America and Britain cross a treacherous red line

Their unhinged obsession with the “two-state solution” threatens to incentivise Hamas UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron meets Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas Fears that the Biden administration’s bear-hug of embattled Israel is the prelude to eating it alive were dramatically enhanced this week. On Wednesday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the administration was “actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with real security guarantees for Israel”. He was confirming a report on the Hebrew-language news site Walla that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had ordered officials to examine the possibility of American and international recognition of a “state of Palestine” the day after the war in Gaza. A senior US official told the site that elements within the Biden administration are recommending a move towards recognising a Palestinian state as a first step in a renewed peace process and not as the result of negotiations between the parties. These “elements within the Biden administration” appear to be in lockstep with the British government. Two days before the report, at a reception in London, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron stunned observers by declaring that the British government was considering formal recognition of a “state of Palestine,” including at the UN. “This could be one of the things that will help make this process irreversible,” he said. It’s been clear from the start of the war in Gaza that both Britain and America are seizing on the turmoil to advance their obsession with a “two-state solution”. However, it’s one thing to press for movement towards a Palestine state. Unilaterally recognising it crosses a red line. Official recognition of a “Palestine” that doesn’t exist is part of the strategy of diplomatic warfare against Israel promoted by those who want to see the Jewish state destroyed. Conceptually ridiculous, since it involves recognising a “state” that has no physical form and no boundaries, it would remove at a stroke the necessity for the Palestinian Arabs to agree to live in peace alongside Israel. Instead, it would incentivizse still further their rejection of Israel’s right to exist. How exactly would such a state be demilitarised? Who would ensure that it had no access to weaponry that could threaten Israeli civilians? What exactly does the US mean by “real security guarantees” for Israel? Is it suggesting these would be enforced by the Hamas-collaborating United Nations, perhaps? “Real security guarantees” like UN resolution 1701 in 2006? The one that called for the area between the Israel-Lebanon border and the Litani River to be cleared of all armed forces other than the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers? The area where Hezbollah has sited 150,000 missiles, which it may unleash upon Israel any moment now, and from where it is launching daily attacks? Until now, Britain and America have rightfully opposed unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state as an act of malicious aggression against Israel. Now they are proposing to join in. And what a time to announce this, when Israel is in the throes of a war for its existence after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. While the IDF is making painful progress towards dismantling Hamas, Britain and America have now given the terror outfit an enormous incentive to keep fighting. Other remarks by Cameron were equally preposterous. He said that recognising a “state of Palestine” would pressure Israel, which he blamed for the absence of such a state. The last 30 years, he asserted, have been a story of Israel’s failure to provide security to its citizens by preventing a “state of Palestine”. This denies reality. The Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly been offered a state of their own, either by Israel or with its agreement, but have always turned it down and resorted instead to terrorism and war. The reason Israel has no security is because the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have mischaracterised the war of extermination against Israel as a conflict over territory. They have accordingly pressured Israel to make endless concessions that undermined its security. They have also continued to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the genocidal agenda against Israel and Jews that it shares with Hamas, and with which it indoctrinates the Palestinian Arabs with murderous hatred of the kind that erupted in the October 7 pogrom. Piously, Cameron also intoned that Israel would need to see all hostages released, with a guarantee that Hamas can no longer launch attacks on Israel and with Hamas’s leadership gone from Gaza. Such a guarantee depends upon the destruction of Hamas as a military force. Yet Britain and the US are actively undermining this by their constant pressure on Israel to step up supplies of humanitarian aid to Gaza, some 66 per cent of which —according to Israeli Security Agency director Ronen Bar — is being stolen by Hamas for its own use. Both America and Britain have provided military aid to Israel. The resupply of weaponry from the United States is critical. The United Kingdom is sending an aircraft carrier to the region to replace the American one that is leaving. Both Britain and America spoke out against the vile South African “genocide” case at the International Court of Justice. Yet in their obsession with the “two-state solution” as the path to peace in the Middle East, both Washington and London display quite staggering political blindness and stupidity. They propose to declare the existence of a Palestine state that the Palestinians have always refused to accept. They treat Hamas and a Palestinian state as if they are unrelated to each other. Get rid of Hamas and presto, a Palestinian state will end this hundred-year war. But Hamas are Palestinians. They were joined in their atrocities on October 7 by hundreds of “ordinary” Palestinians from Gaza. The PA’s governing party, Fatah, supported the pogrom. A Palestinian state would be a Hamastan on steroids and potentially run as such by Iran or Qatar. In The New York Times Thomas Friedman, who is used as a conduit for the Biden administration’s anti-Israel trial balloons, wrote that the proposed recognition of “Palestine” signals an awareness that the United States “will never have the global legitimacy, the NATO allies and the Arab and Muslim allies it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner unless we stop letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold our policy hostage”. This venomous distortion breathtakingly blames Netanyahu for fighting to defend Israel against genocidal Iran. Yet it was the appeasement of Iran by the Obama and Biden administrations that led to the October 7 pogrom, the unleashing of Iranian war across the region and now three deaths and dozens of casualties among Americans. To imply that the Iranian regime which screams “Death to America!” and aims to Islamise the world is only waging this war because of the absence of a Palestinian state is as unhinged as it is disgusting. The Biden administration is riddled with vicious haters of Israel holding key Middle East policy positions. And, of course, Britain is the original cause of this conflict, having torn up its commitment under the Palestine Mandate to settle the Jews throughout Palestine and offering part of it to their Arab attackers instead — the original “two-state solution”. In the 1930s, Britain’s response to Palestinian Arab pogroms against Palestinian Jews was to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own. In 2024, Britain’s response to a Palestinian Arab pogrom against Israeli Jews is to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own. The supercilious Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton resembles nothing so much as a British Colonial Office pooh-bah, busy selling the pass in Mandatory Palestine while looking down his nose at the uppity Jews. While Israel is forced to sacrifice the flower of its youth as it fights for its life, its so-called allies are placing the west itself in increasing peril as they threaten to hang the Jewish state out to dry once again to conceal their own malevolent ineptitude. Jewish News Syndicate Recent posts My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers argues that the MP Mike Free has been forced out of political life by forces that threaten British society. This is how the piece begins: Britain’s social emergency MELANIE PHILLIPS · 9:30 AM Britain’s social emergency Is there anyone in the British government who is brave enough to acknowledge the social emergency that has now developed in the UK as a result of intimidation and antisemitism from within the Muslim community? It has reached the stage where a government minister has been forced out of parliament by Muslim intimidation. Read full story You can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, on the rotten edifice of humanitarianism and the UN, if you click here. And you can access the links to all my work by visiting my website here. One more thing… This is how my email posts work. There are two subscription levels: my free service and my premium service. Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email. Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting and video work. But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them. There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service. A final point… If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips. And thank you for following my work. Melanie Phillips. © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX

