about captivity—joining Natan Sharansky’s Fear No Evil about his years in the Gulag, and Viktor Frankl’s account in Man’s Search for Meaning of his years in Nazi concentration camps—examining the human spirit under the worst possible circumstances. It begins on the morning of Oct. 7 and ends with his release from Gaza after 491 days in captivity—and his visit to the graves of his wife Lianne and his daughters.

Sharabi’s account is short, under 200 pages, which makes it a work to be read at one sitting. In it we see him experience all the best and worst human traits: love, hatred, self-sacrifice, brutality and violence, terror, deliberate starvation, and determination to live. We know the outcome: He will live, and be freed, and will find that on the very first day his family was murdered. But he did not know that, and living for them was a key part of his own survival.

Sharabi was a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri on the Gaza border, like the other kibbutzim an almost ideal community turned in a few hours into places of slaughter, rape, kidnapping, and unspeakable cruelty. He explains his slow realization that morning of Oct. 7 that this was different: not another barrage of rockets from Gaza but an actual invasion—and the IDF was nowhere to be found to fight off the invaders. He was grabbed from the "safe room" in his home and understood what was happening: He was "totally aware that I am being abducted into Gaza, but knowing at least that Lianne and the girls were left behind, I focus and concentrate on one mission: surviving to return home. There is no more regular Eli. From now on, I am Eli the survivor."

It is this mindset that saves Sharabi. He thinks of his family but says, "I refuse to let myself sink into longing. I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage. In the heart of Gaza. A stranger in a strange land. In the home of a Hamas-supporting family. And I’m getting out of here. I have to. I’m getting out of here. I’m coming home."


Oct. 7 photo memorial wall available for download
A few weeks after the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem placed on its gates the “Wall of Remembrance for the Murdered and the Fallen,” a commemorative display with the photos and names of civilians who were murdered that day, along with soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces who have fallen since then.

The display is spread over a width of 20 meters and rises to a height of 3.5 meters. It is projected on a giant screen on the entrance floor of the new library building in Jerusalem, as part of the national documentation and mobilization project for commemoration.

It includes the names of the fallen, their photos and their ages. The display is occasionally updated, allowing visitors to contemplate the wall with their private grief for their loved ones, alongside communion with the common pain of us all.

After the library received requests from various communities in Israel and around the world requesting the use of this display in various memorial ceremonies, the library decided to make the “Wall of Memory” available to the general public and allow the use of the display, physically or digitally, to anyone who wishes to do so.

Files are available for download free of charge at: www.nli.org.il/he/visit/exhibitions-and-displays/displays/7-october-victims.
Britain should prosecute October 7 Hamas rapists, says Israeli investigator
Could the Dinah Project approach work?
Despite the challenges, there is ample compelling evidence of multiple rapes, says Ms Zagagi-Pinhas.

There is first-hand testimony from survivors, although in all but one case this relates to sexual crimes committed against hostages in captivity.

The Dinah Project, which operates from the Rackman Centre at Bar-Ilan University, is also aware of 17 eye or ear witnesses to sexual assaults on Oct 7.

Taking a cautious approach by making sure the testimonies relate to different crimes, this amounts to 15 separate victims, the project believes – potentially only a fraction of the true number, but a solid foothold from which to launch prosecutions.

Other evidence exists, such as from first responders; there is also some forensic evidence, plus videos, photographs and intercepted communications.

Israeli justice has never faced a challenge of this scale. But similar kinds of prosecutions to the type being advocated by Ms Zagagi-Pinhas have worked before, such as in tribunals for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The project knows that it is not without risk. Criminal proceedings can re-traumatise victims and witnesses, and they are adamant that no one should be pressured into taking part unless they want to.

But the women of the Dinah Project, named after a rape victim in the Bible, do want to push the spotlight onto the Israeli justice system.

And you wouldn’t bet against them lightly. Through their painstaking, evidence-based work – rather than angry rhetoric of Israel’s politicians – they have already succeeded in persuading the UN secretary general to add Hamas to a blacklist of organisations that use sexual violence as a weapon.

“Justice comes in different ways and different phases, like recognising what happened to people, helping them recuperate,” reflects Ms Zagagi-Pinhas.

“But I do think that prosecution has very great importance to people. It’s a symbol.”


Trump: Hamas faces ‘complete obliteration’ if it clings to power
U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Hamas faces “complete obliteration” if it refuses to cede control of Gaza, as diplomatic efforts continue around his proposed ceasefire plan.

“Complete Obliteration!” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a text message on Saturday, when asked what would happen if Hamas insists on remaining in power.

Tapper referred to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s assessment that Hamas had rejected Trump’s 20-point proposal by refusing disarmament, insisting on its continued control of Gaza, and tying the release of hostages to broader negotiations.

“Is he wrong?” Tapper asked.

“We will find out. Only time will tell!!!” Trump replied, adding that he expects clarity “soon” on whether Hamas is genuinely committed to peace.

Asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports halting the Gaza bombing campaign and backing his broader vision, Trump answered, “Yes on Bibi.”

The president expressed optimism that his ceasefire plan could become a reality, saying he is “working hard to achieve it.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News‘ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Hamas’s acceptance of Trump’s proposal and framework for releasing the hostages marks “an enormous achievement,” adding that the group has also agreed “in principle” to discussions on Gaza’s postwar arrangements.

