From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
The malignancy of the left
Sometimes, a curtain draped across a mirror is torn aside, and a horrified public suddenly glimpses what it has become.
Two things happened this week which briefly interrupted the smooth acceleration of pathological Jew-hate in the West.
A film called “NAZA” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was directed by journalist-filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, radical anti-Israel activists with a long history of delegitimizing Israel through defamatory falsehoods, in conjunction with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a byword for malevolent misreporting of the Jewish state.
“NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage or unintended civilian casualties. In war, such casualties are sadly inevitable. In the Gaza war, Israel reportedly achieved the lowest ratio of civilians to combatant deaths anywhere in the world because of the unprecedented measures it took to save civilian life wherever possible.
Yet the film claims that the Israel Defense Forces willfully caused widespread civilian deaths. Under the laws of war, armies must assess likely civilian casualties before striking military targets. The film misrepresents the IDF’s fulfilment of that duty as evidence that it intentionally subjected civilians to indiscriminate bombing.
Its shock value lay in its reliance upon voices it said belonged to members of the IDF’s crack intelligence division, Unit 8200. But these were anonymous voices, with no corroboration of who they were or even evidence of what they were claiming.
The second event was a horrifying report compiled by Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism revealing the systemic intimidation, threat and menace now confronting Jews who seek treatment from the National Health Service.
A Jewish cancer patient said that while removing a growth from his forehead, his surgeon told him that Jews shoot children “in the head or the legs” for “their own amusement.” A nurse said that a colleague made a Nazi salute shortly after finding out she was Jewish. A senior Jewish medical professor had received antisemitic death threats. A Jewish emergency worker was physically attacked by a colleague.
The CAA said that Jewish patients were terrified of their surgeons, and Jewish nurses and doctors were being pushed out of the hospitals to which they had devoted their lives.
These two things crossed a line.
In Israel, there’s been a seismic reaction against the film, with Abraham and Szor coming under pressure even from their comrades on the left.
That’s unprecedented. Israel has been profoundly changed by the enduring trauma of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war that followed. Israelis are painfully aware of the heroism of the IDF troops, so many of whom have lost their lives, limbs or mental stability in the desperate fight against a fanatical genocidal enemy—and who have now been trashed in this film, allegedly by their own brothers in arms.
Even in anti-Israel Britain, there’s been widespread shock over the discovery that British Jews are too frightened to go to the doctor or hospital because they fear they may be attacked or even killed under the surgeon’s knife or general anesthetic.
Both developments show that the West is in the grip of a pathology created by the alliance between left-wingers and Islamists. And some Israelis are themselves contaminated by this deadly sickness.
Monsters Welcome By Abe Greenwald
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Here’s something to think about: While European countries are slapping sanctions on Israel, they’re ramping up engagement (including on trade) with the Taliban. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, of course, the Taliban reimposed all sorts of horrors, including the legalization of violence against females and the vicious punishment of religious heretics.
But Europe is too upset with the democratic State of Israel to care about any of that.
I wrote about this very issue a year ago. Since then, Europe’s outreach to the Taliban has increased considerably. In June, Taliban officials met with EU leaders in Brussels for talks about sending Afghan asylum-seekers back home. This was the first time a formal EU delegation met with Afghanistan’s leaders since 2021. The Taliban came out of it boasting that normal consular relations with the EU are coming next.
Officials from the UK and other individual Western countries now routinely fly to Qatar to meet with Taliban representatives. The Afghan Consulate General in Bonn, Germany, is under Taliban control. And an official appointed by the Taliban serves as the first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Oslo.
The trend toward normalizing relations with the Taliban stretches well beyond Europe. India recently waived sanctions on the Taliban foreign minister so he could travel to New Delhi for talks, and the country is reassessing sanctions on Afghanistan altogether.
Less surprising, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others haven’t hesitated to engage with the brutal regime. It’s not at all uncharacteristic of Iran to have sent its foreign minister to Afghanistan last year. Nor is it shocking that Russia is the only country in the world to officially recognize the Taliban.
Revealed: New Bank of England director referred to slain Hamas terrorists as ‘unarmed demonstrators’
The new non-executive director of the Bank of England, Paul Nowak, accused Israel of killing “unarmed demonstrators” in Gaza, one week after Hamas announced the vast majority of those shot were its members, the JC has found.
Nowak, who has been the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress since 2022, was given the top role at the central bank earlier this month by Chancellor John Healey.
The incident Nowak was apparently referring to in his tweet occurred on May 14, 2018, during protests in the Strip which were dubbed the “Great March of Return”.
A total of 62 Palestinians are reported to have been killed, which initially prompted controversy as they were unarmed.
However, on May 16, Hamas had stated in interviews that 50 of those killed were its members. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) similarly claimed three of the deceased.
Hamas official Salah Bardawil said during an interview on Palestinian television: “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.
“I am giving you an official figure. 50 of the martyrs in the recent battle were from Hamas...
The announcement was widely reported by Israeli media, while a Hamas spokesman told CNN on May 18 that, while the exact numbers could not be confirmed, “the protests are peaceful and include all political and military factions”.
Nonetheless, on May 23 Nowak authored a tweet criticising then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in which he referenced the incident without mentioning the terrorist affiliations of those involved.
“Government in Brexit chaos. Unarmed demonstrators shot dead in Gaza. Iran nuclear deal undermined. Trade wars loom as a result of economic nationalism,” he wrote.
“Our Foreign Secretary’s priority? A personal jet. Oh and to be specific, one that isn’t painted grey.”
Nowak has also continued to post about the conflict in the years since.
On September 21 last year, the day the UK recognised a Palestinian state, Nowak tweeted: “Recognition of Palestine is a welcome and crucial step on the path to peace with a two-state solution at its heart.
“The UK government must now do all it can to ensure the Israeli government ends its assault on Gaza. Solidarity to our sister unions in Palestine."
Saturday, September 19, 2026
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