Month: May 2026

More than half of Muslims would vote for pro-Gaza independents to stop Labour from winning, a new poll has revealed.

Labour faces a dramatic collapse in support among British Muslim voters ahead of this week’s local elections, with new Policy Exchange research revealing the party’s backing has plummeted from a historic 80 per cent to just 33 per cent.

The polling, conducted by JL Partners, shows six in 10 Muslim voters in key battleground councils are prepared to back Gaza-focused independent candidates as a means of defeating Labour.

Nearly half would consider supporting the Greens for the same purpose.

The findings suggest a fundamental realignment of Muslim political allegiances, with voters increasingly drawn to independent candidates who prioritise concerns about the global Muslim community alongside local issues.

The Israel-Gaza conflict appears to be a significant driver of this shift away from Labour.

The survey covered more than 1,000 British Muslims living in areas with significant Muslim populations where elections are being held, spanning Greater London, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and parts of Lancashire, South Yorkshire and Merseyside.

A separate nationally representative sample of over 1,000 UK adults was also polled for comparison.

Among Muslim respondents, 49 per cent indicated they would consider voting Green to prevent a Labour victory, while 60 per cent said they would consider backing independent candidates.

The Greens currently enjoy 27 per cent support among Muslim voters, which sits 10 points above the party’s national polling average and 17 points higher than their support among the general population in this survey.

Fourteen per cent of Muslim voters said they would back a Muslim independent candidate in a general election.

The Israel-Gaza conflict emerges as a defining issue separating Muslim voters from the broader electorate.

A quarter of British Muslims polled said the conflict would determine their vote, compared with just five per cent of the general population – making it five times more influential among Muslim voters.

On other matters, priorities align more closely. Cost of living ranks as the dominant concern across both groups, with the economy, education and welfare also featuring similarly in voter priorities.

However, religious identity plays a markedly different role. Sixty-three per cent of Muslim respondents ranked their faith as their most important identity, while only 12 per cent prioritised their British identity.

Among the general population, national identity topped the list at 43 per cent.

The polling uncovered troubling attitudes on several fronts. One quarter of Muslim respondents expressed a favourable view of Hamas, while 28 per cent held an unfavourable opinion.

Views on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were similarly divided, with 23 per cent favourable compared to 20 per cent unfavourable.

Nearly a quarter of Muslims surveyed believed violence could be justified in response to burning the Koran or depicting the Prophet Muhammad, more than double the 10 per cent figure among the general public.

Antisemitic attitudes were notably more prevalent among Muslim respondents.

Twenty-one per cent admitted unfavourable feelings towards Jews, compared with 11 per cent nationally.

Some 45 per cent believed Jews wield excessive influence over the media, while 39 per cent said the same about Parliament – more than twice the national figures.

The research also highlighted concerns about electoral integrity. Fourteen per cent of Muslim voters reported having a postal vote collected by a political candidate or campaigner – a practice now prohibited under the 2022 Elections Act and historically linked to electoral fraud. This figure was nearly double that of the general population.

Dr Rakib Ehsan, lead author of the Policy Exchange report “Understanding Islamopopulism: Views of Concern”, said: “The data shows that the Labour Party is on course to be further punished by British Muslims in the English local elections, with a likely surge of Muslim independent candidates being elected in cities such as Birmingham and towns like Blackburn, along with a number of London boroughs including Newham.”

He added: “The findings show that the UK is far from being a stable multi-faith democracy.”

gbnews

Two people have died and others are in life-threatening condition after a car was driven at “high speed” through a crowd in the city of Leipzig.

Emergency services declared a mass casualty incident in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Monday afternoon after a car was driven “at high speed” through a pedestrianised city-centre area. Two people are confirmed dead and several more, likely dozens, are injured, two of them critically, after being struck by the driver’s vehicle.

Several dead and injured after person drives vehicle into crowd in Leipzig, Germany pic.twitter.com/40tum7JPTN

— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) May 4, 2026

A suspect, said to be the driver, has been arrested. German daily newspaper Die Welt reports a police source stating the suspect is showing signs of mental illness, and that the mayor of Leipzig stated of the incident: “We don’t yet know the exact motive; we don’t know anything about the perpetrator”.