He noted that a lot of international pressure is being brought to bear on Hamas, including from Muslim countries and the European Union, to realize the deal.


Hamas Thought They Knew EVERYTHING About Israel - They Were Dead Wrong (w/Caroline Glick)
Is Israel on the brink of victory in Gaza and is Trump’s peace plan the key? Former senior Israeli official Danny Seaman sits down with acclaimed journalist and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s advisor Caroline Glick for a conversation about the latest developments in the war with Hamas, the proposed Trump-backed Gaza deal and the future of Israeli security.

Caroline Glick, drawing on her decades of experience and close ties to both Netanyahu and Trump, argues that Israel has already achieved most of its strategic war objectives. Hamas, she says, is no longer a viable regime or military force, and the current deal on the table offers Israel everything it set out to achieve while denying Hamas any of its goals. She details how the war has reshaped Israel’s military posture and redefined the role of leadership in this critical moment.

The conversation explores the terms of the peace proposal and the practical, no-nonsense approach of leaders like Netanyahu and Trump. Glick also addresses the emotional toll of war and the resilience of Israeli society. She explains why this is a fight for survival and why the strength Israel has shown in the past two years has fundamentally changed how its enemies perceive it.

CHAPTERS
00:00 – Intro & Audience Requests for Caroline Glick
01:13 – Caroline Glick Joins the Studio
02:00 – Netanyahu, Trump, and Optimism in Israel
03:24 – The Gaza Deal: Israel’s War Goals Within Reach
05:15 – What the Deal Means for Hamas
06:37 – Why This Moment is Different for Netanyahu
08:10 – Faith in the IDF and the People of Israel
09:42 – Security Control Over Gaza: What’s Changing?
11:05 – Trump, the Nobel Prize, and Real Motives for Peace
12:17 – Biblical Strength & the Path to Real Peace
13:55 – The World Misunderstood Israel’s Endurance
15:24 – Heavy Costs—but National Resolve Remains Strong
17:00 – Closing: “We’re Stronger Now Than Before Oct 7”




Hamas said to demand release of terror chiefs, Oct. 7 terrorists in deal for hostages
Hamas is set to demand the release of some of the most notorious Palestinian terrorists, whom Israel has refused to set free, in talks set to start in Egypt on Monday to finalize the return of all Israeli hostages in the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza.

Citing Hamas sources, Channel 12 reported that among the terrorists Hamas is demanding are Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah Tanzim chief serving five life sentences for his part in planning three terror attacks that killed five Israelis during the Second Intifada, and Ahmad Sa’adat, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years behind bars for masterminding the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

Hamas was also demanding the release of Ibrahim Hamed, serving 45 life terms for orchestrating the killings of numerous Israelis as Hamas’s West Bank commander during the Second Intifada, Abbas al-Sayed, who orchestrated the 2002 bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya in which 39 Israelis were killed, and Hamas’s Hassan Salameh, who is serving 48 life terms for plotting multiple suicide bombings.

Channel 12 cited a Hamas source saying the terror group “won’t give up” on securing the release of these and other life-term terrorists, even at the cost of dooming the deal.”

There are currently 303 security prisoners serving life sentences in Israel.
Israel's most dangerous prisoner on the way to freedom
According to the current hostage deal, Israel expects to release 250 prisoners serving life sentences with blood on their hands, along with more than 1,700 Gazans arrested since the October 7th massacre.

Among the high-profile prisoners expected to be freed is Ibrahim Hamad, 60, who planned and organized dozens of attacks against Israelis, many of them suicide bombings.

Among other attacks, he planned the bombing at Café Moment, where 11 Israelis were killed and 65 wounded; the Sheffield club in Rishon LeZion in 2002, where 15 Israelis were killed and 57 wounded; and the Hebrew University that same year, where nine people were killed and about 100 were injured. Israel refused to free him in the Schalit deal.

Journalist Sapir Lipkin reported that Hamas will also demand the release of Abdullah Barghouti, an explosives expert who was one of the commanders of the terror group's military wing in Judea and Samaria. Barghouti is responsible for dozens of terror attacks against Israelis in which 66 people were killed and about 500 were injured, including the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem in 2001 and the Café Moment bombing in 2002.

Also included are Ahmed Saadat, 72, who orchestrated the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001 at a hotel in Jerusalem and was sentenced to 30 years in prison; and Abbas al-Sayed, most associated with the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya in 2002, who is responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis.


‘Don’t believe them’: Former colonel says Hamas may be using hostage deal to buy time
Former British colonel Richard Kemp has urged Israel to “not believe” Hamas are progressing with a hostage deal, as part of their doctrine is about “lying in order to deceive their enemy”.

“My first rule of anything is whatever Hamas says or whatever any other jihadist terrorist group says, don’t believe them. Part of their doctrine is called Taqiyah, which is lying in order to deceive your enemy,” Mr Kemp told Sky News Australia.

“We can hope, I think, that they may have been pushed so hard by Israel in the war that they feel they have no choice other than to accede to what’s about to happen.”




Why won’t the Left call out anti-Semitism for what it is?
If they were from any other minority, no one on the left would have the slightest trouble denouncing the deaths of 53-year-old Adrian Daulby and 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz as the result of a lethal racist attack. A terrorist with the resonant name of Jihad Al-Shamie – talk about nominative determinism – went for them because they were Jews.