Britain’s social emergency An MP has been forced out of political life by forces that threaten British society

Conservative MP Mike Freer who has announced he is stepping down Is there anyone in the British government who is brave enough to acknowledge the social emergency that has now developed in the UK as a result of intimidation and antisemitism from within the Muslim community? It has reached the stage where a government minister has been forced out of parliament by Muslim intimidation. Mike Freer, a minister at the Department of Justice, no less, has said he will step down from parliament because he and his loved ones can no longer endure the threats to his life over his support for Israel. Over a decade during which he has served as the Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green — one of the most heavily Jewish constituencies in the country — Freer, who is gay and not Jewish, says he has received “several serious threats” to his safety. He now wears a knife-proof vest when attending constituency events and says he feels lucky to be alive. In 2021, a government reshuffle meant he had to cancel his planned constituency surgery in order to remain in Westminster. While he was there an Islamist terrorist, Ali Harbi Ali, was lurking with a knife outside his constituency office waiting fruitlessly to attack him. One month later, Ali murdered fellow Tory MP Sir David Amess in a frenzied knife attack over Amess's support for air strikes against ISIS and his membership of Conservative Friends of Israel. Ten years previously, Freer was targeted by the group Muslims against Crusades (which was later banned). It posted online a picture of Freer with the message “Let Stephen Timms be a warning to you”. In 2010 Timms, a Labour MP, had been stabbed in his constituency surgery by an al Qaeda supporter. When members of Muslims against Crusades burst into an event that Freer was holding in a mosque, one said he was “a Jewish homosexual pig defiling the house of Allah”. In subsequent years, Freer was targeted with numerous threats, abusive notes were stuck on his car and mock petrol bombs were left on the steps of his constituency office. The last straw was a suspected arson attempt on his office last December which Freer believes was also motivated by his views. It is beyond shocking that in Britain, the cradle of parliamentary democracy, a fine and much respected MP has been forced out by intimidation. This has happened as an inevitable consequence of the increasing Islamisation of Britain — the progressive attempt to impose conformity with Islam and suppress views held to be inimical to Muslim attitudes — and the supine refusal by successive governments to acknowledge this, let alone do anything about it. Even to mention this is to be accused of “Islamophobia”. But the evidence is overwhelming, and deeply alarming... Subscribe to Melanie Phillips to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX

The latest form of Holocaust denial The ICJ ruling on “genocide” was contemptible. The reaction was worse MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 29 ∙ PREVIEW

