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conversation Culture wars 

The secular inquisition

Melanie, ,

A few days ago, the philosopher John Gray wrote on the Unherd website a bleak but precisely directed analysis of why the humanities can’t be saved. It used to be said, he wrote, that the humanities taught people how to think. No longer. “Students learn an intra-academic argot – intersectionality, hetero-normativity and the like — that has zero utility in the world in which they will go on to live.They also learn that disagreement in ethics and politics is illegitimate. Anyone who departs from the prevailing progressive consensus is not…

Israel 

Puncturing the big lie of Palestinian identity

Melanie, , ,

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, recently claimed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the Canaanites. “This land is for its people, its residents and the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago — and we are the Canaanites!” he declared, vowing that every Israeli stone and house “built on our land” would end up “in the garbage dump of history.” Any western Palestinian supporter might have been left somewhat perplexed. After all, it’s an article of faith among those hostile to Israel that the indigenous inhabitants…

Britain 

Why Brexiteers need Remainers to keep Boris Johnson honest

Melanie, ,

Yesterday’s government announcement that Parliament is to be prorogued for much of the next few weeks until the Queen’s Speech, plus the reaction this has detonated by greatly reducing the time available for Remainer MPs to block Brexit, has created the general impression that Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends the UK to leave the EU with no deal. Remainer-world has gone into scarcely believable meltdown as a result. Brexiteers are thrilled. They shouldn’t be. The danger of a faux-Brexit is now in some ways even more acute than it ever…

Global conflict Israel 

The incendiary balloon of international law

Melanie, , ,

For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence. These weapons – balloons or kites attached to flammable material – are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel. In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land. At the same time, Israeli communities near the border are also routinely attacked with…

Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Why the Labour party can’t deal with its Jew-hatred

Melanie, , ,

In recent days, plotting within the British Labour Party to get rid of its far-left leader Jeremy Corbyn has moved up a gear as deep concern over the party’s precipitous plunge in the opinion polls has burst into the open. Corbyn is being blamed for the two causes of this meltdown. The first is the party’s ambiguous stance over Brexit, in which it is trying simultaneously to please its working-class Brexit supporters and its metropolitan, educated liberals who want the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union — and…

Christians Global conflict USA 

The US Army War College surrenders to intimidation

Melanie, ,

Raymond Ibrahim is the author of an important new book about Islam, “Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West”. In this meticulously researched work, he shows how anti-western attitudes have been endemic in Islam throughout its history. He charts how, over the centuries, Muslim armies went on the offensive to “reclaim” areas of the Middle East, north Africa, southern Europe and Asia Minor – which had belonged to the Roman, Hellenistic Greek or Jewish worlds centuries before Islam was even founded. He also shows how…

Global conflict 

The dark shadow Iran is casting on the world

Melanie, , ,

In Israel, as the drumbeats of war grow ever louder, people are preparing with a mixture of dread, stoicism and determination for the long-feared, ultimate showdown with Iran. After reported Iranian attacks on two oil tankers last month near the Straits of Hormuz, Iran also shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. Following this, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had cancelled an airstrike on Iranian targets with only 10 minutes to spare because of last-minute concerns that the likely number of casualties would be disproportionate. Earlier this week, Iran…

antisemitism Culture wars Global conflict 

The dangerous equation of Islamophobia with antisemitism

Melanie, , ,

The Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has made a number of antisemitic remarks, is currently embroiled in controversy over her marriage history. When claims against her of bigamy and immigration fraud first emerged in 2016, Omar accused the journalists involved of “Islamophobia.” Omar has also made a claim being heard more and more: that Muslims are called antisemites only because they are Muslim. In other words, anyone who calls out Muslim antisemitism is Islamophobic. This twisted claim is a way of making Muslim antisemitism unsayable. The claim is being…

Britain Global conflict Israel 

Hezbollah UK terrorist plot kept secret as British continue appeasing rising Iran aggression

Melanie, , ,

A few days ago, Britain’s Daily Telegraph revealed that in 2015 the British authorities had uncovered a Hezbollah terrorist plot. The key point was that this had been kept secret until now. In a bomb factory on the outskirts of London, a total of three metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate was discovered — more than was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people — stashed in ice packs. This was apparently no rogue plot, but part of an international Hezbollah operation laying the groundwork for future…

BBC Audio Britain 

Drugs and hypocrisy in the moral maze

Melanie, , ,

On BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze last night, we discussed hypocrisy in the wake of Michael Gove’s admission that he had used cocaine on a number of occasions some two decades ago. Since many leading politicians have admitted using illegal drugs at some stage in their lives, should they all be condemned? Isn’t this to set the bar of behaviour impossibly high? Or is it only right that any person in a position of authority who has shown a contempt for the law should suffer the consequences? And is hypocrisy…