That’s all there was to it. The assassin, a British citizen of Syrian heritage, showed his appreciation for this country by ramming his car into the grounds of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in my home city of Manchester and stabbing any Jew he could find.

He had never talked to them. He had never discovered their views about Israel and Palestine. It was enough that they were Jews, and any Jew would do. So he killed one and left the other to be hit by a stray police bullet in the fight that followed. These are racist murders. Just as the huge upsurge in abuse of Jews since the Hamas massacres of October 2023 represents a huge upsurge in racial hatred.

Last night pro-Palestinian demonstrators couldn’t give it a rest – not even for 24 hours. They were outside Downing Street and Manchester’s Piccadilly station, chanting all the old slogans and ducking all the hard questions. ‘Globalise the intifada,’ they cried – does that mean killing Jews in Manchester? ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ – does that mean driving out all the Jews living between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan?

It should be the easiest thing in the world for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to reject accusations of Jew hate and dismiss these questions as smears. It’s not anti-Semitic to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli far right. Nor is it in any way racist to deplore the reduction of Gaza to a charnel house of rubble and bones.

Yet much of the British left cannot defend itself against charges of bigotry because many leftists (not all, but many) refuse to define anti-Jewish racism and declare it unacceptable. They can’t and won’t because any condemnation of anti-Semitism would imply a condemnation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian theocrats. Rather than take a stand against the very people who have led the Palestinian cause to disaster, they prefer to say nothing at all.
As a minister, I saw how police independence became a shield for inaction
We even saw it this week. In the wake of one of the most horrifying terror attacks in British history, we watched the depressing spectacle of the Prime Minister and Home Secretary calling the protests ‘disgraceful’ and pleading with protesters to ‘take a step back’, before admitting they are powerless to do anything about them.

When the state looks impotent it encourages challenge, first from its opponents, later from its now-frustrated supporters.

It’s time to change that. Policing must shift from full operational independence to operational direction. Politicians should have no power to order arrests but instead democratic accountability should extend to strategic priorities. When senior officials can ignore legitimate ministerial priorities, the organs of the state are acting without a democratic mandate.

Operational independence has become a shield for inaction. When public safety and social cohesion are at stake, ministers must be able to direct resources and set clear operational priorities and be held accountable for the result. Democracy requires that elected representatives can act when the public demands it. Without this, we surrender to bureaucratic paralysis while hatred normalises on our streets.

The globalised intifada is here. It is spreading fear amongst Jewish children walking to school under guard and Jewish families praying behind locked gates. It is threatening our shared future.

History shows that antisemitism adapts, changes form, and cloaks itself in each era’s language. It is a political interpretation to determine whether the illusion of safety on the day trumps longer term security against a spreading poison. This is not just an operational matter for the police. It’s a political choice about who we are and what we will tolerate.

We stand at a crossroads. One path is familiar and comfortable: defer to process, avoid difficult decisions, hope that somehow this resolves itself. History tells us it won’t. Hatred unchallenged becomes hatred emboldened. Weakness masquerading as restraint becomes an invitation to further violence, if we persuade ourselves it cannot happen here, we repeat the mistakes of the past.

The other path requires courage: to reform structures that no longer serve us, to empower those we elect to protect us, to make clear that incitement to hatred and violence will not be tolerated on British streets, no matter the cause it claims to serve.

This is ancient hatred in modern dress. The question is whether we have the clarity to name it and the courage to confront it.

I know which path I choose. The question is whether our country will choose it too, before the next attack, before the next funeral, before it’s too late.
For centuries Britain was a bastion against anti-Semitism. Now we have imported it
In the aftermath of a terrorist attack, we must not lose sight of the individualism on which our civilisation was built, and which terrorists despise. Just as the worshippers at Heaton Park synagogue were not responsible for whatever outrages in Gaza were upsetting Shamie, so other Muslims are not responsible for Shamie. The idea that we are answerable for our own actions is, or was, the value that most distinguishes Anglosphere societies.

We are losing that value, not only because we are importing people who have little feel for it, people who have been shaped by cultures of vendetta, tribal identity and sectarian war; but also because we fail to teach it ourselves. Obsessed with identity politics, colonial guilt and anti-racism, we no longer drive into the heads of our children, whether second-generation or seventy-second-generation Britons, that they defined by their behaviour, not by their race.

Hence the bizarrely woke form that anti-Semitism now takes, infused by grievance, victimhood and anti-imperialism. On October 7, even as the Hamas maniacs were carrying out their murders, Mothin Ali, now Deputy Leader of the Green Party put out a video in which he praised Gaza’s “indigenous people” for “fighting back” against “a settler-colonial power”, which he likened to the white colonisation of the Americas.

I find it incredible that a second-generation Briton would play with fire like that, encouraging indigenous people to fight the descendants of more recent arrivals. But such is the meme-like power of the decolonise ideology that plenty of others are at it.

Listen, for example, to Asrar Rashid of the Nottingham Islamic Centre: “The white man wiped out the Maori in New Zealand, the white man carried out genocide against the Aborigines in Australia, he carried out genocide in Canada and the United States of America, and he attempts to carry out genocide in Gaza… Take up arms and defend yourself and do pre-emptive strikes wherever those pre-emptive strikes – which is offensive jihad – is needed.”

Was Shamie moved by such words? Did he interpret “offensive jihad” as a pre-emptive strike against any Jews? Was an attack on a Manchester synagogue his interpretation of “globalise the intifada”, the cry that goes up at almost every anti-Israel rally?

