Antisemitism, Antizionism, Jihadism and the Reunited Germany. News by Fred Alan Medforth
On this week’s show host Rafe Heydel-Mankoo and panellists Michael Murphy of Outpost Studios, Celeste Warren of the Free Speech Union and Alex Story, writer for The Critic discuss:
Europe’s leaders have pulled off a rare feat: open friction with the three powers the continent actually needs.
They outsourced energy to Russia, industrial inputs and competitiveness to China, and hard security to the United States. When those bargains broke, they chose confrontation on all three fronts before alternatives existed. The bill is high energy costs, high interest rates, collapsing industrial investment, and almost no strategic freedom of action.
The energy bet was the most obvious. Before 2022 the EU took roughly 40 percent of its gas and a quarter of its oil from Russia. After the war in Ukraine started it cut the pipes, banned most coal and oil, and pivoted to expensive LNG and Norwegian gas. Russia’s share of EU gas demand fell sharply, yet the transition remains incomplete and costly. Residual LNG still arrives, long-term contracts run into 2027, and storage has been lower than recent winters. Households and industry paid the difference. Some demand was simply destroyed.
That shock landed on an industrial base already shaped by earlier choices: phase out nuclear and domestic fossils while counting on cheap pipeline gas. The result is a structural energy premium. EU industrial power prices have run 1.5–2 times U.S. levels on a sustained basis. Gas settled well above pre-2022 norms. High interest rates, kept elevated by the ECB’s inflation fight, compound the damage by raising the cost of capital. New plants, retrofits, and capacity expansions that might have been marginal under high energy prices alone become unviable when borrowing is also expensive.
The industrial numbers show the squeeze. In chemicals—the feedstock for ammunition, vehicles, electronics, and much else—announced closures have removed roughly 9 percent of capacity since 2022, with the pace accelerating. New investment collapsed by more than 80 percent in 2025. Output continues to weaken. Energy-intensive segments across metals and basic chemicals have seen multi-year drops of 20–30 percent or more in several countries. Higher energy and financing costs shrink competitiveness, idle plants, and divert capital. The continent is quietly becoming more dependent on Chinese intermediates precisely where defense and strategic production need them.
China was the parallel dependency. The goods deficit has approached €360 billion a year. More important is the concentration in rare-earth refining and magnets essential for EVs, turbines, electronics, and defense systems. Export restrictions produce immediate cost spikes and production risks. “De-risking” language and the Critical Raw Materials Act have not matched the scale or speed of exposure. Chinese overcapacity and selective market access continue to pressure European factories while Europe’s own high energy and capital costs make matching that capacity harder.
Security dependence on the United States remains the third leg. Europe still relies on the nuclear umbrella, high-end air and maritime power, ISR, and logistics. U.S. conventional posture is under review and already thinner in places. Replacing key American enablers would require hundreds of billions of euros and hundreds of thousands of additional personnel. Rearmament therefore runs into the same industrial constraints: steel, aluminum, chemicals, energy, and specialized facilities are more expensive to produce or expand under Europe’s energy and interest-rate regime. Each euro of defense spending buys less physical output than it would under lower costs.
Europe chose to forego cheap Russian gas, open markets with China without reciprocity, discard nuclear and bank on a peace dividend without residual strength. Those choices now leave it facing Russia, China, and the United States while energy costs and high interest rates make every new ton of steel or chemical more expensive and every factory harder to build. Ambition without affordable energy or capital is not a strategy. It is an inevitable decline.
A transgender former teacher in Loudon County, Virginia, has been found guilty after threatening to commit a “murder spree” at a local school and cannibalize the corpses of his victims. Hadyn James Dollery, who also goes by the name “Sophie” and “Cotton Candy,” was found guilty of four of five criminal charges last Friday and faces up to 25 years in prison.