International Court of Justice prepares to hear South Africa's case against Israel The fact that Israel expected worse from the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Friday doesn’t make it anything other than shameful. Worse still, though, was the misrepresentation of the ruling by Israel’s enemies — and even by some of its defenders — to make it seem more damning than it was. Although the court didn’t accede to South Africa’s demand that Israel should stop its military operation in Gaza, it ruled that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to prevent a genocide. The very suggestion that this might be a possibility is outrageous and not supported by any reliable evidence to the court. Since Israel’s war in Gaza is intended to destroy Hamas and not to destroy uninvolved Palestinians — whose lives Israel has in fact gone out its way to protect — this was a malicious smear against Israel designed to harm it in the eyes of the world and thus weaken its defences against the truly genocidal Hamas. And since the court drew uncritically upon Hamas propaganda produced by the UN to support such a smear, the court was thus implicitly aiding Hamas’s onslaught. The very same day on which the court issued its ruling, evidence arrived that the UN sources upon which the court had drawn were themselves tainted by Hamas’s genocidal agenda. No fewer than 12 officials of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were sacked after Israeli intelligence discovered that they had been personally involved in the October 7 pogrom. The UK, US and several other western countries promptly suspended their UNWRA funding. In addition, the monitoring group UN Watch has uncovered evidence that more than 3000 UNRWA teachers had celebrated the atrocities on the Telegram channel. Bringing a claim of genocide against Israel for defending itself against the genocide of the Jews intended by Hamas and its patron, Iran, is obscene. As defined by the Genocide Convention, genocide involves the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. This does not apply to Israel on a number of counts. Israel has no intention to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza “as such”. It intends to kill the terrorists of Hamas, not uninvolved Palestinians — and not because Hamas are Palestinians, but because Israel is defending itself against their genocidal onslaught. Moreover, the Palestinians are not a discrete “national, ethnical, racial or religious group” but — as many of their own leaders have acknowledged in the past — they are an indissoluble part of the broader Arab nation. They have no culture, language or religion that makes them distinct from that broader Arab nation; many if not most of their ancestors in the last century immigrated into Palestine from neighbouring states such as Egypt and Syria; their “Palestinian” identity was forged in the 1960s purely as a weapon of war to destroy Israel and to appropriate Jewish history as their own. By this standard, they aren’t covered by the Genocide Convention at all. On the ICJ, the one judge who dissented from the entire ruling was the Ugandan jurist, Julia Sebutinde, who took the majority decision apart. She got it absolutely right. ... Melanie Phillips © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX

The rotten edifice of ‘humanitarianism’

