Nike's ‘Never again' slogan is a disgrace
Yet when I saw the Nike advertisement – hoisted from a crane like an executed Iranian dissident, swaying precariously in front of that modern-day emblem of our capital city, the London Eye – bearing the slogan 'Never again. Until next year,' my mind immediately traveled to darker places. What, I wondered, has a running race to do with the Holocaust?
Only last week, my essay commemorating Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day, was published in these pages.
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Spectator
19 minutes ago
- Spectator
Uefa's ‘Stop killing children' banner isn't fooling anyone
Who does Uefa think it's kidding? It says the huge banner saying 'Stop killing children' unfurled at a Super Cup match last night was 'not political'. It was 'about humanity', insists an insider. 'In fact, you could just say it is common sense', they said. They must think we were born yesterday. Everyone whose moral faculties have not been entirely fried by the Gaza war knows this banner was likely a political dig at that state it is fashionable to hate – Israel. To display such a banner ahead of a Spurs match – a team with deep links to Britain's Jewish community – is especially egregious The banner said 'Stop Killing Children – Stop Killing Civilians'. It was displayed on the pitch in Udine, Italy ahead of the clash between Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain. Children from conflict zones around the world stood by the banner, including two Palestinian kids. Uefa's rules forbid the display of political messages before, during or after matches. But this wasn't political, it says – it was a cry of concern for littl'uns everywhere. I call BS. I suppose it is wholly coincidental that such a banner has been displayed at a time when Europe's chattering classes feverishly accuse the Jewish State of being a child-killing entity. Spend more than 60 seconds on social media and you'll encounter this calumny. Browse the 'respectable' press and there it is. Venture into your city centre when there's a 'pro-Palestine' march and you'll hear the mob holler it: 'Israel spills the blood of children!' This view of Israel as a uniquely murderous state, as a nation that takes pleasure in the butchery of children, is all the rage right now. 'Israel is annihilating Palestinian children', op-ed writers cry. It is 'targeting childhood' itself, we're told. A Unicef official described Israel's war in Gaza as a 'war on children'. It is no such thing, of course; it is a war on the neo-fascists of Hamas who invaded Israel on 7 October 2023 to rape and massacre Jews. On those weekly street rages against Israel you'll see placard after placard calling on it to 'Stop Killing Children'. Israel is seen as an infanticidal regime, as uniquely wicked among the nations of the earth in that children do not merely perish in its wars, as they tragically do in all wars – no, they are targeted for execution by this sick state that gets a twisted thrill from letting the blood of innocents. You don't have to be an expert in Medieval History to hear the echo of the blood libel in these chants. Where once Jews were seen as the dastardly spillers of the blood of Christian children, now the Jewish state is seen as the murderous spiller of the blood of Palestinian children. Some people might believe the left's anti-Israel hotheads when they say it is entirely coincidental that they now accuse the Jewish nation of the same ritualistic crimes of child slaughter that the Jewish people were once accused of – I am not one of those people. For me, it was made most clear on an anti-Israel demonstration in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex back in April. Protesters carried dolls in shrouds stained with fake blood while screaming 'Stop killing babies!' as Jewish families walked home from synagogue after Sabbath prayers. How profoundly shaming that 900 years after the blood libel was born in the City of Norwich, England's Jews once more found themselves surrounded by a frothing mob howling about child slaughter. And now into this mix comes Uefa's apparently innocent banner. Look, who knows what the thinking was of the individuals who thought it would be a good idea to mention the death of children in war before a game of footie. But the impact of the banner is undeniable: it will have made hundreds of thousands of people think about that 'evil' state that the cultural elite insists is murdering children for sport. 'For centuries, Europe has traded in the blood libel that Jews kill children, and clearly the trope remains as popular as ever', said the Campaign Against Antisemitism in response to the Uefa furore. Quite right. To display such a banner ahead of a Spurs match – a team with deep links to Britain's Jewish community – is especially egregious. Why not a banner saying 'Stop Kidnapping Jews', in reference to Hamas's brutal, 15-month abduction of the British-Israeli Spurs fan, Emily Damari? Children die in all wars. It's the worst thing about war. But the Israel-Hamas war is the first of my lifetime where there has been such a grim, frenzied obsession with these tragic deaths, and such a certain conviction that they are not accidental tragedies at all but the intentional handiwork of that monstrous Jewish army. I'm tired of tiptoeing around this: the reason they accuse this nation alone of ritualistic child murder is because it is the Jewish nation.