The court heard how Dollery, 19, sent disturbing messages through online messaging platform Discord in April of 2026 and prompted heightened security at two local schools before his arrest. Dollery was convicted of two counts of threatening to injure or kill a person, one count of making threats on school grounds and one count of threatening to damage a building.
The four convictions carry a potential maximum prison sentence of 25 years, although no minimum sentence is required, and sentencing is expected to take place in the coming months. The case has renewed attention on school safety in Loudoun County, a Northern Virginia school district that has faced several high-profile controversies involving alleged threats, student misconduct and administrative accountability in recent years, specifically involving transgender perpetrators.
Dollery had worked as a non-licensed substitute teacher at Eagle Ridge Middle School, while John Champe High School, located in the Aldie area of Loudoun County, was identified as the target of his threats. Prior to becoming a substitute teacher, Dollery was a local student and amateur theater performer.
According to Loudoun Now, the messages at the center of the case were sent on April 15, one day after Dollery experienced a break-up with his romantic partner.
Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Dircia Schubert told jurors that Dollery contacted the former boyfriend at approximately 1:49 a.m via Discord and sent a slurry of messages, including threats to kill the former boyfriend and members of the former boyfriend’s family. Dollery also threatened members of his own family, and promised a “murder spree” at the former boyfriend’s school. Disturbingly, Dollery also described plans to cannibalize one of the victims after killing them.
Prosecutors said the threats were reported to law enforcement by the former boyfriend and another person through Safe2Talk, an application designed to allow students and community members to report potential safety concerns. The reports prompted an investigation into the communications and the possibility that the messages represented a danger to the people named and the school identified as a potential target. Schubert told the jury that Dollery later messaged the former boyfriend about returning a shirt, adding that he wanted it back “if I’m deemed fit to work after this shit I’m about to do.”
Prosecutors presented that statement as part of the wider context of the communications and Dollery’s awareness that his actions could have consequences for his employment.
School officials at Eagle Ridge Middle School, where Dollery had worked, and John Champe High School, the target of the alleged threats, reportedly considered the messages credible and assigned additional security to both schools while authorities investigated. Dollery was arrested in April, several days after the messages were sent. According to reporting on the case, he was taken into custody away from school grounds and subsequently removed from the list of available substitute teachers for Loudoun County Public Schools. The decision to increase security reflected officials’ assessment that the reported statements warranted precautionary measures while law enforcement worked to locate Dollery and evaluate the potential threat.
Evidence discussed during the trial included a box cutter found in Dollery’s backpack and information recovered from his phone. Schubert told jurors that the box cutter was in his backpack and that phone records showed the device had been used to search Google for information about blood.
During the trial, Dollery’s defense attempted to characterize the threats and weapon as “teenage drama” and Dollery being “desperate for attention,” arguing that the prosecution was blowing the threats out of proportion.
The trial therefore centered on the meaning and seriousness of the messages, the context in which they were sent and whether the evidence established the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors argued that the alleged threats against individuals and a school, together with the other evidence presented, demonstrated the seriousness of the conduct.
After beginning deliberations on October 8, the jury returned to court the next day and found Dollery guilty on four of five total counts. The jury acquitted Dollery on the third count of threatening to injure or kill a person.
Following the verdict, defense attorneys told Judge Matthew Snow that they planned to ask the court to grant Dollery bond the following week. A bond request is separate from sentencing and does not alter the convictions returned by the jury. The court will determine whether to grant the request under the applicable legal standards, while sentencing will establish the punishment imposed for the offenses.
The maximum potential prison term reported for the four convictions is 25 years, but that figure represents the upper limit rather than a prediction of the sentence Dollery will receive. A sentencing hearing is expected to be scheduled in the coming weeks.
Dollery’s case has unfolded against the backdrop of earlier school safety controversies in Loudoun County, including a pair of sexual assaults at two separate high schools in 2021 that prompted intense public scrutiny of the school district’s handling of student misconduct allegations.
Those incidents involved a 15-year-old “gender fluid” male student who was given access to the female restrooms on the basis of his self-declared “gender identity.”
