Jonathan Sacerdoti

It is difficult to fathom how an incident as horrifying as the kidnapping of Israeli musician Itay Kashti by three men in Wales barely registered as a blip on the national news agenda. In any just world, this crime – motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, religious fanaticism, and a chilling sense of political grievance – should have dominated headlines. It should have sparked national debate, serious introspection, and urgent discussions about the growing wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the UK and beyond. And yet, aside from a handful of reports, silence reigned. Kashti was lured to a remote cottage in Llanybydder, Wales, on 26 August 2024, under the false pretence of a music collaboration.

Perhaps it is a rite of passage these days for a journalist to be cancelled. But I never expected that an elite school – one designed to create tomorrow’s international leaders, founded by a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany – would be the ones to cancel a talk about anti-Semitism from me, the son of a Holocaust survivor. My invitation was not controversial – at least, not at first As a journalist and columnist with extensive experience reporting from Israel, covering terrorist attacks across Europe, and documenting the rise of anti-Semitism internationally, I have encountered hostility before. But I had not expected it to come from an institution dedicated to fostering global understanding.

The London School of Economics’ decision to host the launch this week of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters – a book that attempts to sanitise and fails to properly condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has rightly sparked outrage. It is a shameless attempt to rehabilitate a group that revels in the slaughter of civilians, delights in hostage-taking, and has openly vowed to repeat its crimes. If there were any doubts about Hamas’ true nature, they should have been put to rest on 7 October But while the LSE controversy is unsettling, it is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: the enduring failure of many in the West to grasp the true nature of Hamas.

The BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone at first glance seemed to offer a raw and intimate portrayal of life in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict. However, the programme, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was deeply flawed. The documentary, narrated by a Palestinian child, Abdullah Ayman Eliyazouri, presented a personal account of the suffering endured by Gaza’s residents. But the investigative journalist David Collier has reported that the BBC seems to have omitted something astonishing. Eliyazouri is not just a random child caught in the crossfire, but the son of Ayman Eliyazouri, the Hamas-run Gazan government’s deputy agricultural minister. Collier’s investigation cross-referenced social media profiles and other publicly available information.

When the Middle East gets me down, I sometimes rewatch the video of Donald Trump announcing the death of ISIS leader ‘Abooo… Bakarrrr… al-Baghdadi’ in 2019. It never fails to make me laugh when Donald declares the terrorist leader ‘died like a dog… a beautiful dog’. It’s funny to many in the West, because Trump’s words seem like crass bluster from a primitive communicator. In fact, he was deadly serious, and was not speaking for our ears alone. In essence, Trump was ‘speaking Arabic’ – not linguistically, but culturally – delivering a calculated message to the Muslim and Arab world. To call a man a dog is a profound insult in Islamic culture, evoking contempt and dishonour.

Some moments in history demand recognition, not just for their weight in the present but for the seismic shifts they herald. The Trump-Netanyahu press conference was one such moment – not a perfunctory diplomatic exercise, nor a routine reaffirmation of alliance, but an unambiguous declaration of intent. It was a disruption of long-entrenched, failed orthodoxies and the unveiling of a vision that dares to reimagine the Middle East in starkly different terms. For decades, world leaders have clung to exhausted formulas – peace processes built on illusion, agreements predicated on fantasy, and a wilful refusal to acknowledge the fundamental realities of Palestinian rejectionism and terror. That era is now over.

The ceasefire in Gaza, scheduled to begin this morning, has been anything but straightforward. As the agreement unfolds, many have rushed to declare who are the winners and who are the losers. Yet victory does not lie with those who made the most military gains or acted most morally – it leans, perversely, towards those ruthless enough to exploit suffering without moral restraint. In this grim theatre of war the truth is far bleaker, that among the civilized, there can only be losers. After days of fraught negotiations, delays, and brinkmanship, the first steps of this tenuous agreement are now unfolding.

As plans for a ceasefire were announced on Wednesday night, videos of Gazans celebrating with glee made their way onto international news broadcasts. The celebrations were distinctive in style, and looked nothing like those of a people experiencing the end of a genocide. Many an anchor and analyst overlooked the detail, but we would all do well to pay attention to what the revellers were actually showing and telling us.  No ceasefire can fully address the conflict as long as Hamas remains committed to its ultimate goal: the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Jews in the region This is not the first time Gaza’s civilians have seemed quick to celebrate.