UNRWA should be prosecuted for complicity with war crimes MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 26 The United Nations was set up to promote peace and justice around the world. Instead of doing so, however, it has become a key weapon against peace and justice in the global armoury of evil causes. Nowhere has this been more baleful and done such appalling intergenerational harm than in the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which administers health care, education and welfare for the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza. The UN maintains that its staff in Gaza merely deal with Hamas on an operational level as the authority in charge. This is disingenuous nonsense. Wittingly or unwittingly, UNRWA behaves as a Hamas tool. Earlier this month, the monitoring group UN Watch revealed internal UNRWA group chats that took place on Telegram. They showed that more than 3,000 UNRWA staff and teachers celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel and praised the murderers and rapists as “heroes”. Their comments included calls to execute Israeli hostages, expressions of joy and support for jihad, and cheers for video footage of the atrocities with messages such as “just wait, sons of Jews”. When the UN tried to deny this, UN Watch started to publish on Twitter the names of the Telegram participants, at which point the UN suggested it might investigate. Meanwhile, as a result of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, the IDF has been uncovering copious evidence of UNRWA’s links to Hamas. Jonathan Conricus, who until recently served as an IDF spokesman, told The New York Sun: “Every UNRWA school we entered had Hamas weapons in it. Each one was a place for Hamas to hide in and fight from.” In these schools, the IDF found a number of books glorifying militancy and spreading antisemitism. Last March, a report by UN Watch and IMPACT-se — a research body that measures school curricula against UNESCO-defined standards of peace and tolerance — revealed that UNRWA teachers regularly call for the murder of Jews and create teaching materials that encourage terrorism, demonise Israelis and incite antisemitism. UNRWA is itself complicit in Hamas’s activities. Adjacent to a school in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, Israeli troops discovered a makeshift rocket manufacturing factory. The IDF has posted numerous pictures of guns and ammunition in classrooms and is said to have much more evidence of this nature that it intends to publish. Since Hamas placed many of its missile launchers and ammunition dumps next to UNRWA schools, clinics and other buildings, it defies belief that UNRWA was unaware of how Hamas was using the agency’s structures to turn Gaza’s civilians into human shields and cannon fodder. Yet UNRWA not only said nothing about this but has always blamed Israel for striking so close to its facilities. UNRWA has never held Hamas responsible for the war crimes it has committed against the Gazans for whom the UN body is responsible. Instead, UNRWA regularly disseminates Hamas disinformation, such as its misleading casualty figures that list terrorists killed by the IDF as civilian casualties. The agency also blames Israel for difficulties in distributing aid in Gaza despite clear evidence that Hamas actively prevents such distribution and regularly steals aid supplies for itself. Photographs on the Facebook page of the Hamas-run Rafah Governate of Police showed armed police on aid trucks being driven into UNRWA facilities. As David Patrikarakos reported in Britain’s Daily Mail: The Arabic text that accompanies them is equally clear: “Maintaining order in Rafah ensures that humanitarian aid can be distributed to citizens inside the refugee shelters,” it reads. Moreover, the vast network of underground tunnels uncovered by the IDF in Gaza included entrances dug inside UNRWA schools and clinics. The UN claimed that it knew nothing about this. Yet Matthias Schmale, UNRWA’s former Gaza director who was forced out after Hamas turned against him due to comments Schmale made about the precision of Israeli bombing in 2021, not only described how the IDF had destroyed a tunnel underneath an UNRWA school but also said: Many people told me through my four years, there’s tunnels everywhere, and it’s a safe assumption. More damning still, when the IDF asked UNRWA officials to help remove civilians to safe zones during the early stages of the war, the officials wouldn’t do so. “Not only did they refuse to cooperate,” said Conricus, “they actively prevented the creation of safe zones. They have blood on their hands”. UNRWA’s very existence has a malign purpose. Set up in 1949, it bestows refugee status on all descendants of the Palestinian Arabs who were displaced during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. This absurd categorisation has had the risible consequence that, some seven decades after UNRWA’s creation, the number of “refugees” resulting from the 1948 war has increased by more than 800 per cent. No other refugees in the world are defined down the generations in this way. This unique designation was intended to turn the “Palestinian refugees” into a permanent weapon of war against Israel. Trapped in permanent statelessness, they were thus prevented from becoming citizens of other countries, as all other refugees have done, so that their plight would turn Israel into a global pariah. In other words, UNRWA has always played an absolutely central role in the Arab war of extermination against Israel. Some campaigners have tried for years to alert the world to UNRWA’s malign activities. The evidence that has emerged in the course of the current war leaves no more room for doubt. Some eyes have been opened. In December, the National Council of Switzerland decided to cut its funding to UNRWA. In the same month, Germany announced that it would halt new aid commitments for long-term UNRWA development projects in Gaza — although after some back-and-forth it decided not to cut its funding altogether. Nonetheless, many other countries continue to behave as if UNRWA is an honest broker. Although the Trump administration cut US funding, President Joe Biden renewed America’s status as the agency’s top donor, contributing more than $371 million last year. This was followed by Germany with $202 million and the EU with $114 million. The UK gave $21 million. The UN maintains that UNRWA will have a role in Gaza after the war. Given the agency’s record, this would once again be putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. Instead, UNRWA should be indicted as an accessory to war crimes. The problem, however, isn’t limited to this agency. In a report for Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Centre, the director of NGO Monitor, Professor Gerald Steinberg, wrote that Hamas allies and enablers in Gaza include numerous UN agencies and officials, governmental aid organisations and diplomats, and NGOs claiming to promote human rights and humanitarian aid. These bodies, he asserted, have allowed Hamas to devote all available resources to building its underground terror tunnel network while it relied on aid providers to supply the general population with food, water and essential above-ground services. Steinberg wrote of these organisations: Evidence of their involvement and behaviour — specifically with respect to the large-scale theft (“diversion”) of aid for construction of the massive terror infrastructure beneath Gaza and tens of thousands of lethal rockets — is available in numerous photographs and videos from the IDF. At least 12 other UN agencies are active in Gaza, including the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation. A preliminary review of the history, wrote Steinberg, indicates that the officials and employees of these organisations also followed a policy of silence and, in some cases, direct collaboration with Hamas. The problem isn’t just UNRWA’s complicity in genocidal terror, to which the so-called civilised world turns a blind eye. It’s the whole infrastructure of “human rights” and humanitarianism that the west regards as its conscience but has actually been doing the work of the devil. Jewish News Syndicate Recent posts My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers argued that the British government’s attitude towards Islamism remains dangerously blinkered. This is how the piece begins: Denial still flows through Londonistan At long last, the British government is to proscribe the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir under anti-terrorism laws. This jihadi group was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 with the aim of replacing Muslim leaders viewed as not Muslim enough and eventually establishing a caliphate with world-wide implementation of Islamic sharia law. Read full story You can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, observing that something of priceless value is emerging on the battlefields of Gaza, if you click here. And you can access the links to all my work by visiting my website here. One more thing… This is how my email posts work. There are two subscription levels: my free service and my premium service. Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email. Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting and video work. But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them. There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service. A final point… If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips. And thank you for following my work. Upgrade to paid You're currently a free subscriber to Melanie Phillips. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid SHARE RESTACK © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX

"Choose life, and fight for it" Something of priceless value is emerging on the battlefields of Gaza MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 24

