Stephen Pollard

@stephenpollard · Jewish & Israel-focused media — US/UK

Stephen Pollard is editor-at-large of The Jewish Chronicle after many years as its editor.

Sep 8, 2026, 8:45 PM UTC
Brilliant analysis of Labour Israel policy by Labour peer Lord Mendelsohn https://t.co/bpZcLolDZz
Sep 8, 2026, 9:51 AM UTC
Here's my latest Substack, 'Labour’s Israel sanctions are about the next election and have nothing to do with a Palestinian state' https://t.co/OqBomGCaWO It’s been said that today’s announcement by Ed Miliband of sanctions on Israel marks the start of the Holborn and St Pancras by-election campaign. With Zack Polanski certain to. be doing his usual Gaza schtick until polling day, that’s a pretty accurate observation. But it misses the bigger point. Everything this government does with regard to Israel (the same applies to the past two years of Labour) needs to be viewed through the prism of two statistics. There are 37 constituencies where there is a Muslim population of over 20 per cent, and in another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. This, and only this, is what drives Labour over Israel and Gaza. Ignore Miliband and Burnham’s sophistry about Labour acting to preserve the possibility of the two-state solution. The supposed prompt for sanctions - Israel’s long-planned construction of homes in the E1 area of the West Bank – in no way alters such a prospect. It was the October 7 2023 massacre which did that. As for E1 – every peace plan from Oslo to Camp David and beyond has envisaged a final agreement in which this area would remain under Israeli sovereignty, even if the Palestinians rejected those peace plans. There is no possibility of any two-state solution without E1 being Israeli land. Burnham and Miliband have only one concern: the next election and avoiding the bleed away of Muslim votes from Labour. Burnham is reported to have told President Trump yesterday that the sanctions are mainly symbolic. Of course they are. That’s the entire point – they are about showing Muslim voters that Labour is up for giving Israel a kicking. The problem is that it will also be British Jews who get a kicking, as the government’s independent adviser on terror legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, warned last night on Newsnight. Note that no sanctions have ever been or will ever be imposed on Northern Cyprus or Western Sahara - or anywhere else where sovereignty is in dispute and settlements have been built. There are no Jews involved anywhere else, so there are no sectarian Muslims to appease with a bit of performative Jew-bashing. But once policy towards Israel becomes symbolic and Israel is thus itself treated as a symbol rather than a country, Jews also become symbols rather than people. We know what happens next to Jews, because it has been happening already. We are being attacked and, yes, killed – here in Britain. But even on their own terms the sanctions are a ludicrous throw back to a vanished time when Britain actually mattered to Israel. That ended when Starmer decided to treat Israel as an enemy rather than an ally, and – among much else – rewarded Hamas for the October 7 massacre by recognising a Palestinian state, handing it the ability to say its terror worked. So little does Israel need Britain as an ally that it has not even had an ambassador here for over a year. We need Israel far more than vice versa; we sell next to no arms to Israel but Israel is our third largest defence equipment supplier (behind US and Germany). 1.7 million people work for UK firms exporting goods to Israel. One in eight of the drugs dispensed by the NHS come from Israeli companies. Israel ranks eighth per capita among countries investing in the UK. And all that’s without even considering how much we need Israel’s intelligence expertise. Last month Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad chief, revealed that an MI5 director-general had told him, “You have disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK.” The Israelis had, Cohen said, “saved many, many lives on British soil”. British soldiers would have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan without Israeli defence equipment. The sanctions may be intended symbolic – it’s impossible even to properly categorise which Israeli exports come from the West Bank – but do not think Israel will not respond. We are especially vulnerable over defence and security, with the possibility of export licenses for defence, security or dual use technology being revoked, along with our participation in the F-35 aircraft programme and a severe down grading of intelligence sharing. All this so that Labour can try to stop the haemorrhaging of Muslim votes. (If you like what I write, do please subscribe to my Substack, It’s been said that today’s announcement by Ed Miliband of sanctions on Israel marks the start of the Holborn and St Pancras by-election campaign. With Zack Polanski certain to. be doing his usual Gaza schtick until polling day, that’s a pretty accurate observation. But it misses the bigger point. Everything this government does with regard to Israel (the same applies to the past two years of Labour) needs to be viewed through the prism of two statistics. There are 37 constituencies where there is a Muslim population of over 20 per cent, and in another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. This, and only this, is what drives Labour over Israel and Gaza. Ignore Miliband and Burnham’s sophistry about Labour acting to preserve the possibility of the two-state solution. The supposed prompt for sanctions - Israel’s long-planned construction of homes in the E1 area of the West Bank – in no way alters such a prospect. It was the October 7 2023 massacre which did that. As for E1 – every peace plan from Oslo to Camp David and beyond has envisaged a final agreement in which this area would remain under Israeli sovereignty, even if the Palestinians rejected those peace plans. There is no possibility of any two-state solution without E1 being Israeli land. Burnham and Miliband have only one concern: the next election and avoiding the bleed away of Muslim votes from Labour. Burnham is reported to have told President Trump yesterday that the sanctions are mainly symbolic. Of course they are. That’s the entire point – they are about showing Muslim voters that Labour is up for giving Israel a kicking. The problem is that it will also be British Jews who get a kicking, as the government’s independent adviser on terror legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, warned last night on Newsnight. Note that there no sanctions have ever been or will ever be imposed on Northern Cyprus or Western Sahara - or anywhere else where sovereignty