BREAKING: Car rams crowd in Leipzig, Germany; multiple injured pic.twitter.com/0j98Fish4J

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) May 4, 2026

The car was driven into a crowd in a pedestrianised city-centre area on Monday afternoon, racing down a shopping street and into the market square. The car came to a halt close to the city’s historic Cloth Hall market building.

Whether this incident was an attack or an accident is not clear. But Europe now has years of dark experience with car-ramming attacks carried out for terrorist motives, a technique first honest by Islamists in Israel and then exported to the continent.

breitbart

A prominent Canadian LGBT Pride leader has been found guilty of seven counts of sex trafficking. Despite the jury verdict, Jake Tucker, the founder of Innisfil Pride, maintains his innocence and claims the victims are unreliable and the police “botched” the investigation.

While the publicly-available details on the offenses had previously been limited due to court proceedings, new information from the case paints a disturbing picture.

According to Juno News, the allegations against Tucker first surfaced in 2022 when one woman came forward to police alleging she had been sex trafficked by Tucker for years. Police then located another victim who similarly revealed she had been subjected to sex trafficking by Tucker.

In court, the Crown argued that Tucker advertised the women for sexual services, drove them to and from “client appointments,” and drugged them when they did not want to work. One woman told the court Tucker used a taser on her to force her into compliance. Prosecutors described his actions as “coercive, aggressive and violent.”

Tucker’s defense included accusing the women of lying and being unreliable due to their past substance abuse. He also claimed that it was “impossible” that he had pimped the women, claiming that he would have been too busy to have the time.

On Wednesday, a jury found Tucker guilty on seven of the ten human trafficking and assault charges he had been facing. Tucker was acquitted on three counts of assault, sexual assault, and assault with a weapon.

While speaking to press outside the court house, Tucker admitted to having run a “swingers’ club” but denied it being related to prostitution.

Tucker also alleged that the criminal charges filed against him were motivated by separate issues in family court, but did not offer clarification on what those “issues” may involve.

Tucker is married to a man, and purchased a baby girl via a surrogacy contract with his partner. Tucker has made several social media posts depicting the little girl, beginning in 2018 when he celebrated Father’s Day.

Tucker was the founder of Innisfil Pride, and was very active in the LGBTQ+ activist community in Ontario.

The Innisfil Pride website describes itself as a resource for learning about LGBTQ+ “allies and activists.” “Pride is about coming together as a community to celebrate the freedom to be yourself, to uplift and honour 2SLGBTQ+ activism, and to support 2SLGBTQ+ rights,” reads the site.

“Here you can celebrate some local talent, learn about the allies and activists in your community, as well as a listing of free local events and resources available to you through your local library.”

Disturbingly, Tucker continued to be an active representative of Innisfil Pride even after criminal investigations first began against him in 2022.

According to a Facebook post from that summer, Fierté Simcoe Pride decided to “suspend all collaborations with Innisfil Pride indefinitely” due to the charges, while acknowledging Tucker’s organization was continuing to host local events.

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

Ein Beitrag geteilt von Innisfil Pride (@innisfilpride)

Social media posts made by Innisfil Pride after Tucker was charged with sex trafficking reveal that he continued to serve as the president while hosting public campaigns. During Pride month in June 2023, the group hosted the town’s Pride flag-raising ceremony at the local City Hall. Other events described on its website are advertised as being for “all ages.”

At multiple Innisfil Pride events, Tucker performed as a drag queen under the name “Anita Goodickyn.”

Tucker is still listed as the President of Innisfil Pride, according to their website.

In 2018 and 2022, Tucker stood as a candidate in Ontario’s provincial elections, both times running in the district of Barrie—Innisfil. In 2018, he represented the Canadians’ Choice Party, a minor right-wing party noted for having multiple candidates vocally supportive of the neo-Nazi movement in Canada.