Master Sgt.(Res) Elkana Vizel, who fell in Gaza on January 22 Already numb with grief over the flower of Israel’s youth falling in the war in Gaza, Israelis have been further shattered by the killing on Monday of no fewer than 21 reservists in one deadly incident and three other soldiers the same day. Not surprisingly, this has increased calls from the public for an end to the war. Even more understandably, the families of the Israeli hostages are becoming ever more desperate about the captives’ likely horrific fate in the dungeons of Hamas, and are stepping up demonstrations calling for a deal to end the war and secure the hostages’ release. Would that it were that simple. Israel faces a horrific binary choice: to end the threat from Hamas, or end the ordeal of the hostages. It almost certainly can’t achieve both. Hamas will not give up all the hostages without a guaranteed end to Israeli hostilities and a pledge not to assassinate the Hamas leaders. If Israel were to agree to that, a revitalised Hamas would remain a mortal threat to Israeli lives, more hostages would be taken in future and more Israelis murdered. The residents of Israel’s communities near the border with Gaza would be unable to return safely to their homes; nor would the families that have been evacuated from communities near the border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s 150,000 missiles are embedded in the civilian population ready for the signal to strike the entire Jewish state and where Hezbollah’s Radwan force remains poised to invade Israel to order to murder and abduct more Jews. There is hardly an Israeli family that isn’t personally affected by this war. In such a tiny country, almost everyone has family members on the front lines, has relatives or friends who have been murdered or been abducted into Gaza, or knows people in such situations. Yet most of the country remains resolute. Polling suggests that sixty percent of Jewish Israelis oppose a deal that would see the remaining hostages returned in exchange for releasing all Palestinian security prisoners and an end to hostilities in Gaza. These Israelis understand that such a deal would mean Palestinian Arab murderers being set free to murder more Israelis; that it would incentivise yet more hostage taking; that it would give Hamas a victory that would galvanise not just it but every jihadi to redouble their attacks; and that it would betray the fallen soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in the belief that this was a price worth paying to end the Hamas scourge. While most of the Israeli public remain clear-sighted and resolute, the campaign by the hostages’ families — for whom one should have nothing but sympathy and compassion — is contributing to a mood of defeatism being whipped up by self-indulgent Israeli journalists which can only damage the war effort, weaken Israel and assist its enemies. There is, however, a very different story that’s also being told. Ma’ariv correspondent Ben Caspit and fellow journalist Amit Segal have spent time with an Israeli brigade fighting in Khan Yunis. Caspit wrote: In the winter of 2023, Israel is a nation divided into two unequal parts: One part consists of everyone who isn’t either in Gaza or on the northern border, and everyone not recruited for either conscripted or reserve military duty — to wit, nearly all of us. They are all anxious, depressed, arguing, shouting and bickering, putting out negative energy that includes fear, shock, insult, defeatism, incompetence and a great deal of bitterness. The second part of Israel is that on the front. I met them on Monday in Khan Yunis. These are a different kind of Israelis. They’re full of energy and confident in their abilities. They’re united and smiling, faithfully eager to complete their mission. They’re calm. They’re not arguing among themselves but, rather, are helping one another, patting each other on the back and, when need be, they rescue each other. Last Monday in Khan Yunis, I realised that our situation in Gaza is much better than the way it looks from Tel Aviv. Even after the dreadful tragedy on Monday… The tank guys sleep in their tanks (which I can tell you from personal experience really aren’t that comfortable). The infantry soldiers improvise whatever they can.The troops have their coffee and their backgammon and a true sense of being brothers-in-arms, and we heard the same request from absolutely everyone there. “Tell them at home, not to stop us. Let us finish our work. We mustn’t stop. We mustn’t let up. We’re here because this has to be done. We’re strong and we hope that you guys on the home front are also strong.”… We then went up to a look-out…We realised we wouldn’t find a single hospital in Gaza that wasn’t fully fitted with guns, explosives, shafts and tunnels. Nearly all the mosques too [my emphasis]. Gaza isn’t what they told us. We’re now teaching them that we’re not what they’ve been told we are either. The astonishing attitude among the reservists that Caspit was talking about was exemplified by Elkana Vizel, who was among the 21 who fell on Monday. Rabbi Vizel, a squad commander and a married father of four children, previously fought as a reservist in Gaza in Operation Protective Edge (Tzuk Eitan) in 2014, when he was injured in battle. This is what he wrote in a letter to his family during the current war, in case the worst should happen: If you are reading these words, something must have happened to me. If I was kidnapped, I demand that no deal be made for the release of any terrorist to release me. Our overwhelming victory is more important than anything, so please continue to work with all your might so that the victory is as overwhelming as possible. Maybe I fell in battle. When a soldier falls in battle, it is sad, but I ask you to be happy. Don't be sad when you part with me. Touch hearts, hold each other's hands, and strengthen each other. We have so much to be proud and happy about. We are writing the most significant moments in the history of our nation and the entire world. So please, be happy, be optimistic, keep choosing life all the time. Spread love, light, and optimism. Look at your loved ones in the whites of their eyes and remind them that everything we go through in this life is worth it and we have something to live for. Don't stop the power of life for a moment. I was already wounded in Operation Tzuk Eitan, but I do not regret that I returned to fight. This is the best decision I ever made. It is unspeakable that such a gift to humanity has now had his life so cruelly extinguished. It is unendurable that so many of the very best of a young generation are being lost in this war that has been forced upon the Jewish people yet again by genocidal fanatics bent on the extermination of every Jew and the destruction of their ancestral homeland. Yet in the midst of this agony, the words of Elkana Vizel reveal something of priceless value that is emerging on these battlefields of pain; something that Ben Caspit discovered among the soldiers fighting at Khan Yunis. We are witnessing the rebirth once again of Jewish heroism — physical heroism, for sure, military exploits of courage and self-sacrifice which we will be hearing about for years to come, but also a spiritual heroism. We are witnessing the assertion of life in the face of a terrifying cult of death; of optimism and hope in the face of the cynicism and defeatism of the everyday world; of deep love of Israel and its people in the face of the bitterness and rancour that too often divide them; of sweetness and goodness in the face of the disgusting filth of a western world that sides with genocidal murderers against their innocent victims simply because those victims are Jews, or else professes to support Israel in its life and death struggle while leaving it to swing in the murderous wind. In Elkana Vizel, we have seen a young man for whom fighting for his people and his nation gave his life meaning. The way he lived that life and the words he wrote that resonate beyond his untimely grave give us inspiration; they teach us once again why the Jews are the eternal people. Don’t cry, he tells us. Choose life, and fight for it. What this stirs within us Jews is the ancient memory of our lion-hearted history, and the realisation of what we still are. May the memory of Elkana Vizel and all his fallen comrades be a blessing to us all. Recent posts My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers argued that the British government’s attitude towards Islamism remains dangerously blinkered. This is how the piece begins: Denial still flows through Londonistan At long last, the British government is to proscribe the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir under anti-terrorism laws. This jihadi group was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 with the aim of replacing Muslim leaders viewed as not Muslim enough and eventually establishing a caliphate with world-wide implementation of Islamic sharia law. Read full story You can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, arguing that there's an unholy alliance between Muslim Jew-haters, the left and the political class, if you click here. And you can access the links to all my work by visiting my website here. One more thing… This is how my email posts work. There are two subscription levels: my free service and my premium service. Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email. Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting and video work. But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them. There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service. A final point… If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips. And thank you for following my work. Upgrade to paid You're currently a free subscriber to Melanie Phillips. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid SHARE RESTACK © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX

