World

Few people will have been unmoved by the pictures of joy and anticipation which have been broadcast from Gaza in the past twenty-four hours. After fifteen months of horror at a scale that those of us in the rest of the world will mercifully never experience, there is the chance that the death and destruction may be coming to an end.

Unarmed and facing Israeli tanks amid devastation next to his hospital, one Palestinian doctor shows the world what courage looks like. It is a photo that will come to symbolise the sheer enormity of Israel’s assault on healthcare in Gaza and its attempt to empty the north of Gaza of Palestinians altogether. It is ethnic cleansing and it is deliberate policy. It’s not even secret. It is called …

“I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what is happening in Gaza now is a genocide…We don’t teach about genocides in order to realise it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.” Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

You always think things cannot get any worse for the Palestinians. But every year they do. (An extract from an article originally published by Labour List.)

On Sunday, as I have done for thirty-two of the past thirty-five years, I attended the Remembrance Day service hosted by the Austin Branch of the Royal British Legion in Northfield, Birmingham. Every year my thoughts turn to visits I have made to Commonwealth war graves both in the UK and in other parts of the world. All those visits have been both poignant and personally moving. None more so …