The hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has had a busy few months. Mere days after the October 7 attacks, he was calling for the names of any university students who signed letters blaming Israel to be added to a public …
The tomb of Palestinian liberation
Ramallah is a dusty city built, you soon realise, around a fort. This is the Mukataa, or the “headquarters”, separated from the streets by walls and watchtowers. Mandate officials, Jordanian officers and the IDF have all been based here …
Hamas aren’t Hollywood villains
On Christmas Eve, a kidnapped girl lies asleep in a bed that’s not her own. Her captors, two men, stand over her and discuss their plans to detonate a bomb at a holiday parade. The older, balder man glances at …
The volunteer army that rescued Israel
It was hot and stifling in the corridors of Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital. Hundreds of people queued for hours, but no one complained. It was the afternoon of October 7 and they were waiting to give blood.
Volunteers were also …
The brutal truth about ‘Never Again’
“An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned,” was how the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, greeted the news of nine-year-old Emily Hand being released from her Hamas hellhole. He made it sound like the poor …
Why the Irish side with Palestine
When Micheál Martin visited Mount Scopus on the outskirts of Jerusalem two months ago, he struck a pessimistic tone. The Irish government’s deputy head had been taken there for a briefing by UN officials, who told him the number of …
Who is indigenous to Jerusalem?
Moments after the first images of the Hamas terror attack on October 7 hit the web, people on the Left started to cheer on the brutal assault as an act of “decolonising” Israel. “What did y’all think decolonisation meant?” tweeted …
Gen Z has an Israel problem
It’s almost like a religious ritual. Every Saturday since 7 October, central London has swollen with protestors waving the Palestinian flag and chanting “From the River to the Sea”. For the impartial and curious observer, two facts are immediately striking. …
Labour still has an Israel problem
Keir Starmer, like Israel, must brace for a long war he might not be able to win. The Labour leader has staked out a position that is far more exposed than it might first appear, for this is a crisis …
Are all terrorists monsters?
Like many a supposedly timeless phenomenon, terrorism is a modern invention. As a political idea, it first emerges with the French Revolution, so that terrorism and the modern democratic state are twinned at birth. In the era of Danton and …
The myth of Irish neutrality
Over the summer of 1951, there were so many visitors to a remote Irish Army facility in County Donegal, known as Finner Camp, that traffic jams were common. The crowds were trying to catch sight of a strange new aircraft, …
Hamas is playing for time
Hamas leaders know that once the Israeli counter-offensive starts, they will lose their greatest asset: their inter-connected tunnels. This vast warren conceals the vital operations for the manufacture, storage and launch of their rockets, and shieldsheadquarters and rest areas from …
I watched Hamas unleash hell
Tel Aviv
A handsome man in his 20s in a military uniform zips past me on a motorised scooter. A woman with a tattoo and piercings calmly sips a cortado in a coffee shop across from me. A young family …
Violence stalks Gaza through history
Where does the story of Gaza begin? In this region, history — or histories, given that here there is no such thing as a singular history — is serially and violently contested. “Anyone who tells a story knows that most …
Israel is no longer Britain’s war
In the wake of Hamas’s bloody and murderous raid into Israel, as Israeli jets pulverise the Gaza Strip in advance of its looming punitive expedition, the Western discourse surrounding the century-old conflict feels both novel and wearily familiar. Familiar in …