The first incident occurred at Stone Bridge High School on May 28, 2021. According to court proceedings and later investigative reports, the student, who was able to be identified as Hunter Heckel after he turned 18, sexually assaulted a female classmate in a school bathroom. Some reports suggested he was wearing a skirt at the time of the attack.
A juvenile court judge subsequently found him responsible for the offense. After he was barred from returning to Stone Bridge, the student was transferred to Broad Run High School, where he sexually assaulted another female student in an empty classroom.
In November 2021, a juvenile court judge found him responsible for the second incident following a no-contest plea to charges involving abduction and sexual battery. The fact that the same student was involved in two incidents at separate schools became a central focus of national public concern, particularly as questions of what role the school board’s gender identity policies played in their inadequate measures to protect female students.
In December 2022, a special grand jury released a report sharply criticizing Loudoun County Public Schools’ handling of the incidents. The report identified serious communication failures among school administrators and other agencies, as well as missed opportunities to respond more effectively before the second assault. The grand jury also concluded that former Superintendent Scott Ziegler had made a false statement during a June 2021 school board meeting when he denied knowing about sexual assaults in school bathrooms.
A separate third-party review made public in September 2023 also criticized the district’s handling of its Title IX responsibilities, which concern sex-based discrimination and sexual harassment in educational settings. The review found that the school system should have acted more promptly in investigating the first incident.
Heckel was subsequently released from a juvenile treatment center in 2024 despite a judge noting that his psychosexual assessment report was highly concerning.
Criticizing Quranic teachings on women, raising alarms about Islamist influence or using phrases such as ‘illegal migrants’ could invite Islamophobia complaints against British Green Party members in the future under a ridiculously wide-ranging guide published by the party’s Muslim wing. The document stretches the concept of religious prejudice into virtually every corner of political debate, from border controls and LGBTQ rights to candidate selection and even the choice of venue for a party social event.
The document has been proposed for inclusion in the Green Party of England and Wales’ ethics framework, and its central premise is essentially that ‘Islamophobia’ encompasses not merely discrimination against Muslims but also ‘biases against the religion of Islam itself’. By contrast, even the Labour government’s already highly controversial March 2026 definition of Islamophobia expressly protects criticism and ridicule of Islam.
Among the guide’s examples of Islamophobia is the suggestion that Quranic teachings are ‘backward and reductive to women’. Elsewhere, however, it solemnly declares that criticism of religious doctrine and misogyny remains permissible. How members are supposed to reconcile those instructions is left unexplained. Apparently, one may challenge oppression, but not the religious texts invoked to justify it.
‘Even discussing a criminal suspect’s immigration background would face restrictions’
The same selective approach to religious criticism appears in the document’s treatment of homosexuality. Under the heading ‘homonationalism’, the guidance attacks the supposed exploitation of LGBTQ rights to portray Islam as hostile to homosexuality and attributes the ‘vast majority’ of anti-gay legislation across former colonies in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to British imperialism.
While Britain did export such laws, the guide conveniently overlooks the independent role of Islamic law in criminalizing homosexuality. Nigeria retains colonial-era prohibitions alongside Sharia-based penalties in its northern states, while Iran, which was never colonized by Britain, punishes certain same-sex acts with death under its Islamic Penal Code.
The immigration provisions identify ‘illegal migrants’, ‘foreign criminals’, ‘failed integration’, ‘parallel communities’, ‘no-go areas’ and ‘Sharia law’ as potentially Islamophobic coded language, making it practically impossible to debate immigration within the party.
Green representatives would be prohibited from describing migration as an ‘invasion’, ‘swarm’ or ‘flood’, while immigration proposals would undergo so-called anti-Islamophobia assessments before publication. Even discussing a criminal suspect’s immigration background would face restrictions. Debate on border policy would likewise be subjected to ideological vetting.