In 2022, Tucker switched parties to represent the Ontario People’s Front, another right-wing party formed in opposition to COVID-19 vaccination requirements. According to Elections Ontario, Tucker received 184 votes in 2018 and 119 votes in 2022.

Tucker is expected to return to court in May for sentencing.

reduxx

It is no longer a secret that universities have become one of the arenas where some of today’s fiercest ideological battles are being fought: research and knowledge are being subjected to the dictates of wokeism, in defiance of academic freedom—a glorious European legacy dating back centuries. In France, the phenomenon has reached such proportions that lecturers are forced to organise themselves to fight against what sometimes takes the form of relentless harassment.

In many French universities, a climate of intellectual terror prevails that is not—minus the physical elimination—unlike the “terrorism without the gulag,” to use the phrase of the Quebec intellectual Mathieu Bock-Côté during the heyday of the Soviet Union. Some professors and researchers, hounded for non-conformist views and for the content of their courses deemed controversial, find themselves having to defend their case before disciplinary committees where the free exchange of ideas is not the order of the day.

Le Figaro cites the case of a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), accused of psychological harassment by two of her colleagues—an accusation driven primarily by ideological concerns, which led to an investigation against her, based entirely on evidence supporting the accusations. No room was made for a defense. Her case is not an isolated one. Lecturers and researchers are being reported due to the content of their courses being deemed offensive or not in line with standards of political correctness, and the machinery to crush them is set in motion.

In such cases, no support whatsoever can be expected from the institution. This is why independent organisations have been set up to come to the aid of researchers and intellectuals subjected to such pressures: among them are the ADLA, the Association for the Defence of Academic Freedoms, and the O2ER, the Autonomous Observatory for the Respect of Equity and Integrity in Higher Education and Research. Xavier-Laurent Salvador, a member of ADLA, a professor of modern literature, co-founder of the Observatory of Decolonialism, and known for his contribution to the collective work against “woke obscurantism” in French universities—which was censored by the press—regularly receives calls from colleagues facing reports they consider unfounded. The humanities and social sciences are over-represented. Reports come not only from students but also from other lecturers and prove very convenient for disqualifying a rival in the allocation of a post or a promotion.

The support of these organisations is vital for the professors under investigation. Indeed, they are often subjected to lengthy internal investigations, conducted by peers who have no legal knowledge or sense of fairness, and in which they are given no opportunity to defend themselves. Some incur legal fees to no avail and feel abandoned within a broader context marked by the abdication of university management, who do not wish to get involved in defending their professors and prefer to throw them to the wolves of the most determined activists who lay down the law within the university walls without being accountable to anyone.

On an individual level, the knock-on effects can be dramatic. Such is the case of Caroline Guibet Lafaye, a research director at the CNRS and a recognised sociologist specialising in radicalisation. Two young researchers accused her of failing to sufficiently anonymise certain Kurdish witnesses during her research. Guibet Lafaye found herself caught up in a downward spiral. She was isolated by her superiors, with her colleagues forbidden from contacting her. She eventually ended up being suspended.

Her Ph.D. students lost their supervisor. Her funding was cut off. For a year, the researcher received no salary and had to pay thousands of euros in legal fees to refute the accusations levelled against her. One does not emerge unscathed from such an ordeal.

To guard against such abuses, defence mechanisms are being put in place. Some lecturers go so far as to record their lectures in lecture theatres to be able to prove their innocence, says Fabrice Balanche, himself at the centre of a smear campaign for having expressed his opposition to the organisation of Ramadan iftar banquets at the University of Lyon. Many are calling for investigations to be taken out of the university and handed over to the courts to ensure a minimum of objectivity. Thus, in the summer of 2025, a professor of education at a university in the Île-de-France region, finally lodged an appeal with the administrative court against her university for “harassment, failure to provide protection, conflict of values and obstruction of academic freedom” after years of pressure and harassment: her teaching duties were withdrawn on the basis of reports from students. In 2020, she was accused of Islamophobia following a lecture on secularism delivered a few days after the murder of Samuel Paty.