is in dispute and settlements have been built. There are no Jews involved anywhere else, so there are no sectarian Muslims to appease with a bit of performative Jew-bashing. But once policy towards Israel becomes symbolic and Israel is thus itself treated as a symbol rather than a country, Jews also become symbols rather than people. We know what happens next to Jews, because it has been happening already. We are being attacked and, yes, killed – here in Britain. But even on their own terms the sanctions are a ludicrous throw back to a vanished time when Britain actually mattered to Israel. That ended when Starmer decided to treat Israel as an enemy rather than an ally, and – among much else – rewarded Hamas for the October 7 massacre by recognising a Palestinian state, handing it the ability to say its terror worked. So little does Israel need Britain as an ally that it has not even had an ambassador here for over a year. We need Israel far more than vice versa; we sell next to no arms to Israel but Israel is our third largest defence equipment supplier (behind US and Germany). 1.7 million people work for UK firms exporting goods to Israel. One in eight of the drugs dispensed by the NHS come from Israeli companies. Israel ranks eighth per capita among countries investing in the UK. And all that’s without even considering how much we need Israel’s intelligence expertise. Last month Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad chief, revealed that an MI5 director-general had told him, “You have disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK.” The Israelis had, Cohen said, “saved many, many lives on British soil”. British soldiers would have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan without Israeli defence equipment. The sanctions may be intended symbolic – it’s impossible even to properly categorise which Israeli exports come from the West Bank – but do not think Israel will not respond. We are especially vulnerable over defence and security, with the possibility of export licenses for defence, security or dual use technology being revoked, along with our participation in the F-35 aircraft programme and a severe down grading of intelligence sharing. All this so that Labour can try to stop the haemorrhaging of Muslim votes. (If you like what I write, do please subscribe to my Substack https://t.co/kPcXdlZINE )
Sep 7, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC
Here's my latest @JewishChron column, 'How Palestinianism can whitewash racist tropes – even when they are not directed at Jews' https://t.co/6xCvQPtWMM Two Jewish women in their eighties. Both self-described socialists. Both actresses. Both household names. One unashamedly uses racist tropes, comparing Jews to Nazis and demanding to know from a black TV presenter why he isn’t darker skinned. The other speaks of the horror of the October 7, 2023 massacre and highlights the need for Israel and Jews to be able to live safely. One is pilloried, with fellow actors boycotting productions in which she takes part and protestors making her life so dangerous that she needs security protection. The other is warmly received as a chat show regular and hailed as a loveable British eccentric. You do not need me to tell you that it is the woman who openly uses racist tropes – Miriam Margolyes – who is warmly received and the other – Dame Maureen Lipman – who is pilloried. This is Britain in 2026. For years, Maureen Lipman was regarded as a national treasure. She still is by many – by most, I’d venture. But for those infected by Palestinianism, she represents the epitome of evil. One poster calling for her to be boycotted gave her devil’s horns and a pitchfork – which are also, of course, the same horns antisemites have attached to Jews over millennia. Her crime is not even that she has the gall to defend the right of Jews to live in safety in Israel and the diaspora; it is merely that she is a Jew who is unapologetic about being a Jew – and that damns her. Margolyes, on the other hand, has a long history of spouting racist tropes. But in the perverse ideology of Palestinianism, her outbursts are a virtue – because they are directed at Jews. She is deeply apologetic about her own Jewishness. In April 2024, for example, she said of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza: “To me, it seems as if Hitler has won.” She then repeated the trope in an interview with The Big Issue last year: “The terrible thing I face is that Hitler won. He changed us, made us like him.” She added: “I was born in ‘41 at the height of the Holocaust and I cannot bear to think that my people are doing exactly the same thing to another nation.” A few months later she told Kirsty Wark in a live broadcast on Radio 4 that the first Charles Dickens character that gripped her was Fagin. “Jewish and vile…I didn’t know Jews like that then, sadly I do now,” she opined. You might think that her latest imbroglio would present a challenge to those who believe that her status as an anti-Jewish Jew makes her iconic, because this time her target has been a black man. On ITV’s This Morning she questioned the co-presenter, Andi Peters, about his heritage. Margolyes asked him: “What are you?” Puzzled, he replied: “What am I?”, to which Margolyes replied: “You’re a mix. You’ve got a black daddy and a white mummy?” Peters responded: “No, no, no. Both my parents are black…Am I a lighter shade than normal?” Margolyes’ reply was astonishing even for her: “I think you’re high-yalla.” That phrase (along with “pickaninny”) was used in segregationist US to describe lighter-skinned black people. Along with the N-word, it long ago disappeared from all but white supremacists – and Miriam Margolyes. The reaction to Margolyes from her fellow anti-Jews has been revealing. There has been none. You might think it would be interesting to see how those who demand that Dame Maureen is cancelled treat Margolyes. It should present them with a dilemma, because while no evidence has ever been produced of Dame Maureen uttering a racist word, Margolyes’s words are this time not merely targeted at Jews – against whom racism is not merely acceptable but imperative – but at a black man, against whom racism is supposedly unacceptable. But to those addled by Palestinianism, there is only one cause and all else pales. Nothing else matters. So even though Margolyes used a foul racial epithet to describe a black man on live TV, her status as an anti-Jewish Jew absolves her of all else. In truth, Lipman and Margolyes have nothing in common. But the way in which they are treated by the mob does provide a useful reminder of the reality of Palestinianism as an ideology – and the hypocrisy and double standards which underlie it.