Within the party itself, excluding candidates out of fear that ‘extremists/terrorist sympathisers’ could take over party structures is identified as an example of Islamophobia, without clearly distinguishing religious stereotyping from credible concerns about political entryism. The guidance also says Muslims must not be required to condemn grooming gangs, terrorism, misogyny or antisemitism.
Organizing all social events around alcohol in a way that excludes observant Muslims, or gathering vaguely defined electoral data that ‘undervalues’ Muslim communities, also makes the list. Candidates would face mandatory digital anti-Islamophobia training, and even messages shared in private WhatsApp groups would come under scrutiny. The Muslim Greens also recommend training and local events for November’s Islamophobia Awareness Month.
‘Candidates would face mandatory digital anti-Islamophobia training’
The proposals have emerged amid an increasingly bitter struggle over the party’s ideological direction, driven explicitly by growing Muslim influence. On 4 October, the Greens adopted a policy declaring ‘Zionism is racism’ by 1,022 votes to 813, despite opposition from four of the party’s five MPs. Deputy leader Mothin Ali supported the motion, while Green MP Ellie Chowns warned against capture by ‘extremists and racists’. Labour has since threatened to terminate local agreements with Greens who refuse to reject the policy.
Senior Greens are now openly warning about extremist influence within their own ranks, precisely the sort of concern their Muslim wing’s proposed guidance risks turning into an accusation of Islamophobia. A party already battling over antisemitism and ideological entryism is considering rules that would make criticism of Islamic doctrine, immigration and Islamist political activism potential matters for internal discipline.
Whether the guide is actually adopted could be highly significant for the future of the Greens: whether they remain, at least in some minimal sense, true to their British political identity or fully transform into an Islamic party.
The Spanish FA have been fined by FIFA after supporters shouted Islamophobic chants during Spain’s friendly match against Egypt.
Spain have been fined £15,000 for the chants and will have to play their next international friendly with a partial stadium closure.
The incident occurred in the 10th minute of the first half, when a group of Spanish fans chanted: “Who doesn’t jump is a Muslim.”
After the chants recurred, the scoreboard displayed an anti-discrimination message, and the stadium announcer issued a warning.
Spanish police launched an investigation, and FIFA confirmed they were taking disciplinary proceedings against the Spanish soccer federation (RFEF).
RFEF argued the word “Muslim” was “neither insulting nor pejorative”.
They added that fans should be assessed under FIFA’s Article 17, which covers political, ideological, religious or offensive messages.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee rejected the claims, referring to Article 15, which deals with discrimination and racist abuse.
As part of the punishment, FIFA will close at least 15 per cent of Spain’s available seats for their next friendly.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Martin Reichardt has been fined for correcting a vulgar, factually incorrect remark made by a left-wing politician regarding her own anatomy in the German Bundestag.
The left-wing politician who initiated the explicit rhetoric faced no disciplinary action whatsoever – “not even a call to order”, according to the written objection Reichardt lodged against his own penalty.
The controversy dates back to a heated plenary session on March 19, 2026, which was focused on sexual abuse and violence against women. The debate was held to mark International Women’s Day.
During the debate, Kathrin Gebel, an MP for the left-wing Die Linke (The Left) party who took her seat in 2025, accused the AfD of using women’s rights to push an anti-immigration agenda.
When Reichardt interrupted her via verbal heckling from the floor, Gebel launched a highly explicit counter-attack.
“Mr Reichardt, the clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings – and yet you are even more sensitive,” Gebel told the chamber.
At the time, mainstream media outlets and broader left-wing commentators widely celebrated the vulgar jibe, praising it on social media platforms as a historic parliamentary “burn” against the right-wing opposition.
Though the scientific basis of the attack was flawed and Gebel’s anatomical figures were completely wrong, as modern anatomical research indicates the clitoris possesses upwards of 10,000 nerve fibres. A 2023 study by Oregon Health & Science University, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, counted an average of 10,281 nerve fibres in the glans clitoris – the first such count in humans.
