Israel
Portrait of the Week: Farage returns, Abbott reselected and Trump guilty
Home Nigel Farage took over leadership of the Reform party from Richard Tice and is standing for parliament in Clacton.…
Will Netanyahu declare war on Hezbollah?
The war in Gaza is perceived internationally as a limited affair, pitting Israel against the Islamist Hamas organisation within the…
Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal could sink Benjamin Netanyahu
Joe Biden’s introduction of the three-stage deal to end the war in Gaza was a clever rout to bypass Benjamin…
Portrait of the Week: Sunak’s downpour, national service and the ‘triple lock plus’
Home Parliament was dissolved, leaving no MPs until the general election on 4 July. With hours to go, Diane Abbott had…
I’m setting up a ‘climate crisis hub’
‘We thought the house would make the most fantastic centre for climate action,’ I heard myself telling the cat rescue…
Netanyahu’s strategy in Rafah isn’t working
On 7 April, six months after the October massacres in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the public that…
Israel may have to stop its offensive in Rafah
The devastating fire that, according to Hamas, killed dozens of displaced civilians in Rafah and that reportedly started because of…
The grandstanding against the Hay Festival is short-sighted
When the country’s largest literary festival parts ways with its main sponsor, it is not usually a cause for rejoicing among writers,…
How Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden fell out
After the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October, President Biden offered his total and unflinching support…
Anti-Semitism has returned to French politics
New Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific not far from Australia. James Cook discovered it in 1774, but,…
Portrait of the Week: Infected blood apologies, falling inflation and XL bully attacks
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology’ for a ‘decades-long moral…
The dignity of Eden Golan
Two questions dominated last night’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden. First, whether 20-year-old Eden Golan, Israel’s entrant, would…
Britain doesn’t need an Iron Dome
Air defence was in the news this week, after Israel, with the help of allies including the UK, shot down…
Inside the new Arab-Israeli alliance
As Jordanian fighter jets shot down Iranian drones heading for Israel on Saturday night, there were joyful cries of Allahu…
Why does the West protect Israel but not Ukraine?
When Israel and its allies shot down hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles, they demonstrated what an effective air defence…
The Lebanese always return home
Beirut You might have thought that the threat of the Gaza war spiralling into an all-out regional conflagration, along with…
My letter from Chris Packham
I do not know Chris Packham, the BBC nature broadcaster, personally, but he wrote me a letter last month, enclosing…
A new survey that may be of interest
My favourite opinion polls are those which elicit enormous shock in the population for stating something everybody knew for ages,…
Portrait of the Week: Tory phishing, tension over Rafah and Cameron in America
Home The review by Dr Hilary Cass of gender-identity services for people under 18 called for an end to prescribing…
Why do MPs send nude pictures of themselves?
Adam Dyster has gone to work for the shadow Defra secretary Steve Reed. I admit this is not an appointment…
The London Library should leave us in peace
Reading only slightly between the lines of US foreign policy on Israel/Gaza, I detect that its most urgent aim is…
Even pilgrims are staying away from Jerusalem
Israel has a new train line: 25 minutes from Ben Gurion airport to Jerusalem. The Christian pilgrims would love it…