Lives, careers, and research projects are thus shattered for reasons that are always the same: students denounce lecturers who offend their ‘religious beliefs’; accusations of ‘transphobia’ or ‘Islamophobia’ are brandished as indisputable slogans. The university has ceased to be a refuge for free thought, yet none of the national authorities—the ministry of higher education or the CNRS management—seem to be fully grasping the extent of the problem.

europeanconservative

Less than a year out from France’s next presidential elections, National Rally (RN) party chief Jordan Bardella is doubling down on a core plank of its: Welfare for nationals, first and foremost.

He restated that family benefits would reserved for households where parents hold French citizenship as part of a broader push for “national priority”.

“Under our leadership, social housing will be allocated as a priority to French families who need it most,” he said during his speech on May 1, Labour Day.

“Social benefits will be reserved for French nationals,” he insisted.

Bardella argued that France can no longer function as what he portrayed as a heaven for foreign-born residents.

“France is not a hotel; it is not a social welfare office whose sole purpose is to subsidise the birth rates of other countries on its own territory,” he said.

He went further, criticising the country’s provision of state-funded healthcare to undocumented migrants, vowing to end what he described as a system offering comprehensive free treatment while, he claimed, many French citizens struggle to afford care.

“We will put an end to this scandal of state-funded healthcare, which offers the full range of free treatment to undocumented migrants, even as one in three French persons goes without medical care due to a lack of funds,” he said.

Bardella’s plan on restricting access to social goods is consistent with a long-standing ideological line within the RN.

The President of the right-wing party framed the policy as a question of fairness: Prioritising those who contribute, particularly in areas where housing and public services are under the greatest strain.

Nevertheless, France’s constitutional framework affirms a right to basic means of subsistence for all individuals unable to work, without reference to nationality.

In April 2024, the Constitutional Council leaned on that principle to block a referendum initiative backed by Les Républicans that sought to tighten access to certain social supports for non-French citizens.

The political current appears to be shifting in Europe.

Similar “national priority” measures are beginning to surface elsewhere in Europe, with Spain’s Aragón among the latest regions to move in that direction.

brusselssignal

Foreign inmate gangs have sparked fresh chaos inside an overcrowded Italian prison after a violent brawl at Frosinone left five officers needing emergency hospital treatment.

The confrontation reportedly broke out between two separate groups of foreign prisoners, as verbal abuse and threats quickly escalated into a violent clash involving clubs and improvised weapons.

Prison officers moved in to restore order, but the situation rapidly deteriorated as inmates began using objects inside the facility as weapons.

Five officers were eventually taken to the emergency room at Frosinone hospital with injuries including bruises, cuts, a fractured little finger, and a bruised jaw. They were later discharged with prognoses of around 10 days.

The violence was reported by both the Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union and the Penitentiary Police Union, which warned that the prison is once again facing serious disorder linked to overcrowding, staff shortages, and the presence of violent inmates.

As reported by Corriere della Sera, Angelo Vittiglio, regional deputy secretary of the Penitentiary Police Union, described the incident as “yet another attack” and called for the most troublesome prisoners to be moved to other facilities immediately.

“Immediate transfer is necessary to avoid compromising the peace, order, and security in places where security is increasingly lacking,” Vittiglio said.

The Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union said the episode confirmed the “highly tense situation” already reported after a recent inspection of the facility.

According to the union, inmates threw stools, gas canisters, and coffee machines during the brawl, while others got hold of sharp objects as the violence intensified.

“Only thanks to the professionalism, sense of duty, and spirit of sacrifice of the Penitentiary Police staff was it possible to prevent the situation from further deteriorating,” the union said, warning that the consequences could have been even more serious.

The union also said repeated calls to transfer the most violent inmates had been ignored.

“We have repeatedly urged the transfer of the most violent inmates to other facilities, even outside the district, but our requests have fallen on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the most troublemakers continue to compromise the security and stability of the facility,” it added.

The Frosinone brawl comes amid wider concerns over Italy’s prison system, with overcrowding and staff shortages repeatedly blamed for unrest, assaults, and deteriorating conditions inside detention facilities.