Sep 7, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC
Heartwarming to be at yesterday's Svetlanov conducting competition and to see Israeli conductors finish first and second https://t.co/2vmaDUoYVZ
Sep 4, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC
Here's my @Telegraph column, 'Miriam Margolyes isn’t a national treasure, she’s an irrational disgrace' https://t.co/hVMUidAMoU We love our national treasures. There’s Sir Michael Palin, obviously. Dame Judi Dench, of course. And Dame Joanna Lumley, without a doubt. But there is a still rarer group – those regarded by some as a national treasure and by others as simply detestable. Indeed, the group is so rare that I can only think of one member of it: Miriam Magolyes. The actress, perhaps most famous for her role in the Harry Potter films, is a TV regular – a guest who can be relied on to tell a good yarn about other famous people she has worked with. But with those stories come the other side of the coin: Margolyes is obnoxious, which she makes clear every time she speaks. Her latest demonstration came yesterday on ITV’s This Morning, when she started asking the black co-presenter, Andi Peters, about his heritage. She asked: “What are you?” Puzzled, Peters replied: “What am I?”, prompting Margolyes to say: “You’re a mix. You’ve got a black daddy and a white mummy?” Looking astonished, Peters replied: “No, no, no. Both my parents are black.” His riposte left Margolyes looking a bit stumped. He then added: “Am I lighter shade than normal?” Then came Margolyes’ descent into the gutter, intentional or otherwise. “I think you’re high-yalla.” A befuddled Peters prompted her to elaborate. “That’s what they call it in America, when someone isn’t deeply black.” “I didn’t even know there were shades,” Peters replied. “There are shades”, she continued. When Peter then pressed his fingers to his ear and warned Margolyes that his producers were “getting nervous”, she insisted: “Don’t be nervous. We welcome everybody.” The phrase “high-yalla” (or “high yellow”) – along with “pickaninny” was commonplace in the US in the 19th and early 20th century to describe lighter-skinned black people. Along with the N-word, it rightly died out in polite society decades ago. It is used today only by those who want to offend, as well as the ignorant and stupid. Given she went to Cambridge, I hardly think Margolyes is either of the latter two. You’d have thought that we are long past the sight of a black man being questioned on live TV about the status of his blackness. But when you invite Margolyes on, you never know what she’ll say. She has a long history of revolting behaviour. In 2020, for example, after Boris Johnson fought for his life in hospital with Covid, she said on Channel 4 show The Last Leg that she had “wanted him to die”. Then, in 2022, she appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme immediately after Jeremy Hunt, who had just been appointed chancellor. Having met him outside the studio, she told listeners: “When I saw him there, I just said: ‘What a hell of a job, the best of luck.’ And what I really wanted to say was ‘F--- you, bastard,’ but you can’t say that.” If Margolyes was a straight, white, middle-class male she would have been “cancelled” years ago. But she has two golden tickets which mean that no matter what she says or does, she will always be given a platform. First, she is Left-wing. Her insults and jibes are always directed at Right-wing targets. This plank of her identity is a get-out-of jail-free card which means that where others would be pilloried for such remarks, she is treated as some sort of licensed jester. But even more than that, she has the trump card: she is a Jew who not only seems to despise Israel but other Jews – and can be relied on to make that clear at every opportunity. In April 2024, for example, she said of Israel’s behaviour in its battle with Hamas in Gaza: “To me, it seems as if Hitler has won.” She then said a similar thing in an interview with The Big Issue last year. “The terrible thing I face is that Hitler won. He changed us, made us like him,” she said. Margolyes then added: “I was born in ‘41 at the height of the Holocaust and I cannot bear to think that my people are doing exactly the same thing to another nation.” It’s simply gross to compare the bloodshed in Gaza with the systematic mass murder of the Nazi Holocaust. A few months after those comments, Margolyes told Kirsty Wark in a live Radio 4 broadcast that the first Charles Dickens character that gripped her was Fagin. “Jewish and vile…I didn’t know Jews like that then, sadly I do now,” she opined. Margolyes makes being obnoxious into performance art, and bookers and producers who get a thrill out of her unfiltered Left-Wing odiousness run with it. Since her shtick is desperately unfunny, yet she still gets work, the last laugh is really hers.
Sep 2, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC
Here's my @JewishChron column, 'The shameful attempt to ostracise Dame Maureen Lipman and other Jewish artists who refuse to disavow Israel' https://t.co/WXNymsBRsA Many years ago I sat near someone at work who I found repulsive in almost every way. He was hard left, and as a fellow columnist he would share with readers opinions I regarded as dangerous and vile. I viewed him with a form of disgust. That’s not the full story, though. We obviously each knew we had very different views – I was also employed to share my thoughts with readers. But we had a kind of unspoken pact and neither of us would go for each other in what you might call real life. We confined our mutual loathing to print and even then we never attacked each other personally. We each played the ball, not the man. We rubbed along. The fact that we had such low regard for each other was of course exacerbated by our jobs. We spent every day writing about politics, policy and the news. There was no hiding place for either of us. But a version of that dynamic plays out all the time in offices across the land – people who for whatever reason loathe one of their colleagues but who keep that loathing to themselves and get on with their job. That’s how society works. Imagine if, instead, work colleagues were not only always open about their personal views of each other but would only consent to working alongside people who held similar views. Office life simply could not work. Which brings us to Gerard McCarthy, an actor who was due to appear in a production at London’s Soho Theatre with Dame Maureen Lipman. Last week McCarthy pulled out. As he put it: “Because of views she has publicly and repeatedly expressed regarding Israel and Palestine, I did not feel comfortable personally promoting her involvement. I did not ask for her casting to be reconsidered or expect anyone else to share my position. I simply chose not to use my own platform to promote someone whose political views are at odds with my own.” Let’s strip away the bluster and be clear what is actually going on here. McCarthy has pulled out of a play because of the presence of an iconic actress who has expressed views shared by the overwhelming majority of Jews. McCarthy represents a growing pattern in the arts, reported on in depth by the JC, which seeks to ostracise from public life any Jewish artist who refuses to disavow Israel. More than that, the likes of McCarthy seek to impose a form of catechism which has to be adopted by Jews to permit their continued presence. If Dame Maureen was to prostrate herself before the self-declared community of the good as if in some sort of Cultural Revolution struggle session, then to renounce her previous support for Israel and utter a form of words which condemned Israel, she would immediately become a useful Jew. For the haters, the “AsaJew” is the most priced of all propaganda tools. Their Jewishness is the opposite of a source of ostracism but rather provides a stick with which to beat those Jews who refuse to comply with the haters’ demands. Not, of course, that Dame Maureen would ever do any of this. Instead, she suffers repeated antisemitic abuse and requires protection for her physical security – the reality of life for Jews in the public eye. And the fact that she dares to support the right of the Jewish state to exist, let alone to defend itself from terror, is more than enough for the likes of McCarthy to boycott her. This is where we now are.