The BBC and the axis against Israel There's an unholy alliance between Muslim Jew-haters, the left and the political class MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 21

The Conservative MP Andrew Percy has accused the BBC of putting British Jews directly at risk through its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Absolutely. The BBC’s relentless portrayal of the Israelis not as the victims of genocidal terror but as hard-hearted, vengeful and wanton killers of children and the innocent has channelled ancient antisemitic tropes of Jewish blood-lust and helped fuel an enormous increase in attacks on Jews. As Percy said, the BBC’s double standards on Israel, treating patently absurd civilian casualty figures from Hamas as reliable while casting doubt on Israeli statements, present Israel rather than Hamas as the aggressor and rogue actor. A principal offender has been the Today programme presenter, Mishal Husain. Interviewing the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps on Monday, she unleashed a barrage of distorted and out-of-context quotes to demonise Israel as a bloodthirsty aggressor. Claiming that the IDF spokesman, Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari, had said in October that “our focus is on creating damage not precision,” and that Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, had said “we will eliminate everything” in Gaza, Husain said these remarks suggested Israel wasn’t acting within international law and might be why “so many Palestinians have died”. Yet as the Guardian acknowledged on 5 December, Hagari had been mistranslated. He had actually said: “While balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage”. Gallant’s words have been taken out of context. He had said: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before, and Hamas will not exist. We will eliminate everything”. He meant eliminating Hamas, not Gaza’s civilians. In any event, what matters is not what’s said but what Israel does. For the ratio of civilians to combatants killed by Israel is around two to one. This is far fewer than the proportion of civilians killed in war by any other nation’s army — and when taking into account the Hamas rockets falling short into Gaza and killing its people, fewer still. Most disgusting of all was how Husain twisted Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the ancient Israelites’ biblical foe, Amalek, when he said: “We remember, and we are fighting.” Husain claimed that “Amalek” involved the injunction to spare no-one and destroy “every man, woman and child, sheep, camel and donkey”. And she suggested this was the cause of Israel’s rate of death and destruction in Gaza. This was grotesque. Amalek was the genocidal enemy of the Jewish people, whose attack was so lethal that the Jews have a religious commitment to “remember” him in order to destroy any such enemy before it can wipe out the Jewish people again. Yet Husain and other Israel-haters have abused this sacred duty to defend the Jewish people against genocide by claiming obscenely that it meant Israel intends to wipe out the Palestinians as an act of malign aggression. The government has supported Israel over its show trial at the International Court of Justice. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, has said South Africa’s accusation against Israel of “genocide” is wrong because “genocide” involves an intention to wipe out an entire people whereas Israel is merely defending itself in Gaza. Defending Israel, however, takes more than objecting to “when did you stop beating your wife” harassment. It involves calling out the murderous lies that are circulating about Israel’s behaviour, and stating the truth instead. But instead, Cameron took aim at Israel with a few poisonous barbs of his own. He was “worried,” he told a parliamentary committee, that Israel “might be in breach of international law” in Gaza and that “on lots of occasions” its compliance was “under question”. Since he offered no evidence of any such breaches, his remarks served merely as yet another smear against an Israel fighting for its life according to international law and yet being demonised for doing so. The Jews find themselves in the hallucinatory situation of being under unprecedented physical and verbal assault by a western world determined to erase genocidal Jewish victimisation and instead delegitimise Israeli Jews as enemies of humanity. This has been building up for years. Yet the community’s leadership has chosen not to call out publicly the enemies of the Jews in British society. Instead it has sought to appease, to genuflect and to grovel. Last week the Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, indicated the desperate failure of that approach when he called for British Jews to be “brave” and challenge Muslims over Israel following the “deeply disappointing” Muslim attacks on the Jewish state since the October 7 pogrom. Candidly, Mirvis regretted that he hadn’t always prioritised Israel in interfaith dialogue, which mostly “focused on what unites us”. The community needs to start calling out the unique evil of the onslaught against Israel and the Jews from the unholy alliance between Muslim antisemites, the left and the political class. Instead of responding with instantly forgettable rallies against antisemitism to the malevolent falsehoods raining down daily from the intelligentsia, the church and the Hamas Broadcasting Corporation, British Jews should start taking the fight in public and by name to those intent on destroying truth, justice and the Jewish people. Jewish Chronicle Recent posts My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers argued that the British government’s attitude towards Islamism remains dangerously blinkered. This is how the piece begins: You can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, arguing that the distinction between Hamas and “ordinary” Palestinians is largely spurious, if you click here. And you can access the links to all my work by visiting my website here. One more thing… This is how my email posts work. There are two subscription levels: my free service and my premium service. Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email. Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting and video work. But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them. There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service. A final point… If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips. And thank you for following my work. © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX Unsubscribe Get the appStart writing