Officers’ unions have warned that prisons are becoming increasingly difficult to control when too many inmates are held in stretched facilities without enough staff to maintain order.

Italy has seen repeated prison unrest in recent years, including riots linked to overcrowding and pressure on detention centers, with officers and other staff members left exposed during the violence, and the crisis has already forced the Italian government to consider politically sensitive measures.

Official figures highlighted by Italian newspaper La Verità in February showed that more than 144,000 convicted offenders in Italy are currently serving sentences outside prison through alternative or community-based measures due to overcrowding.

Of those, 30,279 are foreign citizens, accounting for 21 percent of the total.

Among foreign nationals under supervision, the largest share comes from African countries, accounting for 37 percent of foreign offenders in alternative measures.

By nationality, the largest groups are Moroccans, Albanians, and Romanians, with 4,871, 4,147, and 3,890 convicted offenders, respectively, serving sentences in the community. They are followed by Tunisians, with 1,824, and Nigerians, with 1,464.

In July last year, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government weighed the early release of more than 10,000 prisoners in response to severe overcrowding, despite previously opposing so-called “prison-emptying” policies.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said the proposal would merely apply an existing legal provision allowing inmates with less than 24 months left to serve, and who were convicted of non-violent offenses, to complete their sentences outside prison.

Italy also saw a wave of prison riots in August 2024, with overcrowding blamed for violence at detention centers in Turin, Bari, and Rome.

In one incident, prisoners took a nurse hostage, while prison security staff were seriously injured.

rmx

In the final push before voters head to the polls this week to choose who will staff their local council governments, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party unveiled perhaps its most tantalising policy prescription for illegal migration: let the Greens deal with it.

Echoing schemes in America in which Republican governors such as Texas’ Gregg Abbot or Florida’s Ron DeSantis bused illegals to elite Democrat strongholds like Martha’s Vineyard, Reform UK shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf said that if given power, the party will place all migrant detention centres in constituencies that voted for the pro-mass migration Green Party.

Yusuf noted that in order for the government to carry out large-scale deportations, it will need to detain tens of thousands of migrants at the same time and therefore will be in need of detention centres to hold the illegals.

However, rather than spreading out such detention centres evenly throughout the country, the Reform immigration spokesman said that the party would ensure that the burden of illegal migration disproportionately impacts those who support it.

“A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP. Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council,” Yusuf said on Sunday.

He added that a Reform government would “prioritise Green-controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green-controlled councils to locate the detention centres… This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.”

The Greens, who have seemingly abandoned focus on climate matters in favour of courting its multicultural base on issues like opposition to Israel, is dominated by far-left ideology on immigration, with its members previously voting to grant illegals amnesty and provide them with taxpayer-funded housing.

A 2023 policy document stated that the party believed in “world without borders” and that illegal immigration should not be considered a “criminal offence under any circumstances.”

Important new Reform policy: pic.twitter.com/y9R9P5Gqyt

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) May 3, 2026

For Reform to be focusing on the Greens in the waning days of the campaign perhaps demonstrates the scale to which British politics has transformed since the last time voters went to the polls for the 2024 general election, in which both Reform and the Greens only managed to pick up a handful of seats in the parliament.

Less than two years on, the Green party, under the leadership of upstart radical Zach Polanski have surged in the polls and now stands neck and neck with governing Labour as the top left-wing party in the country in the polls, having its support base bolstered by peeling off the youth and Muslim voting blocs away from Labour.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has blown past the Conservatives to become the most popular party in the country, as trust continues to fade in the two Westminster establishment parties following years of economic mismanagement and a bipartisan failure to properly police Britain’s borders.

According to predictions from an election expert and Tory Peer, Lord Hayward, Labour could be on pace to lose nearly three out of four of its local council seats that are up for election on Thursday, or around 1,900 out of 2,500 seats.

Conversely, Hayward predicted that the Greens would gain around 500 council seats, the Conservatives would lose around 600, and Reform would gain 1,550 councillors. However, the election expert did caution that the landscape is novel and therefore may be ripe for surprises.