Who can say? In any event, Shamie is responsible for his own wickedness. I argued here a couple of weeks ago that we should set a very high threshold for incitement – higher at any rate, than generalised verbal attacks. Kneecap saying that the only good Tory is a dead Tory, Bob Vylan chanting Death to the IDF, George Abaraonye glorying in the murder of Charlie Kirk – these things ought no more to be illegal than Lucy Connolly being happy to see asylum centres burned down, or Graham Linehan wanting to punch trans women in the balls. Free speech means allowing people to say foolish, dangerous and obnoxious things right up to the point where it can be shown that they intend a specific crime to result from their words.

The flip side of free speech is a culture of orderliness and civility. If we do not want offensive opinions to be punished by law, they need to be policed by social disapprobation. We need to convey, not only in the classroom, but in our wider political and media discourse, that certain British values are non-negotiable, and that these include personal freedom, parliamentary democracy, equality before the law, religious pluralism and respect for the country itself.

These were the values that encouraged millions of Jews to leave more authoritarian cultures and settle throughout the Anglosphere in the first place; the values that still enrage many of the governments that they had left behind. Lose them, and we lose ourselves.
The road from cowardice to carnage
Last year, Jewish News was looking to build a new website. We put the work out to tender, as any publisher would, and one company stood out. They were professional, creative and, on paper, perfect. We were excited to get started. Then came the email.

The company had decided it “wasn’t comfortable” working with a Jewish newspaper. The boss told me that while he could insist his staff does the project, “their hearts wouldn’t be in it and the outcome would not be the best it could be for Jewish News”.

How terribly thoughtful of him.

That was it. No further explanation. Just moral objection to our existence. The company (which I’m sorely tempted to name and shame but will resist… for now) is signed up to a movement called B Corp, whose stated aim is to promote “high standards of social accountability and address society’s most critical challenges”. You couldn’t make it up. I wrote twice to B Corp asking whether a company carrying its seal of approval refusing to work with Jews was in keeping with its “high standards”. I was told to complete an online form and wait 90 days for a response. That was 446 days ago.

I was angry, upset and quietly heartbroken, but dismissed it as a wretched one-off.

A few months later, the head of a theatre company Jewish News had interviewed to help promote her new Jewish-interest show withdrew permission for us to publish our article, saying “political issues between us” made her uncomfortable appearing in a Jewish newspaper.

I remember reading her email in a Waitrose car park, shortly after strolling past the kosher food aisle, where a sign had been put up announcing: “These products are monitored by CCTV.”

Security cameras for biscuits. How fucked up is that?

These are just two examples of the quiet isolation we’ve experienced at Jewish News in recent months. Two years in which I’ve kept assuring myself, and others, that this madness will pass and no one has been seriously hurt.

Then two Jews were murdered on Thursday morning outside a synagogue in Manchester. The first deadly antisemitic attack on British soil since the 17th century.
Domestic terror at a Manchester synagogue wasn’t an isolated incident
The Jewish community in the country is small, proud and deeply woven into all aspects of society. It has produced scientists, judges, artists, philanthropists and soldiers.

But today, Britain’s Jews feel vulnerable and abandoned. They are told to rely on police patrols and CCTV cameras, while political leaders court applause abroad by recognizing a Palestinian state and tolerating marches that glorify violence.

This is not protection. It is appeasement dressed up as security.

Manchester’s bloodshed should be a national wake-up call. Starmer’s pledge to protect Jews must be more than sound bites. The government must summon the courage to draw red lines and restore the foundations of civic responsibility. That means:
Enforce hate-crime laws with vigor. Antisemitic speech and incitement at rallies must lead to arrests, not excuses.
Restrict demonstrations that glorify terror. Free expression is not a license to advocate violence against Jews.
Demand integration. Immigrant communities must be taught, and expected, to embrace Britain’s civic values—equality before the law, rejection of violence, loyalty to democratic institutions.
Bolster counterterrorism intelligence. Resources must be poured into monitoring radical networks that exploit alienation.
Reaffirm Jewish belonging. Starmer and other leaders should state clearly, again and again, that Jews are not outsiders to be “protected” but full British citizens who help define the nation itself.

Multiculturalism without boundaries has led Britain to this perilous moment. By refusing to insist on shared identity, by tolerating open antisemitism on the streets and by signaling diplomatic sympathy for the Palestinian cause without conditions, Britain has emboldened those who wish to harm its Jews. Unless its leaders rediscover moral clarity, the promises of safety will remain hollow—and more tragedies will follow.

Manchester is not only a Jewish tragedy. It is a British one. If the United Kingdom cannot protect its Jews, then it cannot protect its values either.
No more platitudes: This is what our politicians must do to resist Jew-hating terrorists
When I was told by police near an anti-Israel “peaceful march” that I was “quite openly Jewish” and must go away or be arrested for causing a “breach of the peace”, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley doubled down. He has betrayed his own officers through the farce of two-tier policing and he must go.

This weekend, police were reduced to begging supporters of Palestine Action – the group accused of wrecking RAF jets at Brize Norton – to postpone their protests, at which there have been hundreds of arrests, so that officers could protect Jews instead. The crackdown on this dangerous performative mayhem must be no less harsh than that meted out after Southport, and for that, we may need new laws and certainly political backbone.