Gebel was subsequently forced to upload a video acknowledging her factual error.
In an Instagram post she apologised for “talking sh*t”.
“The clitoris doesn’t have 3000 nerve endings at all – it has 10,000,” she corrected herself. “But it’s not so unusual for someone to be ignorant about the clitoris. Because the fact that we represent the clitoris correctly in medical textbooks at all is actually quite new.”
She claimed it is an example of women’s health being neglected.
Gebel also said “I would never, never call Martin Reichardt a ‘pussy’ or compare him to a vulva.”
“Because the vulva is an incredibly strong organ. It is extremely stretchy, it can withstand a lot. And my point was that Martin Reichardt can’t do that.”
On October 15, during a parliamentary debate on family policy in which four opposition motions on single parents, child poverty and maternity protection for the self-employed were tabled, Reichardt used his time at the podium to formally return fire, hitting back at Gebel’s erroneous data.
“You have been very helpful to me — you with your unqualified intervention, and you with your lack of knowledge about your own clitoris.”
Reichardt said he had done no more than highlight a factual error on a subject Gebel herself introduced to the floor. The reaction from the house leadership was swift and asymmetric.
Bundestag Vice-President Andrea Lindholz, of the Christian Social Union (CSU), who was chairing the sitting, immediately intervened, bypassing standard warnings to hit Reichardt with a formal fine. Under the Bundestag’s rules of procedure, such a penalty is set at €1,000, rising to €2,000 for a repeat offence.
Reichardt lodged a written objection the same day, arguing that his words were a factual observation and that he had used the term only because Gebel had aimed it at him first.
On October 16 the Bundestag rejected that objection without debate. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the CSU, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and Die Linke all voted to throw it out. Only the AfD backed him.
Further fuelling accusations of institutional bias, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) took to the floor on the same day to defend the enforcement.
In doing so, Klöckner appeared to introduce an entirely separate political grievance out of nowhere to justify the punishment.
“I want to say very clearly: something like this aligns itself with accusations thrown at women here in parliament that they are childless. We are in the year 2026. Women and men have equal rights!”
“In the future, we will immediately punish this with a fine if people talk so disrespectfully with and about women.”
Fitness, muscle-building, discipline and a sense of community – what for millions of people is simply part and parcel of sport is now also being cast into the shadow of the Nazi past. Extremism researcher Julia Ebner draws parallels between the sporting culture of certain far-right groups and the Hitler Youth.
The case raises a fundamental question: must everything that certain social or political circles find objectionable today inevitably be linked, sooner or later, to Nazism? Not every traditional notion is a throwback to the past. Not every sense of community is an expression of extremist sentiment. And not every well-toned physique is a reference to the 1930s.
Anyone who is constantly on the lookout for historical parallels will eventually find them everywhere – if only because, even during the Nazi era, people participated in sport, started families, belonged to clubs and went about their daily business.
After all, when even a weight bench has become the starting point for a debate about the Hitler Youth, the question eventually arises as to whether Nazi tendencies really are lurking everywhere – or whether some people are now primarily training one thing above all else: their ability to spot them everywhere.
There seems to be hardly any area of society left that is safe from historical comparisons with the Nazi era. Whether it be political attitudes, traditional gender roles, certain forms of community spirit or notions of masculinity – references to that period are sometimes made with astonishing speed. And the further back that ill-fated era lies, the quicker these comparisons are made. Now it seems that fitness is also in the firing line
In her book From Fitness to Fascism: The Dangers of Extreme Masculinity, the Austrian extremism researcher Julia Ebner examines the links between the cult of the body, ideals of masculinity and far-right movements.
In an interview with the magazine *Der Spiegel*, she explains:
“The fitness and martial arts culture of some radical movements bears clear parallels to the fitness and combat exercises of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s.”
