Jake Wallis Simons

On the fringes of his Unite the Kingdom rally last Saturday, Tommy Robinson was asked what he would change if he became prime minister tomorrow. “I would stop Islam,” he replied baldly, before listing an inchoate set of proposals centred solely around Muslims and immigration and involving the Army. Ever since the 2022 elections, when Ben-Gvir and his allies entered the Knesset, Israeli society has been locked in a battle for its soul Despite his knack for articulating some home truths, the man is little more than a rabble rouser. Luckily, Britain doesn’t have proportional representation, which – given his level of support – could make him a minority kingmaker in a governing coalition. Which brings me to Israel.

So Israel is suing the New York Times. Not before time, if you ask me. Particularly since October 7 – the sexual depravities of which were revealed this week in a stomach-churning independent report – America’s paper of record has preoccupied itself with magnifying the most grotesque stories about the Jewish state, giving Hamas the incentive to persevere in their bloodthirsty propaganda strategy. The liberal media is providing the oxygen for the very people it most affects to loathe This week, it was a column by two-time Pulitzer prize winning journalist Nick Kristof, who in the distant past once retweeted a post describing a pro-Israel group as “pigs”. Headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians” – you see what they did there?

To the studio! Podcasts, if you ask me, are the one good thing to have come out of the digital revolution. My new one, The Brink, which I present with hulking former Parachute Regiment officer Andrew Fox, has hosted three guests so far: American media supremo Bari Weiss, former Israel defence minister Yoav Gallant and Mossad spymaster Yossi Cohen. What are we? Well, we’re not Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. The highlights? Weiss observing that society is not facing a crisis of trust but of trustworthiness: ‘You should not trust something that’s not worthy of your trust.’ Then there was Gallant’s message to the West: ‘We all think war is bad, only you have forgotten that sometimes it is necessary.’ Which brings me to Cohen, the most devious and moral man I know.

In those awful first weeks after 7 October, someone came up with a slogan that was taken as a rallying cry for those of us on the right side of the argument. As editor of the Jewish Chronicle at the time, I bought a job lot of stickers emblazoned with the slogan and handed them out to staff. It was this: 'F**k Hamas'. On Saturday, when the jihadi group released Ohad Ben-Ami, 56, Or Levy, 34, and Eli Sharabi, 52, in an appallingly emaciated state, that slogan was an adequate description for how the nation of Israel felt. When waif-like Sharabi was paraded on the propaganda stage, he was 'interviewed' by his captors and asked what aspect of freedom he was most looking forward to.

The Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is a moderate man and chooses his words carefully. So his statement about David Lammy’s suspension of 30 export licences to Israel was striking in its tone, if not surprising in its content. The Foreign Secretary's timing did feel a bit rum 'It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on the 7th October, and at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families,' he said. The Foreign Secretary's timing did feel a bit rum. In Israel, yesterday was an intense moment of national mourning.

This piece was originally published in a different form on 16 July. If the Pimpernel was damned and elusive, he had nothing on Mohammed ‘the guest’ al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing. The ‘guest’ moniker – ‘Deif’ in Arabic – was gained by decades of moving from house to house nightly to avoid assassination. Despite reportedly losing an eye and a leg in attacks, he continued to evade the missiles as if charmed. The 58-year-old shadow was by far the longest-surviving senior leader of Hamas. This morning, one day after the sensational assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the IDF has finally confirmed his death. On 10.29 a.m.

Israel is the only meaningful democracy in the Middle East. This is as true today as it was last week. But the shameful scenes of far-right violence in response to the arrest of a group of soldiers is a gift to those who wish to undo it. On Monday, dozens of hardline activists tried to disrupt the arrest of nine reservists detained as part of an investigation into 'suspected substantial abuse of a Palestinian detainee'. They were accompanied by far-right politicians, who barged into an army base and occupied it for several hours.

The slaughter of a dozen child footballers on Sunday came as a startling sign that the situation in northern Israel cannot continue. Since October 7, thousands of Hezbollah rockets have rained down on the Jewish state, claiming many lives and causing 70,000 people to flee their homes. There comes a point where the only option is war. According to UN Resolution 1701, issued in 2006, Hezbollah forces must not stray south of the Litani river, about 18 miles from the Israeli border. They have violated that ruling for years, with no real punishment from the UN or anybody else. On a trip to the region before October 7, I saw them moving through the territory with my own eyes, carrying out surveillance.