That must be bolstered by regulators like the Charity Commission finally cracking down on hate preaching at mosques, and professional bodies striking off those who spew hatred, like the doctor allowed to keep practising after calling the Royal Free “a cesspit of Jewish supremacy”.

And we need proscriptions. This country is miserably soft-touch, allowing Islamists banned across the Arab world to operate freely. The Home Secretary can today ban support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran’s IRGC, the Houthis, and the medieval Palestinian terrorist groups who joined in with Hamas on October 7.

Across the Channel, repeated terrorist attacks on French Jews then fuelled Islamist violence against non-Jews from Charlie Hebdo to the Bataclan.

If Britain makes the mistake of meeting terror with hand-wringing platitudes instead of Churchillian resolve, we are all in mortal danger. On Thursday at 7pm, we will meet at Downing Street to call for that action. Please join us.
Badenoch links pro-Palestine demos to synagogue attack in defiant Tory Conference speech
Kemi Badenoch has used her leader’s speech at the Tory Party conference to draw a direct link between pro-Palestine protests on Britain’s streets and the Manchester synagogue terror attack.

Speaking on Sunday at the start of the party’s conference in Manchester, she said extremism on the UK’s streets had gone “unchecked” and the pro-Palestine demos are in fact “carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland”.

Badenoch said she had visited members of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation shul and told delegates at the conference the “strength of Manchester’s Jewish community is humbling.”

She also noted how, since the first Jewish community was established in Manchester in the 1780s, Jews have been “part of the fabric” of the city.

“The horrific and despicable attack at Heaton Park Synagogue on Thursday has shocked us all,” Badenoch told the conference.

“But for many in the Jewish community, it did not come as a surprise. Many have been living with a sense of rising dread that an attack like this was becoming inevitable.”

She then added, “Extremism has gone unchecked. We see it manifest in the shameful behaviour on the streets of our cities.

“Protests which are in fact carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland. You hear it in the asinine slogans.

“You hear it in ‘From the river to the sea’ – as if the homes, the lives, of millions of Jewish people should be erased.

“You hear it in ‘Globalise the intifada’ – which means nothing at all, if it doesn’t mean targeting Jewish people for violence. We have tolerated this in our country for too long.

“And we have tolerated the radical Islamist ideology that seeks to threaten not only Jews, but all of us, of all faiths and none, who want to live in peace.”
Kemi Badenoch SLAMS pro-Palestine protests - ‘Carnivals of HATRED directed at Jewish community’
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch used her speech at party conference to condemn pro-Palestine demonstrations across the country and called them 'carnivals of hatred'.




The left are 'responsible' for antisemitism rise in the UK | Howard Jacobson
"It's the left that's stigmatised Israel and Zionism and lied about it all for the last number of decades."

The left are "responsible" for the "great lie" at the heart of Palestine Action, says Booker Prize novelist and journalist Howard Jacobson.




Fury over BBC decision to air show hours after the Manchester terror attack where expert blamed Israel and the British government for the atrocity
BBC has been criticised by Jewish leaders for broadcasting a programme hours after the Manchester synagogue attack where an expert blamed Israel and the British government for the atrocity that claimed two lives.

The broadcaster aired the news talk show called The World This Evening on its controversial Arabic service channel, which is part of the licence-payer-funded BBC World Service.

In the show, broadcast on Thursday evening to millions in the UK and across the Arab world, presenter Mohammed Saif Al-Nasr interviewed a Jewish rabbi called Jonathan Romain, and a Cambridge-based Midde East expert called Dr Makram Khoury-Machool, a Palestinian himself.

During the 14-minute exchange, the two guests were asked about the attack by Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, on the Heaton Park synagogue earlier in the day, which left two Jewish worshippers dead and three injured.

Police shot dead Al-Shamie himself, who was carrying a knife and fake suicide device on him.

Whilst British and Muslim leaders in the UK condemned the terrorist attack, Dr Khoury-Machool appeared to blame the British government and the support of Jewish leaders of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war.

Dr Khoury-Machool said: 'The Jewish community and the British government cannot treat such an incident in Britain as though it fell from the sky, and suddenly the perpetrator carried out the attack and assaulted a Jewish synagogue.

'The British government must inquire on its own police and statements.

'When we listen to the Jewish leadership, they either support the Israeli occupation, and most of them do – it is not possible for a British Jewish leader to endorse Netanyahu's crimes and not expect there to be reactions on the British street.'

The presenter, Mr Al-Nasr, did not appear to challenge Dr Khoury-Machool. He then turned to Rabbi Romain, and asked him: 'Perhaps some the positions and statements of Jewish leaders here in Britain may support Israeli policies in Gaza and may contribute to fuelling these tensions.'

Rabbi Romain, who is based at the Maidenhead Synagogue in Berkshire, responded by saying that he did not agree with that.

He added that Jews in the UK had differing views on the Gaza war.

The Rabbi said: 'Whether they support Israel or not, there is no justification for attacking them. Israel itself [on the Gaza war] is divided within itself. Netanyahu's government only enjoys 50 per cent of support.'

But Dr Khoury-Machool - who described the war in Gaza as 'cleansocide' or ethnic cleansing and genocide – went on to blame the terrorist's grievance to the 'extreme slowness of the British regarding a sympathetic response to the Palestinians.'
‘Why were they in the UK?’: Manchester attacker’s ‘poisonous beliefs’ slammed
Sky News host Rita Panahi has questioned why the man behind the Manchester synagogue attack was allowed in the United Kingdom despite his “poisonous beliefs”.

