national identity Archives | MelaniePhillips.com

The story Jews repeat on Passover is the secret of their survival

April 8, 2020 MelanieCoronavirus, jews, national identity, Passover

As Jews around the world celebrate the festival of Passover this week, the ironies are painful. The festival celebrates the pivotal biblical event that followed Pharaoh’s refusal to free his Hebrew slaves. The last and most terrible of the 10 plagues inflicted as punishment upon the Egyptians, the death of the firstborn in every family, passed over the houses of the Hebrews who then left Egypt for freedom and their destiny as a Jewish nation. Today, of course, the plague of the coronavirus has not passed over the Jewish people—a…

Audio Britain Culture wars

The cultural chasm over Britain’s place in the world

February 21, 2020February 21, 2020 Melaniebrexit, climate change, national identity

I took part in a “Brexit breakdown” podcast discussion with Ian Dunt, editor of Politics.co.uk, and Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s college, London and director of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. Chaired by podcaster James Millar, our discussion quickly developed from the eponymous issue of Brexit which so divides us. After we talked about what it meant to us and how we saw it developing, we moved into wider and deeper cultural issues. These opened up before us as an unbridgeable chasm.…

Culture wars Videos

Our cultural crisis: conversation with John Anderson

December 17, 2019December 17, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, cultural crisis, John Anderson, national identity

I recently sat down for a second video discussion with John Anderson, the former deputy prime minister of Australia, over the crisis in western culture and society. We discussed my own political journey, described in my memoir Guardian Angel, in which I came to understand that the great battles over the traditional family or education involved a wholesale repudiation of objectivity, evidence and truth itself. The result is our current era of cultural totalitarianism. We also talked about the war to the political death between on the one hand, national…

Britain Culture wars

National identity is the key to life and liberty

November 12, 2019 Melaniebrexit, David Miliband, liberalism, national identity

The former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband, now head of the International Rescue Committee, last month delivered the Sir Martin Gilbert lecture at Highgate synagogue. Under the title “Brexit and the anti-liberal moment”, he argued that Brexit was both cause and symptom of the destruction of the “liberal democratic idea”. First, cards on the table. I am a staunch, clean-break Brexiteer. I nevertheless respect many who voted Remain in the 2016 referendum out of their anxiety about the costs of leaving the EU which, although I disagree with them, is…

Israel

In a deadlocked election, the real winners are Israeli Arabs

September 20, 2019 MelanieArabs, election, Israel, national identity

If nothing else, one clear result of Israel’s frustrating general election gives the lie to the claim that Israeli Arabs were being intimidated from casting their vote. This arose from a failed attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party to allow its operatives to film inside polling stations on the unproven charge of voter fraud in the Arab sector. In the middle of election day, a report attributed to Likud that it had installed “facial recognition” cameras outside Arab polling stations was condemned as an attempt to intimidate…

Britain Israel USA

Israel gets the nation-state right while the west fumbles with identity

July 27, 2018July 27, 2018 Melaniediaspora, Israel, jews, national identity

Two utterly fundamental and seismic issues are threatening to tear apart Britain, Europe and America. They are mass immigration and national identity. The majority of Jews in Britain and America are warmly disposed towards the former and terrified of the latter. They have got it precisely the wrong way round. Diaspora Jews have a Pavlovian response to immigration. This is entirely understandable: the vast majority, myself included, are the descendants of immigrants and refugees. Jews are also commanded in the Torah not to wrong or oppress a stranger “for you…