Brendan O’Neill

Now Ireland is erasing its Jewish history. This week Dublin City Council will vote on a proposal to change the name of Herzog Park in the south of Dublin. The park was named for Chaim Herzog, the Belfast-born, Dublin-raised Jew who later became the sixth president of Israel. ‘Following consideration, the Committee agreed… that the name “Herzog” should be removed from the park’, says the council’s chilling proposal. Scrubbing the name of a Jew from a public park? Tell me that isn’t anti-Semitism. For two years now, Herzog Park has been the focal point of that spittle-flecked Israelophobic fury that is so commonplace in modern Ireland.

It’s back. The lie that led to the slaughter of so many Jews has returned to public life. The calumny that caused so much anti-Jewish persecution, expulsion and bloodshed has stirred, zombie-like, from its historic slumber. Jews drain the blood of Christians and use it to make bread – incredibly, unconscionably, this most appalling falsehood has returned. It is obscene that such words are being uttered on a university campus in 2025 At University College London (UCL) this week, a lecture was given in which it was allegedly suggested that Jews murder Gentiles and use their blood in perverse rituals. The comments were made by Samar Maqusi, a US academic. She was speaking with UCL’s Students for Justice in Palestine. Some of what she allegedly said was positively medieval.

The rot at the BBC is worse than people think. It’s far more serious than the occasional twisting of facts to get one over on a politician the Beeb hates, like Donald Trump – an act of journalistic malpractice for which director-general Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness have now resigned. This scandal exposes a great truth of our time – that the elites are often more susceptible to fallacy and hysteria than the rest of us The deeper problem is that the BBC has been so corrupted by faddish ideology that it is now content to burn truth itself in the service of that ideology. It has supped so heartily on the Kool-Aid of correct-think that it is even willing to promote such delirious untruths as ‘male breastmilk’ in order to stay sweet with its fellow ideologues.

His name was Wayne Broadhurst. He was 49 years old. He reportedly worked as a refuse collector. He was by all accounts well liked in his local town. And yesterday his life was ended in the most savage manner imaginable. He was stabbed to death as he walked his dog on a brisk, bright Tuesday afternoon. The suspect is a 22-year-old Afghan national, who came to Britain on the back of a lorry in 2020 and was subsequently granted asylum. Which politicians will say Wayne Broadhurst’s name today? Which of them will say his life mattered? The attack took place in chill, suburban Uxbridge, a part of outer London I know well. A 45-year-old man and his 14-year-old son were also stabbed. This barbarism in suburbia will leave so much horror and sorrow in its wake.

What’s more scary? A gaggle of old UKIP voters gathering to vent their spleen about mass immigration? Or a march of hulking young men, all masked and clad in black, hollering ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Zionist scum off our streets’? At the risk of being branded with that cheap and meaningless slur of ‘Islamophobe’, I’m going to say it’s the latter.  Something extraordinary happened in London this weekend — there was a ‘counter-extremist’ protest that felt more extremist than the thing it was countering. Their target was UKIP, around 75 of whose supporters had assembled in Whitehall to agitate for remigration. Yet it was the anti-UKIP side that felt properly menacing.

Who really won the by-election in Caerphilly? I know officially it was Plaid Cymru, and I wouldn’t want to diminish that funny little party’s glee. Congrats, etc. But the true victor was a far newer party. An angry party. A party of the fretful and anxious. A party so fresh it doesn’t even have a name yet. I say we call it Not Reform. Farage is now the behemoth of British politics, so much so that pretty much all elections now boil down to this question: Reform UK or Not Reform UK? I think it is pretty clear that it was this nameless entity that propelled Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle to victory last night.

Tel Aviv Bemusement seems to be the main emotion in Tel Aviv following the UK’s mad ban on Maccabi fans. A Maccabi supporter sipping an espresso in bustling Dizengoff Square doesn’t get it. ‘You’re keeping the fans out because you’re worried they’ll be attacked?’ He screws up his face. ‘You should stop the attackers, not the fans.’ He has a point. Britain seems to have rustled up a novel way to deal with Jew hatred – just hide away the Jews. No Jews, no anti-Jewish mob. No Maccabi fans, no violent outbursts of Israelophobia from that unholy, unhappy union of Islamists and leftists who think Israelis are demonic. Problem solved.