“It is just so sinister,” Ms Panahi said.

“There is a recognisable threat and risk, and we saw that play out in the UK.

“This character that has been apprehended, Jihad al-Shami, you look at the family there, you look at what was said publicly, why were they in the UK? Why were they allowed to migrate to the UK with such poisonous beliefs?”




Greens slammed for ‘unbelievable’ Manchester attack comments
Sky News host James Macpherson discusses Greens leader Larissa Waters blaming Australian arms sales to Israel for the attack on Jews in Manchester.

Ms Waters was asked for her views on the terror attack this morning.

“It is absolutely unbelievable, ‘our hearts go out to the family’ … to imply a connection between the two is absolutely disgusting,” Mr Macpherson said.




IDF chief of staff: ‘If talks break down, ready to resume fighting’
IDF Chief-of-Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, conducted a field visit on Sunday to the westernmost point of the Netzarim Corridor, which splits the Gaza Strip into two.

Zamir conducted a surprise exercise simulating an attack on the troops’ outpost, and held a talk and briefing for soldiers and commanders.

“The operation is not over. We must remain alert and ready for combat at all times,” Zamir said.

He said there is “no ceasefire,” but a shift in the operational status as political leaders try to convert military gains into a political outcome. He warned that “if the political effort does not succeed, we will return to fight,” and stressed the army will “continue to carry out our mission” while preserving soldiers’ lives.

He stressed that Israel will not allow Hamas to continue as a governing or military force in Gaza and “if required—we will fight to achieve this.”

Zamir added that even if an agreement is reached, the IDF will maintain operational control of forward areas to preserve the ability to act as needed.


IDF downs Houthi missile from Yemen
Israeli air defenses early on Sunday morning shot down a missile launched by Houthi terrorists in Yemen, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

“The Air Force intercepted one missile that was launched from Yemen,” the IDF stated, adding that sirens sounded “in accordance with policy.”

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the attack, which sent over a million Israeli civilians to bomb shelters at 5 a.m.

Air-raid alerts were activated in parts of Israel’s densely-populated center, as well as in parts of Judea and Samaria, the military stated.

Take-offs and landings were briefly halted at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.

The Israeli Air Force previously intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen on Sept. 29, which also triggered sirens across central Israel, including Tel Aviv, as well as in parts of Judea and Samaria.

That attack reportedly also did not cause any damage or casualties.

The Houthis have carried out missile and drone attacks on the Jewish state—including a drone attack that wounded 22 Israelis in Eilat on Sept. 24—since the Hamas-led terrorist assault on Oct. 7, 2023.


Jerusalem denies abuse of Thunberg, others arrested aboard Hamas flotilla
Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday denied claims that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and others detained aboard the Hamas-linked Gaza flotilla have been mistreated in custody since their Sept. 23 arrests.

Denouncing reports claiming Thunberg was detained in a cell infested with bedbugs with too little food and water as “brazen lies,” Jerusalem said “all the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld” at Ketziot Prison.

“Interestingly enough, Greta herself and other detainees refused to expedite their deportation and insisted on prolonging their stay in custody,” according to Sunday’s Foreign Ministry statement.

In correspondence sent by the Swedish Foreign Ministry to people close to Thunberg, and seen by The Guardian, an embassy official who visited the activist said she claimed to have been mistreated in Israel, including by being forced to hold flags. The identity of the flags remained unclear.

Jerusalem’s Foreign Ministry noted on Sunday that Thunberg “did not complain to the Israeli authorities about any of these ludicrous and baseless allegations—because they never occurred.”
Gary Lineker shares unevidenced claim that IDF ‘tormented’ Greta Thunberg
Gary Lineker has shared a claim made, without evidence, by a crew member on the recent Gaza flotilla mission that Israeli soldiers “tormented” Swedish activist Greta Thunberg after halting her ship as it tried to reach the Strip.

More than 50 vessels were intercepted by the Israeli navy as they attempted to breach the long-standing naval blockade of the territory, with their crew detained for deportation.

Since then, Turkish activist Ersin Celik has accused the IDF of mistreating detainees, particularly 22-year-old Thunberg.

He alleged: “They dragged little Greta by her hair before our eyes, beat her and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag.

"They did everything imaginable to her as a warning to others.”

He also claimed that soldiers woke activists every two hours to deprive them of sleep, denied them medical care and restricted access to food and water.

However, he did not provide any evidence to corroborate his claims and no other detainees have yet made any allegations of mistreatment.

Thunberg was also previously arrested and deported from Israel after participating in a flotilla mission in June and did not claim to have been beaten or abused during that stint in detention.

Nonetheless, former Match of the Day ho


Here's What The Media Won't Tell You About October 7th and The Future of Israel

‘Cautious optimism’ for peace deal with ‘genocidal death cult’ Hamas
Executive Manager at Australia, Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Joel Burnie discusses Hamas’ next moves in the peace deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to announce the release of all hostages from Gaza as Israel, the United States, and Hamas prepare for indirect talks in Egypt.

“The optimism is that we hope in the coming days that the hostages will be released,” Mr Burnie told Sky News Australia.

“The atmosphere in Israel is very, very cautious optimism.

“The devil is in the detail. Hamas is a genocidal death cult that will do everything in its power to delay the implementation of other parts of the plan.