ITV News
19 minutes ago
- ITV News
Israel announces West Bank settlement that will 'bury' idea of Palestinian statehood
Israel is developing plans to build thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank, in a move that would 'permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state', Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said. The E1 settlement project, which seeks to connect Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim and essentially split the West Bank in two, would effectively make it impossible to create a future Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The announcement comes as an increasing number of countries, including the UK, France and Canada, are announcing they would recognise a Palestinian state from September. Smotrich presented the advances in the project as Israel's response to those announcements. The project has been in the works for two decades, but progress has been frozen due to strong international opposition. Smitroch announced on Thursday that approval for 3,401 new houses was currently pending, with final approval expected next week. He was speaking at press conference held at a planned construction site. 'They will talk about a Palestinian dream, and we will continue to build a Jewish reality,' Smotrich said. 'This reality is what will permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise.' He has repeatedly lobbied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the occupied West Bank and apply Israeli sovereignty to the entire territory. Palestinian officials were quick to criticise the plans. In a statement, the presidency of the Palestinian National Council described them as a 'systemic plan to steal land, Judaize it, and impose biblical and Talmudic facts on the conflict'. Palestinian Speaker Rawhi Fattouh said the 'colonial plan falls within the policy of creeping annexation' of the West Bank, which is accompanied by settler violence against Palestinians. Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now described the E1 plan as 'deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution'. All petitions to stop the construction were rejected by the planning committee on August 6. Palestinians in the West Bank Israel's plans for construction in the West Bank are contributing to increasingly difficult circumstances for Palestinians living in the West Bank as much of the focus is instead on Gaza, around 40 kilometres away from the occupied territory. Attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have increased since October 7, 2023, while evictions from towns and an increased number of checkpoints have made life harder for those living there. More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. Would this be legal? Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. But during the first Trump administration, the State Department reversed longstanding US policy and ruled settlements were 'not inconsistent' with international law. The Biden administration left this new policy in place. Could other countries take in displaced Palestinians? Prime Minister Netanyahu has said there are talks underway with a number of countries about taking in Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza. South Sudan, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Libya and Indonesia are all involved in those talks, according to a senior Israeli official who spoke to ITV News' American partner CNN. In exchange for taking in some of Gaza's population of more than two million people, the official said the countries are looking for 'significant financial and international compensation'. But the countries have not individually confirmed what part they could play. On Wednesday, South Sudan rejected a report that it was in discussions about the resettlement of Palestinians, saying in a statement the reports were 'baseless and do not reflect the official position' of the country. Somaliland also said there were no such talks earlier in the year. Last week Indonesia said it was ready to take in 2,000 Palestinians from Gaza for treatment but that they would return to Gaza once they recovered. Netanyahu has never given a detailed vision of what will happen to Gaza after the war but has repeatedly advocated for resettling displaced Palestinians in other countries, particularly after President Donald Trump floated the idea in January.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Leaked document 'leaves Government's Palestine Action case in tatters'
Blogger and activist Craig Murray has obtained and published an abridged version of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre's (JTAC) assessment for proscribing the group under the Terrorism Act. The former diplomat said that the report, prepared to set out the Government's case for the ban, showed that Home Secretary Cooper 'had consistently lied about Palestine Action in a panicked attempt to defend the proscription'. He said that her central claims, including that the group were 'violent', were not backed up by the JTAC report. The report, a 'gisted' form of the full document used in court proceedings, does make allegations that Palestine Action members have committed violent crimes, but Murray (below) points out that it fails to mention that these are 'hotly denied and subject to trial'. He added that the report, condensed to protect the anonymity of its sources, 'makes plain that government ministers are simply lying about their information'. The report focuses on an incident in Filton, near Bristol, earlier this year where Palestine Action members blockaded the entrance of the UK headquarters of Elibt Systems, an Israeli weapons firm which was the focus of much of the group's attention. READ MORE: Scottish Enterprise panned for lack of checks on Israeli-linked arms firms It appears that the document makes reference to details of activists' alleged crimes, however Murray said he had redacted this section 'because it is the subject of an upcoming trial and publication would be in contempt of court'. He added: 'The blanked-out sections take police allegations entirely as fact, even though they are hotly denied and subject to trial.' Elsewhere in the report, Palestine Action members' 'assault against persons' is referenced, though the circumstances are not made clear. An incident in Glasgow is referred to, which was referenced in the Home Secretary's statement to Parliament setting out the reasons for the proscription, but the crimes are described only as 'serious property damage'. (Image: PA) Cooper's (above) statement referred to the activists' 'violent crimes'. Murray argued that if Palestine Action had, as has been claimed or implied by Government ministers and officials, that the group had deliberately attacked people, received foreign funding, attacked 'random' Jewish businesses or planned a 'big terrorist act' then the JTAC document 'would say so'. 'It says nothing of the sort,' he added. 'Palestine Action is what it says it is: a non-violent direct action group which targets the Israeli weapons industry and its support and supply line. 'It states that its actions are not terrorism but direct action to prevent Genocide – and when given the chance, juries have usually sided with Palestine Action against the government.' The Home Office was approached for comment.