Sep 1, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC
Here's my latest Substack, 'Burnham speaks with a forked tongue on antisemitism' https://t.co/7OgGnpxzly I’ve been around the block a bit, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across as classic a demonstration of actions speaking louder than words than a social media post today by Andy Burnham. I’ll quote it in full: "We send our love and support to the Jewish community in Manchester and beyond who last night gathered to remember Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, who were killed defending their synagogue last year. My thoughts are with their families and all those who have been affected by the attack. "I know for many Jewish people, the sorrow and fear from that day has not lifted and I know we must do more to protect communities across the country. "I want Jewish people to know that their safety is a priority of mine and I’m determined to stamp out antisemitism for good." It sounds good, doesn’t it? How could anyone object to such fine, warm words? Let’s ignore the trite notion that Burnham could “stamp out antisemitism for good”. Jew hate has existed for thousands of years and it’s not going to go away because Andy Burnham says he’s determined to end it. I can’t decide if it’s hubris, narcissism or simply stupidity that lies behind such a statement. Probably a bit of all three. On second thoughts let’s not ignore it, because it exemplifies the overall hypocrisy of his words. The pledge that Burnham is determined to end antisemitism is self-evidently meaningless. He knows, as will anyone reading his post, that he won’t – he can’t, even if he dedicated his every waking moment to it – end antisemitism. But that hasn’t stopped him writing it. That’s because the entire post is meaningless. It talks of love and support for the Jewish community, doing more to protect it and stamping out Jew hate. But while those are warm words, that’s all they are. Words. When it comes to actions, Burnham shows the very opposite – that when it comes to his priorities, he couldn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or the views of British Jews about our safety. At the most basic level, the very first extended interview he gave was with Gary Lineker, a man who has repeatedly demonstrated why many – I would say most – Jews regard him as one of the worst antisemites in the country. Anyone truly bothered by antisemitism would shun Lineker, not reward him with an interview. But the hypocrisy goes far deeper than that, of course. Under his predecessor, Keir Starmer, Labour has spent the past two years rewarding Hamas for its massacre on October 7 2023 by such means as recognising Palestine, thus giving the terrorists the evidence to claim that theirs was the only way to secure such a move. Burnham, however, has turbocharged this and is poised to announce sanctions on Israel. These are dressed up as sanctions on West Bank trade, but since in most instances it is physically and logistically impossible to separate this from Israeli trade generally, it’s clear what is really going on. Worse, the sanctions aren’t really about Israel or Palestine as such. They are about Labour’s domestic issues – its fear of the sectarian Muslim vote which secured four seats in 2024 and threatens to win many more at the next election. Burnham (or rather his staff) might have put together some warm words about antisemitism but his actions show that his actual priority is to do whatever he can to win back sectarian Muslim support – and that means treating Israel not as an ally but as an enemy. And if that puts British Jews’ security even more at risk – which it does – so be it. There’s a horrible saying about politicians, which is a product of the idea that they are a bunch of untrustworthy charlatans: How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move. I hate that cynical attitude because public service is not only important, it is honourable. But the cynicism of Andy Burnham makes it ever more difficult to make that case.