“This is a very clear yes, but by Hamas with an emphasis on the but than on the yes.”




Why Did Ro Khanna Speak At an Event With Anti-Israel Radicals?
“Raise your hand if you’re a pro-terror radical!” That was how Representative Ro Khanna opened his appearance at ArabCon, an Arab American convention held September 25–28 in Dearborn, Michigan. He was mocking Melissa O’Rourke’s article, “2028 Dem Hopeful To Share Stage With Pro-Terror Radicals At ‘ArabCon.’” But O’Rourke’s warning proved prescient. Panelists joked about the October 7 attacks, called the American legal field “Zionist-controlled,” and peddled pro-terror apologetics.

Asked for comment, Khanna told me that “I don’t agree with everyone who spoke at the conference, but I do believe in free speech. You can’t just be for free speech when it’s convenient. I’ve unequivocally condemned the October 7th attacks and called for the release of the hostages.”

Despite his distancing, Khanna’s appearance—and position as a rising star in his party—raises questions about the Democrats’ appetite for reining in their extremist wing.

ArabCon was hosted by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and streamed to YouTube by BreakThrough News, a platform closely tied to the Party for Socialism and Liberation. It featured a range of speakers, including academics, politicians, commentators, creatives, activists, a whistleblower, and more. While organizers billed the event as “a platform for community engagement, dialogue, and political debate to build solidarity and advance the interests of Arab—and all—Americans,” it often showcased anti-American and other radical ideologies.

Many panelists focused on Palestine and October 7. Amer Zahr, reportedly a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, joked about reporters’ repeatedly asking whether “you condemn October 7th.” When he posed the question in jest to San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi, she responded, “I condemn Israel and the United States and all oppressions and imperial wars around the world. And I never ever condemn Palestinian resistance.”

In another conversation, California State University professor Sawssan Ahmed used Hamas’ operational name for the October 7th attack, saying that, “Since the Al-Aqsa Flood and before . . . a lot of unlearning has been occurring about Palestine.” Ahmed later said this might be a cause “of hope or optimism” for Palestine. CAIR–San Francisco Bay director Zahra Billoo floated the possibility of a “one state solution.”

The radicalism didn’t end there. Billoo described the Holy Land Foundation leaders who were convicted of materially supporting terrorism as “incredible, generous, kind, beautiful men.” Rania Khalek, host of Dispatches on BreakThrough News, boasted to the ArabCon audience about having refused to condemn armed resistance on Piers Morgan’s show.


Ian Austin: The lunatics are on the streets again staging hate marches unleashing a tidal wave of Jew hatred – they must be curbed
When our government decided Israel was not committing a genocide, the BBC buried the news.

When the UN said it might be, it ­dominated every bulletin.

The bias is so blatant but BBC bosses just refuse to do anything about it.

Demonising Israel, singling it out for criticism, holding it to standards never applied to other countries — these are examples of antisemitism.

The obsession in Parliament and on the BBC spreads the lie that Israel is a uniquely evil country and that obviously causes hatred against the Jewish community.

So please don’t ask me to listen to pious lectures — promising to oppose antisemitism — from people who support ­boycotts, sanctions or embargoes that would prevent Israel from defending its Jewish citizens.

The authorities need to start getting a grip. They need to start standing up for our values.

Living in the UK must mean believing in democracy, equality, freedom and tolerance.

If you don’t agree with that, go and live ­somewhere else.

People who hate Jews or think that Israel should not be allowed to exist must be prevented from ­coming to Britain or staying here.

It’s time to clamp down on extremist preachers spewing hatred and sack NHS staff or university lecturers responsible for racism.

Hate marches can’t be allowed to take over our streets every week.

Change the law to curb them if necessary.

As for the rest of us, ordinary decent people must show the ­Jewish community their ­solidarity and support.

Stand up to anti-Jewish racism, just as we would it if was any other minority group.


Free speech tsar tells universities: stop intimidation of Jewish students
Universities must take firm steps again protests or speech that intimidates Jewish students, the government’s new “free speech tsar” has said.

In a wide-ranging interview on the Union of Jewish Students’ (UJS) podcast Yalla, Arif Ahmed, Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students (OfS) said there was “massive concern” over the rise in campus antisemitism and that institutions were “totally expected” to act.

He warned that universities should intervene if protests leave Jewish students feeling unable to attend lectures or even enter their own accommodation. “Whilst the political ideas expressed in the protests may be perfectly lawful and expressible, it may also be right for the university to say: you can’t do it here and you can’t have it every day outside a lecture theatre, because that’s really affecting Jewish students’ capacity to engage in their education,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed also underlined that freedom of speech extends to religious expression, adding: “If Jewish students are intimidated out of expressing their own religion, that’s an affront to their freedom of speech and something we would expect universities to take action about.”

Crucially, he confirmed the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act guidance – in force since August – is compatible with the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Calling IHRA “a very useful tool for understanding modern antisemitism,” he highlighted its role in identifying coded language such as calls for “Zionists off campus” as antisemitic.

The OfS itself has adopted IHRA, with Ahmed stressing: “We will not, under any circumstances, protect Holocaust denial.”

He further expressed concern about a “chilling effect” on Jewish and pro-Israel students in classrooms, citing cases where they feared speaking against the “dominant view” or where lecturers assumed political positions and treated them differently.