“We’re in a truly unprecedented world where you’ve got both Reform and Greens as major disruptors,” he told The Times last week. “We’ve never had five-party politics before. Normally, the opposition gains off the government. On this occasion, all parties are fighting each other for all the seats.”

For his part, Reform leader Nigel Farage said that he would be very pleased if Lord Hayward’s predictions came true, while saying that he expected his party to perform “stunningly well” on Thursday. Mr Farage has predicted that the local elections will force Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to finally resign from his post.

Farage Predicts His Reform Party Will Perform ‘Stunningly Well’ at This Week’s Local Electionshttps://t.co/6I5XK3nT19

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 3, 2026

breitbart

by Bill Ponton

If there is one thing to be said about the Germans, they are persistent. Any nation that would invade a neighbor with a far greater population, larger industrial base, and more natural resources, all of which were mobilized for war, as it did with Russia in WWII, and persist on that path until the enemy was at the Brandenburg Gate, would also be the last to give up on an energy policy that is a complete failure. Chalk it up to the conceit and over-preening of its people. For the Germans, it is a repeat of Stalingrad. Commit the whole economy to achieving the prize of Energiewende, and then watch it collapse in ruin like the 6th Army on the banks of the Volga River.

Germany’s fate is not foreordained. There is still time left for the Germans to start up their nuclear plants, fire up their coal-burning plants, and stop the hemorrhaging of industry to countries with cheaper energy. However, the German political class is like Hitler in his last days in the bunker. As the Russian troops were encircling Berlin, he busied himself with ordering non-existent troops to launch counter-offenses. Likewise, German politicians are installing an ever-increasing number of solar panels in the hope that its experiment in transitioning the energy sector will prove to be the right decision. They are taking the economic miracle that their fathers achieved in the aftermath of WWII and throwing it away on a fantasy that an economy can function without firm dispatchable thermal power.

I would like some German central planner to explain to me why installing 120 GW of solar capacity is a good thing at a latitude of 52° N. One would not grow pineapples at that latitude. Likewise, one should not attempt to power a modern economy with solar. The capacity factor, a measure of actual output / maximum possible output, for a solar plant is 8%. Compare that with a thermal plant that might range between 60–70%. Solar is an expensive asset from which little utility is derived.

Germany has an additional problem with solar power. Half of its solar power capacity is on private rooftops (behind-the-meter) and floods the grid at inauspicious times. During periods of high solar radiation combined with low weekend or holiday demand, the grid gets flooded with “must-take” renewable energy, making it difficult to balance the power grid. Unlike dispatchable thermal power plants, which can be throttled more easily, the fluctuating nature of solar requires complex interventions to prevent grid overloads. Moreover, solar panel owners are guaranteed a fixed feed-in tariff regardless of market prices, and the gap between market price and the guaranteed remuneration must be covered by subsidies.

It is a mess that keeps growing, becoming more menacing. It also is ratcheting up the price of electricity, scaring away industry and plunging the average German into energy poverty. German electricity generation cost for its mixed system of solar, wind, and thermal running in tandem is $136/MWh, compared to U.S. electricity generation for a thermal only which is $38/MWh—over three times greater. If you were the owner of a German chemical company, the cost differential would make relocation to the U.S. attractive. My calculations are here.

Moreover, pressure on Germany to change its energy policy is emerging from another quarter. Trump’s order for withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany was not only an expression of his displeasure with Germany’s stance in the war with Iran, but a signal to German leadership that support for European security amongst the U.S. populace is waning. Germany will have to choose between rearmament and staying the course with its Energiewende, a classic guns or butter tradeoff. The question remaining is whether Germany will allow itself to be encircled and destroyed as it was at Stalingrad, or will it break out of its current mindset and forge a new path forward?

americanthinker

Cambridge University has faced criticism for declining to suspend students who allegedly made death threats against a fellow undergraduate following his visit to Israel.

Bradley Smart, a 21-year-old third-year student at Homerton College, participated in a trip organised by the Pinsker Centre think tank, which brought Oxbridge student leaders to meet both Israelis and Palestinians to gain insight into the Gaza conflict.