Sep 1, 2026, 7:14 AM UTC
Here's my @TheSun column, 'Labour is so obsessed with attacking Israel it doesn’t realise a trade ban will cost PALESTINIAN jobs' https://t.co/jVt4ckOb3L Imagine Britain had an ally whose intelligence know-how was so vital to our safety that the head of MI5 said the ally had “disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK” and “saved many, many lives on British soil”. Imagine the same ally’s military equipment had saved the lives of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then imagine the ally was also a huge market for British trade, buying £3.2billion of British products a year and so backing huge numbers of British jobs. That ally doesn’t need to be imagined. It’s Israel. More than 1.7million of us work for firms exporting to Israel. One in eight of the drugs dispensed by the NHS comes from Israeli companies. Israel ranks eighth per capita among countries investing in the UK. Almost anyone using a mobile phone is using Israeli tech. There has long been a lobby within Labour that regards Israel not as an ally to be cherished but an enemy to be attacked. The Labour Government has spent the past two years doing just that. Now PM Andy Burnham is poised to go a stage further by banning the import of any goods produced in the West Bank — the disputed region which the Palestinians claim as their own but on which Israel has been building settlements for many years. The ostensible reason for the sanctions is that Israel is planning to build homes in an area of the West Bank known as E1. Labour says this will destroy all hope of a two-state settlement. Yet in every peace plan for the region, from Oslo to Camp David and beyond, E1 has been marked as remaining under Israeli sovereignty. There is no conceivable peace plan in which it would be part of a Palestinian state. The truth is that this is just an excuse. For a huge number of Labour MPs, attacking Israel has become core to their world view. They are so consumed by “Palestinianism” — the ideology and mindset that puts the campaign for a Palestinian state above everything else — that they will not rest until Israel is brought to heel. Burnham is now doing their bidding. One of the first things he did on his return to Parliament was to apologise for “Labour’s initial response to the treatment of Gaza”. He said: “We got it wrong and I am sorry for that.” But there is also another factor at work. The emergence of a sectarian Muslim vote has changed politics on the Left. In the last General Election, so-called Independent Gaza candidates won four seats and came very close in others. The Muslim population is over 20 per cent in 37 constituencies, and there are another 73 seats where the Muslim population is between ten and 20 per cent. Labour MPs are terrified they will be booted out at the next election. Everything Labour does with regard to Israel should be seen in that context. It is all about showing the sectarian Muslim vote that Labour is their party. The sanctions have nothing to do with helping Palestinians because they will be hit the hardest. Roughly 30,000 Palestinians work in the settlement economy, earning several times what Palestinian employers pay elsewhere. A goods ban would cut their income without shifting Israeli policy at all. As for the impact here, it’s physically impossible to separate all goods produced on the West Bank from other goods. There is no overall labelling system when they are exported from Israel. So this is really a bar on the import of all Israeli goods. If Burnham thinks the Israelis are just going to sit back and accept such treatment, he must be even more out of his depth than he already seems. As I’ve explained, we need Israel’s technological, military and intelligence expertise far more than they need us. When the Israelis respond, we will be the ones who suffer. Just look at Ireland. In 2024, Micheal Martin, the then-defence minister and now Irish PM, ordered the removal of an Israeli-made navigation system from Ireland’s new official jet because it would have required a deal with Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence firm. That jet is now unable to land in fog or rough weather. Perhaps Burnham thinks it is a good idea to ensure that the RAF won’t be able to fly its planes because they depend on Israeli technology. (And, by the way, Israel is the UK’s second largest defence supplier — and doesn’t buy British weapons. This is one-way traffic.) When Israel alone is singled out for boycotts — there is nothing over the Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, China or any other conflict except Ukraine — it also changes the atmosphere at home. At a time when antisemitism is on the rampage, it is British Jews who will bear the brunt of the impact. Next time you hear Burnham or any Labour minister say they deplore antisemitism, remember they are shameless hypocrites.
Aug 25, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC
Here's an extract from my @CapX column, 'Trump’s Iran sanctions might just work' https://t.co/1Cie2BFWYz President Trump’s imposition of ‘economic D-Day’ against Iran – a series of sanctions against any nation dealing financially with Iran, as well as banks and businesses – has already been dismissed by the usual suspects whose knee jerk response is always to attack any new measures against the Tehran regime. When it comes to Iran, ‘the usual suspects’ has a specific meaning: the various diplomats, advisers and political figures who negotiated and implemented the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – known as the Iran Nuclear Deal – in 2015. Alan Eyre, for example, a former US diplomat who was on the nuclear negotiating team with Iran until the 2015 deal was signed, said yesterday that ‘there are no new sanctions that are effective’. The question that is begged, of course, is what ‘effective’ means now. In the case of Iran, there are two main benchmarks. The biggest is the fall of the regime. That is the long-term goal of the US, of Israel and – often forgotten – of most of Iran’s Arab neighbours, all of whom understand the severity of the poison the Tehran regime injects into the region – and globally. But there is another benchmark, too: the lesser but nonetheless vital aim of US policy under Trump, Israel and the Arab neighbours. That is to weaken Iran so it poses less of a threat outside its own borders. That was one aim of the military strikes earlier this year; it is also one of the aims of the new sanctions. The issues around sanctions stem mainly from the 2015 JCPOA and its supporters, who have never accepted that their supposed diplomatic triumph in 2015 was in reality a disaster, and have continued to push for treating the Iranian regime not as an enemy which needs to be defeated but as a potential partner to be eased back to respectability. But the facts are clear. Sanctions work as a means for – at the very least – reducing the Iranian threat. The most recent proof is that Iran’s economy grew when the sanctions imposed in Trump’s first term after he scrapped the 2015 deal were then eased by Biden – and shrank when they were reimposed by Trump in his second term. IMF figures show that in the year after the 2015 JCPOA deal Iran’s economy grew 12.5% – and then shrank by 4.8% in 2018 and 9.5% in 2019 after Trump reimposed sanctions (as part of what was known as his ‘maximum pressure’ strategy following the scrapping of the deal). Had Trump not intervened, Iran was on the way to being a cash-rich terror funder with a nuclear weapons programme. The key point is that the JCPOA was not a flawed deal that needed improving but a mistake in conception because it handed cash and diplomatic cover to a regime that had no intention of honouring it. It was an act of folly by President Obama to remove sanctions on the world’s leading funder of terror, which then gave its economy a 12.5% boost in the first year after the deal. Trump was thus responding to the reality of a resurgent Iranian economy and thus threat when in his first term he scrapped the 2015 deal and reimposed sanctions in 2018. These immediately put the squeeze on the Iranian economy. Tehran was being brought to its knees economically. There was still a long way to go to remove the threat it posed but the foundations were there for that to seem a realistic possibility. Biden then came to power in 2021, bringing back to office many of those behind the original misguided JCPOA deal. Having learned nothing in their years out of power, they immediately lifted the pressure on Iran by no longer enforcing Trump’s sanctions as part of their attempt to agree a new deal. That not only gave a huge economic boost to Tehran; it sent a clear signal that the US was no longer serious about sanctions. Khamenei read that signal correctly, leading to bolder action by Iranian proxies such as Hamas – and the October 7 2023 massacre. In the first quarter of 2022 Iran exported 870,000 barrels of oil a day (largely to China), 30% above the 2021 average of 668,000. By January 2024 this was 1.29 million barrels a day. Add to that a payment in August 2023 of $6 billion to the regime for the release of US hostages with the Americans insisting, pathetically, that the money could only be spent on humanitarian aid. Suddenly Iran was again flush with cash. This matters because Iran’s economy feeds directly into terror. In 1992 – when suicide bombings began – Iran gave Hamas $50m a year. By 2020 that was over $100m a year (US State Department figures), plus in 2023 a reported extra $70m for missile and defence systems in Gaza. Given Iran’s role both in the Middle East and beyond, you would think Western governments would do all they can to isolate the regime in Iran and starve it of the money it needs to fund terror. And yet as we have seen over recent years, quite the opposite has happened...