Pro-Palestinian LA Times Heiress Seizes Left-Wing Outlet to Push Agenda
The pro-Palestinian daughter of the Los Angeles Times owner has recently been appointed publisher of the left-leaning outlet Drop Site News— a new platform for her to espouse her hateful views about Israel.

Nika Soon-Shiong, 32, daughter of billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, is no stranger to newsrooms. She has allegedly interfered behind the scenes at her father’s newspaper to influence coverage, meddling with headlines and clashing with editors who didn’t align with her activist agenda.

Soon-Shiong’s own public statements reveal a consistent hostility toward Israel and Zionism. On social media, she has displayed a Palestinian flag in her bio, dismissed the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, described Israel as an “apartheid state” engaged in “genocide”, and even alleged that the Los Angeles City Council was funding a “Zionist militia.”

Despite this pattern of rhetoric aligning with fringe, hardline narratives rather than journalistic neutrality, Soon-Shiong has, since 2021, sat on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — an organization that redefines international law to designate terrorists as journalists.

How much influence has Soon-Shiong exerted on the CPJ? Even before the October 7 massacre and the resulting war, the CPJ published a report accusing the Israeli military of acting with “impunity” and severely undermining freedom of the press. This, even while according to the organization’s own data, Israel did not even feature in its so-called “Global Impunity Index,” which charts the countries in which press freedom is curtailed and where there is a lack of accountability when journalists are killed.

The double standards were glaring.

The CPJ has also been at the forefront of eulogizing so-called “journalists” who were killed in Gaza while working for outlets like Al-Aqsa TV and Quds News Network, which are affiliated with Hamas.

As we will see below, Soon-Shiong isn’t overly concerned when it comes to distinguishing between journalists and terrorists. One can only assume that this has played an active role in the CPJ’s wilful blind spot on this issue.


New Jersey rabbi assaulted, residents step in to stop attacker
A New Jersey rabbi was assaulted on Sunday, according to the Bergenfield Police Department and Borough of Bergenfield, but locals intervened to stop an attacker suspected of coming out of town.

Rabbi Avraham Wein's assailant was taken into custody, which the police attributed to quick action from residents and their own forces. Antisemitism is at a record high. We're keeping our eyes on it >>

A motive has not yet been established, the rabbi's synagogue emphasized in a community email, and the investigation is ongoing.

Police said on Facebook that they believed the attack to be a "random, isolated incident," and the Borough shared that an initial investigation indicated that the attacker was not a Bergenfield resident.

According to the Borough, police presence has been increased and additional security measures have been implemented.

While reports circulated that Rabbi Avraham Wein had been building a sukkah or had been hospitalized, the Congregation Keter Torah clarified that neither was the case. Wein's Teaneck synagogue further explained that more information could not yet be shared for legal and privacy issues.

"While we know that everyone has the best intentions, it is best not to spread social media postings about this event," read an email from the congregation.


Grief and defiance in Trafalgar Square as thousands mark second anniversary of 7 October
To stand in Trafalgar Square on a blustery October Sunday afternoon was to remove any doubt about how much British Jews are hurting.

This was a rally, planned months ago, to mark the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks against southern Israel on 7 October 2023. But there was universal pain etched on the faces of the crowd and the speakers as people fought to explain — to themselves — the most recent horror of the Yom Kippur Heaton Park Synagogue deaths in Manchester.

The square holds a maximum of 5,000 people and the place felt full. But this event, chaired with great dignity by Henry Grunwald KC, was not about numbers: it was about bearing witness, giving testimony, and also about resilience.

Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg underlined that message, telling the crowd that he had spent Shabbat in Manchester with the Heaton Park congregation. Amid the weeping and the prayers, he said, “We even danced together”, displaying “Jewish joy, Jewish pride. We, the Jewish people, refuse to be cowed”.

The Manchester attacks threaded like a bloodied ribbon through the presentations of every speaker, from “proud but deeply anguished Jewish Mancunian” Keith Black, who is chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, to the chief executive of UJIA, Mandy Winston, who read out a heartbreaking list of 17 British citizens who were murdered on 7 October 2023.

In his defiant address, Black said that the community had feared that the murders of 2023 would “spill over into this country.” Manchester, he said, had only proved that fear to have been justified, and he declared — to cheers from the crowd — that “antisemitism in this country is out of control.” That would have been no surprise to at least one member of the Trafalgar Square crowd — antisemitism czar Lord Mann.

But Black understood the spirit of the day by also declaring: “This is our home and we will not be driven out. We will stand firm, resilient, well-organised and brave. The leadership of this community is determined to fight back and protect our way of life”.

By every light it was a day of heightened emotion and heartbreak; not least in a video address from former British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari, who urged the community: “Use your voice — this is not the time to be quiet.” In this, she was echoed by the Israeli embassy consul, Sima Doovdevani, who said that “silence in the face of terror is not an option”.

Perhaps the most moving contribution came from Shaun Lemel, a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre. Still just 26, he had been living and working in Connecticut and had come back to Israel for a family visit when he was persuaded by friends to buy a ticket to the music festival — in which more than 300 people lost their lives to Hamas terrorists.

At times seeming on the edge of tears, he recalled: “At 6.18 am I was dancing and having the time of my life. At 6.29 am the music stopped”. The terrified young man realised he was close to being either murdered of kidnapped — and passed out. He was saved by friends who rescued him — and he in turn helped to save three complete strangers — “who are now family.”




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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