Normal people are cheering the prospect of peace in Gaza. Some might even raise a glass to Donald Trump for his valiant efforts to end this horrible war Hamas started. But there are others who will be feeling forlorn. The anti-Israel mob, to be specific. Won’t you spare a thought for this tragic community that built its entire personality around hating Israel – what are they going to do now? There is an eerie silence in anti-Israel circles There is an eerie silence in anti-Israel circles this morning. The people who spent the past two years hollering ‘Ceasefire now!’ seem strangely downbeat about the prospect of a ceasefire. No doubt that’s partly because they would rather eat hot coal than credit Trump with a geopolitical win.

I knew the modern left had its fair share of narcissists who can rarely see beyond their own navels. But even I never imagined they would spend the second anniversary of 7 October, the worst atrocity the Jews have suffered since the Holocaust, moaning about their ‘mistreatment’ by the Jewish state. Even I never imagined they would hijack the commemoration of the rape, abduction and slaughter of Israelis to moan about the hard beds and cold food Evil Israel allegedly foisted on them. You want us to weep over Greta’s rash when there are half-starved Jews in Hamas’s tunnels being forced to ‘dig their own graves’? The lack of self-awareness of Greta Thunberg and the other flotilla fools who tried to sail to Gaza is astonishing to me.

JK Rowling has broken her silence on Emma Watson. And if I were the Harry Potter actress, I would lie low for a few months. In fact, I would go full hibernation and spend the rest of winter in some far-flung cottage sans internet. For Rowling’s critique of Watson and her lazy, luxury beliefs is devastating. It is one of the truest and most cutting takedowns of the blissful ignorance of moneyed moral poseurs I have ever read. Rowling’s critique of Watson and her lazy, luxury beliefs is devastating Once upon a time, Watson was known merely for playing Hermione in the film adaptation of Rowling's Harry Potter books. Of late, she has become a one-woman foghorn for the luxuriant moralism that passes for virtue in celebrity circles.

Imagine if, following the rape charges against Harvey Weinstein, a mob of angry people had rallied to his defence. Imagine if this smug, seething crowd had raged against the women who accused Weinstein of sexual offences. Imagine if they wagged their fingers in the women’s faces. Imagine they branded the women troublemakers. Imagine they went so far as to taunt the women by displaying banners saying: ‘Rich movie producers welcome here!’ Local women rallied around a girl, just 14, who had accused a man of sexually assaulting her. And those women were demonised We would have been appalled, right? Well, that very thing happened in Epping. Local women rallied around a girl, just 14, who had accused a man of sexually assaulting her. And those women were demonised.

Who does Keir Starmer think he’s kidding? There he is in that glossy video imperiously decreeing there should be a State of Palestine, yet he can’t even hold the British state together. Under his half-hearted purview our borders have become more porous, our state machinery has become more enfeebled, and the country has become the laughing stock of the civilised world. Forget playing fantasy states overseas, Sir Keir: fix the one you run. Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? We have become a nation where you risk being branded far right if you fly the flag. Where it’s considered extremist to want better policing of the borders.

Has there ever been a lamer protest group than Led By Donkeys? I’m old enough to remember when protest was raucous, occasionally even sexy. The young and the angry rising up in fury against their irritant rulers. Now it’s four craft-beer bros from Stoke Newington whose idea of ‘rebellion’ is to titillate the middle classes with a naff projection about how awful Brexit is. Led By Donkeys have never exactly been daring The chattering class’s favourite faux troublemakers are back with another cunning stunt. This time they’re giving Brexit, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss a break and are aiming their macchiato-fuelled spleen at Donald Trump. I bet you’re shocked that this agitprop group that is basically a Guardian leader made flesh also suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.