Aug 25, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC
Here's my @spectator column, 'We are already at war with Iran' https://t.co/ZrkLmGcbOt Of all the inane – not to say stupid – comments by Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, his remark about US and Israeli action against Iran must be at the top. ‘This is not our war,’ he said. ‘We will not be drawn into a wider war.’ Andy Burnham made the same mistake when he took office and said we had no place involving ourselves in a war with Iran. The problem is that while we might not want to be involved in a war with Iran, Iran is very much involved in a war with us – and regularly demonstrates the extent of its hostility. We might choose to ‘hear no evil, see no evil’. But that doesn’t mean the evil isn’t real. This weekend, for example, it emerged that Iranian hackers shut down a power plant for four days – the first time Iranian hackers have succeeded in such an attack. According to reports, the attack on the British power plant coincided with similar cyber attacks on US water plants. The attack is said not to have had a significant impact on the UK’s power supply or energy generation but is, rather, being treated by the security services as a warning shot by the Iranians designed to provoke fear over their capabilities should they choose to escalate such action. As has been well reported, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are engaged constantly in attacks on infrastructure, government bodies and businesses. The NHS, schools and the likes of M&S and Jaguar Land Rover have all been hit. But while all arms of government are well aware of this threat and work non-stop to counter it, political debate is more rooted in a non-existent Shangri-La than the reality of the ongoing, live and very real threat – not least from Iran. The Tehran regime is known to have increased cyber-attacks on the West in recent months. The Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, which oversees spying agencies, has reported that cyber warfare is a ‘significant area of asymmetric strength’ for Iran which has thousands of hackers focused on such capabilities and spends tens of millions of dollars on it. But while this latest cyber-attack is deeply concerning, the picture is far worse when the reality of Iran’s espionage and interference in the UK is grasped. At the most basic level it pays criminals – both in gangs and as individuals – to stalk, plot against and attack regime dissidents as well as Jewish targets. Last month George Stana and Nandito Badea were jailed for 12 and eight years for the stabbing in March 2024 of Iran International presenter Pouria Zeraati outside his home in Wimbledon. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said the evidence ‘overwhelmingly supported the conclusion that the attack was carried out on behalf of the Iranian state’. The CPS said the two were ‘recruited, funded, and directed to carry out violence’. In March, a dual Iranian-British national and an Iranian were charged under the National Security Act with hostile surveillance for Iran. One was alleged to have directed the other after a visit to Tehran to reconnoitre a series of Israeli and Jewish targets: the Israeli embassy and consulate, Bevis Marks synagogue, a Jewish community centre and the offices of the Community Security Trust. Both deny the charges. Last May, three Iranian nationals resident in London were charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service and with surveillance intended to enable serious violence against Iran International staff, between August 2024 and February 2025. The three men have pleaded not guilty. Last October, Sir Ken McCallum, MI5 director general, said the service had responded to over 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the previous year, and that Iran routinely uses criminal proxies. The previous July the Intelligence and Security Committee reported ‘at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022’. Iran, it said, targets the UK partly because Tehran regards Britain as ‘a particularly malevolent opponent of the Islamic Republic’. A counter-terrorism operation last summer saw several Iranians arrested over an alleged plot against the Israeli embassy in London. These are just a sample of many examples, the latest of which saw sanctions placed on the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right (IMCR), which claimed responsibility for seven attacks at UK locations, including the anti-Semitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green in March. On and on it goes. This isn’t even a shadow war – it’s a war in which Iran is fixated on attacking Britain and British citizens, while we refuse to accept there is any war even taking place. That’s before we even start to consider the role of China and its support for Iran. Reports this week suggest China has provided the technology used by Iran for its cyber-attacks. At least we recognise the malign threat posed by Iran, even if we refuse to recognise reality and say it is at war with us. Yet we regularly refuse to correctly describe Chinese actions against us – and look instead to the supposed benefits of growth from economic cooperation. It is a kind of wilful mass political delusion, in which pretending something isn’t happening means it isn’t happening. And it is madness.