Upon his return to college, Mr Smart, who is not Jewish, claims identifiable students posted threatening messages in a group chat, including phrases such as “I’m going to kill him” and “he needs to die”.

After reporting the threats through official harassment procedures, the college reportedly advised him to contact welfare services or consider relocating to different accommodation.

The group chat messages also contained slurs, degrading language, and antisemitic material, drawing comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, according to Mr Smart.

Fearing for his personal safety, he vacated his Homerton accommodation approximately one month after the incidents began.

Mr Smart told The Telegraph: “As a Cambridge student, I expected my university to be a place where opinions could be refined through dialogue.

“The reality, however, was that this trip was enough to trigger a campaign of cancellation, including explicit death threats and being banned from a college club.”

When he approached police about the matter, Mr Smart claims officers informed him it constituted an “academic matter” and declined to pursue an investigation.

Lord Walney, who previously served as the Government’s counter-extremism tsar, condemned the institution’s handling of the situation.

He said: “It is entirely unacceptable that students at one of our leading universities would threaten to kill one of their peers for visiting Israel.

“The college’s response is wholly inadequate, and sets a dangerous precedent that intimidation and threats of political violence will be tolerated. Cambridge must do better.”

Ben Freeman, executive director of the Pinsker Centre, warned: “Jewish students and their allies are in fear for their lives.

“After recent attacks, this fear is all the more justified. Threats of violence cannot be normalised. We cannot allow intimidation to shut down dialogue.”

Gabrielle Apfel, president of the Cambridge Israel Society, described the university as having become “a lion’s den with regard to Israel and Zionism” over the past two and a half years.

Ms Apfel added that the Cambridge Israel Society has hosted progressive speakers, including former Labour MPs, yet still considers it necessary to keep event locations confidential.

She said: “Jewish and Israeli students feel like they have to keep their connections to Israel and their identities to themselves. No student should feel unable to be themselves because of their background or identity.”

The allegations emerge amid escalating anti-Israel sentiment across Britain’s elite universities.

An Oxford student faced charges last year for inciting racial hatred after leading chants calling to “put the Zios in the ground”.

Violent incidents targeting British Jews have also risen sharply in recent months, with two Jewish men stabbed in Golders Green, north London, last week.

gbnews

During this time of the year, we in Israel commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and then exactly one week later, the nation commemorates Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, we in Israel mourn our fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, halting everything as the sirens blast (cars stop, pedestrians stop, the nation literally comes to a standstill). These past weeks and months, given that Israel’s sirens were prompts to rush to bomb shelters, one can only imagine the anxiety and accompanying stress, should one of those sirens have coincided with a memorial siren.

The common denominator between these two pivotal historical events namely the Holocaust and the Iranian attack on the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and Israeli civilian population centers, is Germany’s intentional involvement and compliance.

Nazi Germany’s responsibility for implementing the Holocaust is an undisputable historical fact. Yet few associate Iran’s current nuclear and military capabilities with the very same nation, namely Germany, a nation responsible for annihilating 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. Germany played a key role in the early development of Iran’s nuclear program decades ago that jump-started the Iranian nuclear capability by providing German nuclear technology, training, specialized components, and machinery.

Key details regarding German involvement included providing Iran with specialized equipment such as high-strength aluminum, vacuum pumps, numerical controlled machine tools and frequency Converters: critical frequency converters for thousands of Iran’s centrifugal machines.

Historically, Germany was a primary technological partner for Iran, particularly in infrastructure and energy: This transfer of technology of actual components by Germany has over the years enabled Iran to advance and transform its nuclear weapons industry to weapons grade enrichment.

Despite international sanctions, approximately 77 formal agreements were initiated over the years between German and Iranian higher education institutions. These involved student exchanges and joint research in fields like physics and IT. A major treaty was signed between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the West German Ministry for Research and Technology. This paved the way for the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, originally designed and partially built by the German firm Kraftwerk Union (Siemens), a core installation for Iran’s enrichment program.

