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Culture wars 

The new morality patrol

Melanie

The Harvey Weinstein scandal punched open the dam. Now virtually every day brings a new slew of allegations in Britain about male sexual misbehaviour – in the theatre, in Parliament, in the media. This has all got seriously out of hand. There’s no question but that some of these allegations are extremely serious and that the men involved need to be held to account. But sexual attacks or harassment are being conflated with minor incidents of lewd and crass behaviour. All of this is reprehensible, but the reaction is out…

Global conflict 

The real threat to the west. Why can’t Britain see it?

Melanie

Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has been making some remarkable comments. In an interview with The Guardian, the recently designated heir to the Saudi throne said the desert kingdom had been “not normal” for the past 30 years. He blamed the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with” and which had created a problem around the world. “Now is the time to get rid of it,” he said. Saudi Arabia would now revert to “what we followed – a moderate…

Videos 

Hello, Tuvia!

Melanie

Tuvia Tenenbom is the best-selling author who peels away public pieties, evasions and hypocrisies to expose what people really think. His latest book, Hello Refugees, lifts the veil from the migrant crisis in Germany. Last Monday, I interviewed Tuvia in Jerusalem. You can watch the event here.

Israel 

Staging incitement at the Young Vic

Melanie

London’s Young Vic theatre is staging a revival of the hate-inciting, Israel-phobic agit-prop called My Name is Rachel Corrie which was first put on in 2005. With exquisitely horrible timing, its previews started last Friday evening which was Kol Nidrei, or the beginning of Yom Kippur which is the most holy day in the Jewish religious calendar. A protest is being staged outside the theatre every night; with enormous decency and commitment, a group of Christians leafleted the theatre during the Yom Kippur performances. Last July Jonathan Hoffman, who is involved…

Israel 

In conversation with Tuvia Tenenbom

Melanie

The best-selling author Tuvia Tenenbom, who peels away society’s polite fictions to expose the soft underbelly of prejudice beneath, turns his attention in his latest book Hello Refugees to Europe’s migrants. I shall be in conversation with him to discuss what he found out about them, and about the Americans he encountered in his previous book The Lies They Tell , on Monday October 9 at 7.30 pm at the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre in Jerusalem.

huawei Israel 

The hen-house votes for the fox

Melanie

Interpol, the world’s largest international police organisation, today accepted the “State of Palestine” as a full member. The Palestinians’ membership bid was accepted with 75 countries voting yes, 24 voting no, and 34 abstaining. The Times of Israel reports: “Israel fiercely objected to the Palestinians joining Interpol, arguing that Ramallah’s alleged support for terrorism could hinder rather than aid Interpol’s efforts.” You don’t say. This is totally nuts at every level. What is this “State of Palestine” Interpol has now accepted? Where are its borders? Does it include the terror-statelet…

antisemitism Britain 

The Labour Party – a safe space for hate

Melanie

What has been revealed about the Labour party at its annual conference in Brighton should make all decent people shudder. A fringe meeting hosted a call for Labour to debate whether the Holocaust actually happened, the libelling of Israel as a racist, Nazi, apartheid and colonialist state and a demand that Jews who supported Israel should be kicked out of the Labour party. What was so chilling was not just that the meeting, called Free Speech on Israel (aka Safe Space for Hate) provided bigots with the opportunity to spew…

USA 

Signs of desperation in that rolling White House coup?

Melanie

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s squad inquiring into allegations of collusion between Team Trump and President Putin’s Russia broke into the home of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort in the middle of the night, drew their guns on Manafort and his wife, carted out boxes of stuff and took out Manafort himself in handcuffs and pyjamas, telling him to expect an indictment. For what, precisely? If prosecuting authorities uncover evidence to support a prosecution, they charge someone. They don’t tell that individual to expect a charge about some unspecified offence…

warming Culture wars 

World ends? Well it may take a bit longer now…

Melanie

Climate scientists have now admitted they were wrong about man-made global warming and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not very wrong, you understand, just a bit wrong. Apparently the planet is still going to hell in a carbon-lined hand-cart, just more slowly. A study in the journal Nature Geoscience says the world has warmed more slowly than had been forecast by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions. You don’t say. Global average temperature has risen by about 0.9C since…

antisemitism Britain 

Britain’s alarming antisemitism problem

Melanie

In 2002, on the BBC TV show Question Time, I was accused of dual loyalty in front of a jeering studio audience. My crime had been to defend Israel against demonization and double standards by both the audience and other members of the panel. At that time I had visited Israel only twice in my life, two years previously. No matter. A British Jew defending Israel was – and is – immediately accused in some quarters of incipient treachery toward Britain, just as throughout history antisemites have accused Diaspora Jews…