Aug 24, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC
Here's my latest @Telegraph column on Lineker - when someone shows you who they are, believe them. https://t.co/0hersC6UK2 When someone shows you who they really are, it’s a good idea to take note of their behaviour. When that person repeats their behaviour month by month and year by year then there is no room for doubt. Last May the BBC finally dropped Gary Lineker, one of its highest-paid stars, after he had spent years ignoring the broadcaster’s social media policy with a series of posts about Israel and Jews. The final straw for the BBC came after he shared a video entitled “Zionism explained in less than two minutes”, featuring an emoji of a rat. The comparison of Jews to rats was the Nazis’ standard dehumanising image for Jews, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history knows – and certainly as someone who makes a point of sharing their supposed deep and informed knowledge of Israel and anti-Semitism would know. But having claimed contrition after his sacking by the BBC over a post which used the Nazis’ comparison of Jews and rats, Lineker has now gone a step further and shared a speech which labels “Zionism” itself (the belief in a Jewish homeland) rather than just Israel as Nazi. This is not so-called criticism of Israel. Given that the vast majority of Jews worldwide describe themselves as Zionist, this is about Jews. In the speech shared by Lineker, Tony Greenstein – an anti-Zionist who was cleared last week of inviting support for Hamas – says that “Zionism is in the tradition of the Nazis who persecuted Jews”. The comparison of Israel with the Nazis is one of the most well-defined elements of anti-Semitism – and is spelt out specifically by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance which uses “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as an illustrative example of anti-Semitism. Lineker has a long, repulsive history in these issues. In March 2023 he described the then government’s explanation of its asylum policy as “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. Ludicrously, he sought to correct Sir Simon Schama, one of the world’s leading historians, when Schama criticised his post. Last year Lineker said that the October 7 2023 Hamas massacre should be put in “the full context”, which “starts way before October 7”. He has demanded that Israel be expelled from all international sporting and cultural bodies, “until it ends its grave violations of international law… particularly its apartheid rule and the crime of genocide it is perpetuating in Gaza”. But he has made no similar demand of Iran, China, Russia or any other nation. David Bernstein, the former chairman of the FA and Manchester City, has said Lineker holds “prejudiced and disproportionate views” and that “a person should be judged by the company they keep”. Lineker seizes any opportunity to attack Israel, no matter how fictionalised the accusation. After the death in Nablus of Ahmed Daraghmeh, who was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers, he wrote: “How awful,” reposting a tweet accusing the IDF of taking Daragmeh’s life “treacherously”. Daraghmeh died during an attack on Jews who had been visiting the site of Joseph’s tomb and was then mourned by Hamas as a mujahid – a fighter or warrior. Earlier this year, in an interview with Andy Burnham, Lineker referred to an “ongoing genocide” in Gaza. So far, Lineker has not even bothered to claim ignorance, either of who Greenstein is or the words Greenstein used. Now that he is free of the BBC, my guess is he no longer feels he even has to pretend.
Aug 21, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC
Here's my @JewishChron column, 'Why Labour’s attacks on Israel are really about winning back the Muslim vote' https://t.co/eEbVmbnCUY On Wednesday night the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, did what British foreign secretaries have done continually since Labour took office in July 2024. Miliband issued a statement condemning Israel. We need not detain ourselves for long with the specifics of Miliband’s tirade, since this latest – as with all previous ones on Israel under this Labour government – is not about the words it comprises. FYI, it attacks the launch of tenders for the E1 settlement project as “unacceptable and destructive”. As it happens, I disagree with the settlements, although the E1 project is relatively innocuous. It is a small strip of land connecting the Israeli capital with Ma'ale Adumim, a town of 40,000 people. The idea this destroys the two state solution, as Miliband asserts, is away with the fairies. It doesn’t bisect the West Bank and it would never be part of a Palestinian state. But Miliband’s words are not the point. There is only one reason why Miliband has made such statements, as did his predecessors Yvette Cooper and David Lammy, treating Israel not as the ally it has been to the UK for decades but as an enemy to be brought to heel. That reason can be found in the results in four constituencies in the last general election – Leicester South, Blackburn, Birmingham Perry Barr and Dewsbury and Batley – in which so-called “Gaza independent” MPs won, and the fact that Labour’s vote fell by over 14 per cent from 2019 in constituencies where the Muslim population was above 15 per cent. To put it bluntly, Labour is scared witless about its prospects of holding on to the Muslim vote at the next election. Thirty-seven constituencies have a Muslim population of over 20 per cent, and in another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. No wonder Labour is scared. From day one of the Starmer government, Labour’s Middle East policy was determined by one thing: seeking to stem the tide of deserting Muslim voters. Everything it does with regard to Israel should be seen in that context. That is why Miliband is lambasting the Israeli government over a housing project on the periphery of Jerusalem, to prepare the way for – as he put it in his statement – “a comprehensive set of measures to respond to Israeli government policies”. Have a guess what those might be…it doesn’t exactly require Nostradamus, does it? This is all about finding excuses to sanction Israel, in the hope that this will appease sectarian Muslim voters. The housing project is merely the excuse. Any other could have done. If Benjamin Netanyahu had passed the cold virus on to a non-Israeli by sneezing then Miliband would have used that: “It is an outrageous abuse of governmental norms, of the Vienna Convention and of the prospects of peace that the Israeli prime minister has so recklessly – some would say wilfully – chosen to spread the cold virus beyond internationally accepted Israeli borders. The British government cannot and will not stand back and see this continue blah…blah…blah.” The irony is that Labour’s plan to win back Muslim support will be as effective as its attacks on Israel: useless. Those votes are gone – finito, vamoose, scarpered. They are as over as British influence on Israel. That vanished in July 2024 when Labour restored UK funding to Unrwa, the UN agency which employed some of the October 7 terrorists, when it dropped opposition to the ICJ arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, and when it recognised a non-existent Palestinian state without making a single demand on any Palestinian leaders, effectively rewarding Hamas for its strategy of mass-murder. Does Miliband – or the PM, Andy Burnham – think Israel even gives a damn about their using Israel to appease British Muslim voters? Have neither of them noticed that Israel hasn’t even bothered to send an ambassador here for over a year? Do they not realise that Britain needs Israel far more than the other way round? Leave aside the trade balance (the UK exported £3.2bn worth of products to Israel, while Israel sold £2.5bn worth of goods and services to the UK). Leave aside that 1.7m people work for UK firms exporting goods to Israel. Leave aside even that one in eight of the drugs dispensed by the NHS comes from Israeli companies. Focus only on intelligence and the military. ust last week Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad chief, revealed that an MI5 director-general had told him, “Yossi, you deserve the Oscar for what you did here. You have disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK. Thank you very much for doing it”. The Israelis had, Cohen said, “saved many, many lives on British soil”. And British soldiers would have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan without Israeli defence equipment. Perhaps Burnham and Miliband think the model to follow is Ireland, which has also gone out of its way to demonise and boycott Israel – to the extent that its new jet is unable to land in fog or rough weather because in 2024 Micheal Martin, the then-defence minister and now Irish PM, ordered the removal of an Israeli-made navigation system which would have required a deal with Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence firm. Maybe Burnham and Miliband will think it is a good idea to ensure that RAF can’t get its planes off the ground, because they depend on Israeli technology. And, by the way, Israel is the UK’s second largest defence supplier – and doesn’t buy British weapons. This is one way traffic. If Miliband and Burnham were serious about peace, they would knuckle down and try to restore relationships with the Israelis and tackle some of the obstacles on the Palestinian side, such as the PA’s ongoing "pay for slay” programme, whereby the families of terrorists are rewarded financially. But none of this about the peace they claim to want – which they go out of their way to undermine by attacking Israel. This is about seeking to save their political skins by shouting at the Israelis as colonial masters would lord it over supplicants. It would be amusing if the stakes for Israelis – and, yes Palestinians – weren’t so important.