The west’s lethal error in the war against Israel The distinction between Hamas and “ordinary” Palestinians is largely spurious MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 19

In the current war in the Middle East, it’s a given that a distinction must be drawn between Hamas and the “ordinary” Palestinian Arab residents of Gaza. This distinction, however, is largely spurious. An article in The Washington Free Beacon that drew upon interviews given to Israeli TV by freed hostages has confirmed that ordinary Gazans were deeply involved in the October 7 pogrom and subjected the hostages to cruelty, abuse and starvation. Nili Margalit recounted how Gazan “civilians, regular people” took her hostage at knifepoint in the October 7 attack. Margalit said a “boy … 17, maybe 18 years old” and an “older man with the knife” broke down the door of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and forced her, barefoot and in pyjamas, into a stolen golf cart. Margalit said she saw a “mob, thousands of people,” including “women and children,” pouring across Israel’s breached border with Gaza less than two miles away. She saw two boys, one “no more than four or five years old” and the other 15 or 16, riding an all-terrain vehicle that belonged to her father, a cattle breeder who was among those murdered that day. The boys had apparently already made one trip from Nir Oz to Gaza and were returning for another round of carnage. A number of the freed hostages said they spent part of their captivity in family homes, hospitals and other civilian sites in Gaza where they were locked into rooms, starved and ill-treated. Mia Schem, who was shot in the arm and abducted from the Supernova music festival, said her captors brought her directly to a hospital in Gaza as she was bleeding to death. Schem then received no further treatment or even pain medication. She was taken to a private home where a man and his family held her captive with “pure hate,” forbidding her to speak, cry or move. She would go days without receiving food and was never allowed to bathe. Bad as their conditions were, the hostages’ captors repeatedly told them that their lives would be at risk if they were discovered by ordinary Gazans. The hostages hardly needed any such warning. Sharon Aloni Cunio recalled how she and her twin three-year-old daughters were mobbed on October 7 as terrorists brought them into Gaza on a tractor from their home in Nir Oz. “People start beating everyone who was sitting on the tractor — just beating us, from all sides. It was horrific,” she said. The testimony of the freed hostages carries particular weight because these aren’t extreme nationalists. They are Israelis who, in general, were until October 7 the most fervent believers in peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs, ferrying Gaza residents to hospital in Israel and establishing many bonds with them. They believed that whatever the failings of Palestinian leaders, the Palestinian people just wanted to live alongside them in peace and security. Now they say something very different. “I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists,” said Schem. “There are no innocent civilians, not one.” Agam Goldstein-Almog, who was abducted with her mother and two younger siblings after Hamas murdered her father and elder sister in their homes in Kfar Aza, said: “If we previously believed that there was a chance for peace, we’ve lost all faith in these people, especially after we were there and among the population.” Nor are most Arabs living in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria any different. Between October 7 and January 15, Rescuers Without Borders recorded more than 2,600 attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults. The IDF has been fighting heavy battles in these territories to thwart attacks and destroy terrorist infrastructure. In recent weeks, it’s been investigating possible infiltration tunnels discovered near Jewish communities in the Hebron Hills in Judea and Shiloh in Samaria’s Binyamin region. The Palestinian Authority has never condemned the October 7 pogrom; on the contrary, its main party, Fatah, has repeatedly extolled the atrocities. A poll published by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed support for Hamas in Judea and Samaria more than tripled after October 7, with no fewer than 82 per cent of Arabs there supporting the attack and 70 p[er cent of them supporting the “armed struggle” against Israel. In any moral universe, a set of people bent upon exterminating another would be treated as pariahs by the international community and their rights would be considered forfeit. Yet America is even now insisting that the “route to peace” is through a Palestinian state that must be ruled by a “revitalised” and “reformed” PA. There’s zero chance of any such reform. Such a state would merely revitalise the capacity of the Palestinian Arabs to inflict yet more genocidal attacks on Israel. America and Britain remain wedded to the “two-state solution” because they refuse to acknowledge that this conflict is not over a division of land. Instead, it is a war of annihilation against the Jewish homeland that has lasted for almost 100 years. Moreover, the reason the conflict still endures is the behaviour of the west itself. Led by Britain in the 1930s, the west has consistently rewarded and incentivised Arab aggressors bent on destroying Israel, while it has prevented Israel from taking the measures necessary