Iran has relied on dual-use German nuclear technology to enrich and produce weapon-grade uranium enabling a nuclear threshold capacity. Iranian leaders being confident that their advanced nuclear weapons industry would deter any external attempt to prevent their nuclear ambitions, interpreted the West’s apathy over the years to this emerging threat that a nuclear Iran would pose for the world. This indifference has enabled Iran to spread her tentacles of Islamist terror through her proxy Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Today, the United States and additional Western nations have come to the realization that Iran poses an existential threat beyond the borders of the Middle East, with Israel being just the first step within its overall plan.

Iran’s existing constitution, formed in 1979 and subsequently amended in 1989, outlines a vision that is fully incompatible with Western principles and has guided and empowered the Islamic leaders of Iran throughout its forty-seven-year existence. It also gives meaning to what has often been mistaken for mere hyperbolic cheerleading: “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” While America was built on notions of liberty, individual freedoms and limited government control, the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon a global totalitarian vision.

Essentially, it seeks a one-world Islamic government derived from Koranic principles and Sharia law. It set out to help all similar revolutionary efforts across the world, justifying its support for its proxies such as Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terror factions in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Islamic terror cells throughout Europe. In addition, it was hoped that this Islamist vision of world domination would be realized by the end of the 20th century, which certainly explained Iran’s unquenchable appetite for nuclear weapons as the optimum, most accelerated pathway toward overtaking all other forms of rule.

Germany has also provided the Islamic Republic of Iran, whether intentionally or not, an additional motivational path to use their nuclear ambitions to achieve their goal of world domination. The Aryan myth closely associated with German Nazi society during the 1920s and 30s, is one of the fundamental pillars of Iranian Islamist nationalism. Iran’s Islamic leaders have used their sense of self-acclaimed Aryan superiority to demand parity with Europe and dislocate Iran from the perceived backwardness of the Islamic Sunni world.

Born in early nineteenth-century Europe, the Aryan myth was a product of linguistics, of racial anthropology – a pseudo-science that today is totally discredited. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, they began to legislate on the basis of their racist worldview. A central goal of Nazi policy was exclusion and, ultimately, the annihilation of Jews. It often claimed to empirically demonstrate the inherent superiority of Europeans over the non-European subjected ‘races’. It later became a fundamental component of Nazi ideology.

Believing in the Aryan kinship of Iranians, German Orientalists and cultural emissaries introduced the Aryan myth into Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. The convenient intellectual device produced from this curious importation is well known: Iranians are part of the Aryan race and thwarted from their glory by religious and cultural miscagenation with Semites (in this case the Jews, and Sunni Arabs).

The Nazis were careful to use ‘Aryan’ themes. Erwin Ettel, a German ambassador to Iran from 1939 to 1941, emphasized the use of such themes in his “general guidelines for propaganda to Iran” while he also insisted that “Germany’s battle against World Judaism” should also be directed “against the Jews in Iran, who want to force the Aryan Iranian people under their yoke”.

In 1951, Sumka, the Iranian Nation-Socialist Party, was explicitly modeled on the Nazi Party and, alongside other far-right groups such as the Pan-Iranian Party, it sponsored attacks on local Jews and leftists in Iran while boasting about the ‘Aryan’ race that the majority of Iranians supposedly belonged to. It is remarkable that although both terms ‘Aryan’ and ‘race’ have fallen into disuse in the West, they are a fundamental component of modern Iranian political thinking among Iranian leaders.

Since 1952, when diplomatic relations were established between the Federal Republic of Germany and Iranian Islamic Republic, diplomatic relations were close and resulted in numerous technological, cultural, and industrial bi-lateral agreements. However, the volume of trade has decreased significantly in recent years as a result of the sanctions against Iran, primarily from the United States’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the sanctions unilaterally imposed by the United States.

Nevertheless, there is still considerable interest in bilateral cultural and academic exchange between the two countries’ civil societies. One can only conclude that had Germany not been forced to end their close bi-lateral relations with Iran due to American sanctions, not only Israel but the whole of Western societies would be under the existential threat posed by Iran on the world.

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