Aug 14, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC
Here's an extract from my latest Substack, 'Of course Netanyahu doesn't speak for British Jews' I’m most grateful to Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy, the ‘co-leads’ of Progressive Judaism, who have today issued a statement in which they offer the thought that “Prime Minister Netanyahu does not speak for British Jews.” Good to clear that up, eh? It had never previously occurred to me that the prime minister of Israel - a foreign country – did actually speak for British Jews. Nor, I imagine, had it occurred to Benjamin Netanyahu, either. But heh, thanks anyway to the rabbis for clearing this up. Their statement was in response to an interview with Netanyahu on an Israeli podcast in which the Israeli PM didn’t speak for British Jews. He spoke – whodathunkit?! – for himself. As politicians tend to do when they are interviewed. But for Rabbis Baginsky and Levy, he shouldn’t even have done that, because one of the things he spoke about was…Britain. How very dare he! Who does he think he is, the PM of a foreign land offering his view of Britain. Because no British prime minister would dare offer their view of Israel, would they? I mean, that’s never happened… Let’s be real here. What got the rabbis’ goat wasn’t that Netanyahu sought to speak on behalf of British Jews, because he didn’t. Nor was it that he spoke about Britain. Which he, er, did. Rather, it was that he said something that as ‘co-leads’ of Progressive Judaism’ – the key is in the P word – they don’t agree with. He said something that wasn’t very nice about radical Islam. And that is a big no-no. Rule Number One for self-defined progressives, gold plated, underlined, in capitals: NEVER SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT RADICAL ISLAM. Here’s what Netanyahu actually said. After talking about Winston Churchill’s son Randolph Churchill and his grandson Winston Spencer Churchill, who were both journalists, Netanyahu told an army radio podcast that they “came here and covered the Six Day War in a very positive way for us… “Try to find that now in Britain, which you could call the Islamic Republic of Britain.” He went on: “The first nuclear Islamic republic will be the Islamic republic of Britain. We’re making sure there won’t be another one in Iran.” Is it undiplomatic? You bet it is. Is it a not very funny joke? The same. But let’s have some context. I doubt Netanyahu any longer gives a damn about Britain, which has quite deliberately under Labour turned from embracing Israel as a key ally to treating it as something resembling an enemy state. Since taking office Labour has restored funding to Unrwa, the UN body that employed Hamas terrorists who took party in the 7 October 2023 massacre; it has dropped the previous government’s attempt to have the ICJ arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister, reversed; it has suspended some arms sales to Israel (an irrelevant but symbolic embargo given we need Israeli sales and know-how more than they need ours); it has rewarded Hamas by recognising a Palestinian state; it has barred Israeli officers from attending the Royal College of Defence Studies; and it has repeatedly issued statements condemning Israel as if it was some errant child that needed to be brought to heel. As to Netanyahu’s choice of words: why do you think Labour has done all this? Let me tell you why. It is scared witless of the sectarian Muslim candidates who emerged in the 2024 election and who threaten to wipe out the prospects of a large number of Labour MPs at the next election. There are 37 constituencies in which the Muslim population is over 20 per cent, and in a further 73 seats it is between ten and 20 per cent. Labour’s vote fell by over 14 per cent last year from 2019 in those constituencies where the Muslim population was above 15 per cent. Labour is possessed by fear of this trend. It panders to the views of these sectarian Muslims in a naked bid to retain power. So, in a very meaningful, radical way Islamist views, which view Israel as the devil, are setting government policy. No, we are not the Islamic Republic of Britain. It’s a silly choice of words, designed to épater la bourgeoisie. But the sentiment behind it – that we are letting some of the demands of Islamists set our foreign policy is a statement of fact. Clearly Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t speak for British Jews, nor does he seek to. Unlike, it seems, Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy, who appear to think that they do indeed have some sort of right to say what British Jews think: “Prime Minister Netanyahu does not speak for British Jews. His words do not represent us. British Jews are not made safer by rhetoric which denigrates British Muslims or portrays an entire community as a threat.” Speak for yourselves. I’m a British Jew and I believe I am only going to be safer when the threat posed by extremist Islam is raised and tackled – not when it is ignored. (Please sign up to my Substack if you like what I write.)

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