to see off the threat once and for all. The essential prerequisite for any solution is for the west to withdraw support for Palestinian aggression and unequivocally back Israeli self-defence. Deprived of both western funding and validation, the Palestinian agenda would fall apart. Instead, the west continues to promote the murderous fiction that there are “good” Palestinians who deserve a state of their own — which would be a terror state with Israel at its mercy. The west’s lethal error goes even deeper. America and the UK have failed to realise that, just as Hamas can’t be divorced from the Palestinians but are part of the same genocidal entity, so the war against Israel is merely the most neuralgic element of a civilisational war between the Muslim world and the west. That war was declared in 1979, when the Islamic revolution in Iran galvanised and radicalised Sunni as well as Shi’ite Muslims across the world, helping to create al Qaeda. The new Iranian regime declared war on the west and has prosecuted that war ever since with virtually no pushback. Instead, western appeasement has helped finance and bolster Iran’s terrorism, proxy wars and quest for hegemony. That catastrophic strategy, combined with the west’s continued financing and support of the Palestinian agenda, enabled the Hamas pogrom and onslaught on Israel from multiple fronts in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Judea and Samaria. This already metastasising conflict is feared to presage a world war in which Russia and China join Iran against a west which has shown such lamentable enfeeblement in the Middle East. Britain and America do not only insist that “bad” Hamas is different from the “good” Palestinians. They similarly claim that al Qaeda, ISIS and other radical Islamists are merely rogue actors in an otherwise unthreatening Muslim world. Both Britain and America have accordingly failed to recognise how jihadis intent upon conquering the west for Islam — as Hamas has said is its own ultimate aim —have tunnelled into British and American democratic structures and institutions as devastatingly as they have tunnelled into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon. As a result of myopia, muddled thinking and moral cowardice, America and Britain are not just aiming to ensure that an Israel they protect from outright annihilation will nevertheless continue to twist in the murderous Islamist wind. They have also advertised to the enemies of civilisation that the west itself is ripe for conquest. Jewish News Syndicate My most recent exclusive post for my premium subscribers argued that the British government’s attitude towards Islamism remains dangerously blinkered. This is how the piece begins: Denial still flows through Londonistan MELANIE PHILLIPS · JAN 18 You can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, on the deepening chill over Israel from Britain and America, if you click here. And you can access the links to all my work by visiting my website here. One more thing… This is how my email posts work. There are two subscription levels: my free service and my premium service. Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email. Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting and video work. But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them. There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service. A final point… If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips. And thank you for following my work. © 2024 Melanie Phillips BCM Rozenberg London WC1N 3XX Unsubscribe

Denial still flows through Londonistan

Finally banning Hizb ut Tahrir is a sop when attitudes remain so blinkered MELANIE PHILLIPS JAN 18 At long last, the British government is to proscribe the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir under anti-terrorism laws. This jihadi group was founded in Jersualem in 1953 with the aim of replacing Muslim leaders viewed as not Muslim enough and eventually establishing a caliphate with world-wide implementation of Islamic sharia law. The group has been banned in numerous countries, including all Arab states except Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE. There have been calls to ban it in the UK for decades. It has played in particular an outsize role by radicalising educated and intelligent young British Muslims searching for a meaning to their lives. The government has finally acted because of the part Hizb ut Tahrir has played in the appalling demonstrations and incitement against Israel since the October 7 Hamas pogrom. The UK branch openly celebrated the atrocities and chanted “Jihad! Jihad!” on the streets of London. The ban, however, is but an inadequate gesture. At least four groups with links to Hamas are reportedly behind these anti-Israel hate-fests. Some of their principal actors are still freely operating in Britain. It was only in November that the government banned Hamas altogether, having previously banned only its military wing in 2001. And ministers are still refusing to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the main instrument of Iranian global terrorism. This reluctance is all of a piece with the British government’s attitude towards Islamist extremism ever since 9/11. Ministers and officials have refused to acknowledge Islamist extremism as a jihad or Islamic holy war, because they have refused to accept that its roots lie in an interpretation of Islam that is mainstream and dominant in the Islamic world. ...