At first glance, this statement is aimed at certain radical groups. But Ebner goes even further. In her view, the far right has, in a sense, ‘hijacked’ or ‘co-opted’ fitness culture – particularly martial arts culture, as she puts it. The left and liberals must therefore reclaim this ground. This will certainly be no easy task for the ‘let’s fight tonight’ left, for what must be going through the mind of a left-winger or Green if they take seriously their comrades’ current desire to become ‘fit for war’ or ‘capable of defence’?
Perhaps the bewildered would-be warrior might take comfort in the fact that discipline, physical strength and team spirit are neither right-wing nor left-wing traits. They form part of the foundations of many sports, and people have been training for a wide variety of reasons for a long time – even long before the Nazi era.
The Hitler Youth was no ordinary sports club, but an organisation of the National Socialist regime whose remit included, amongst other things, the political indoctrination and pre-military training of young people. The key difference, therefore, does not lie in whether someone does push-ups, lifts weights or practises martial arts, but in the political objectives being pursued through these activities.
The pathological search for parallels with Nazism is, however, a social phenomenon that extends far beyond the world of fitness. One increasingly gets the impression that certain phenomena can no longer exist without being linked to Nazism. Except, of course, in the case of the current warmongering aimed at crushing the Russians – there are, naturally, no similarities with the Nazi era.
Seventy percent of the asylum requests filed by the illegal migrants that invaded the Spanish exclave of Ceuta are now alleging persecution on the basis of their recently discovered homosexual orientation, a new report states.
Unnamed sources from Spain’s National Police disclosed to the newspaper ABC on Friday they have detected a not-so-discrete shift in how the invading migrants are trying to seek asylum in Ceuta.
Initially, and during the first month of the invasion, the migrants reportedly claimed alleged economic reasons in their asylum applications — including, but not limited to, claims of “not having a job or wanting to seek a better life in Spain.”
However, the tactic appears to have shifted in recent weeks from economic reasons to allegations of persecution in Morocco based on their claimed sexual orientation. Per the newspaper, 95 percent of the total asylum applications filed by the invading migrants come from Moroccan nationals, with all other nationalities collectively representing the remaining five percent.
Islam is the largest religion in Morocco with more than 99 percent of the population adhering to it.
The sudden surge in sexual orientation persecution claims has reportedly prompted authorities to believe that the migrants are receiving some form of “advice” by third-party entities on what steps to take to achieve their goal of staying in Spain. The Spanish National Police reportedly suspects that unspecified non-government organizations may be behind the alleged “advice.”
As of mid-October, at least 19 known asylum claims are publicly known to have been granted to migrants that invaded Ceuta — five of which were confirmed by the police to have been on alleged sexual orientation persecution claims.
In total, asylum applications presented by the invading migrants reportedly have a 99 percent rejection rate, according to the information disclosed to ABC. A minor, 0.1 percent of all Moroccan “asylum seekers” have further taken their case before the National Court.
A denied asylum application, however, does not translate into the immediate deportation of the migrant from Ceuta or Spain, as the individual must be officially notified by authorities — a procedural step that, according to the newspaper, has led to migrants abandoning the refugee center they were housed in, hiding in mountains, neighborhoods, or even in homes, making it harder for the police to determine their whereabouts.
Per the police sources, it is believed the alleged asylum seekers “circulate among themselves” any information and motives that they believe will have the better chances towards a successful asylum application.
Asked for comment on the matter, a spokesperson from Spain’s Unified Police Union (SUP) told ABC that the organization is concerned over the sudden shift in the asylum applications and is aware that such tactics are being circulated.
While this cannot in itself prove “generalized fraud,” SUP noted that all corresponding verifications must be reinforced, emphasizing asylum is a benefit that must only protect those who actually suffer persecution and not become a pathway to bypass migration laws through the use of false statements.
Additionally, the police union called for more resources and specialists to expedite the processing of the asylum applications, stressing, “Because there’s no point in denying a request if the person then disappears and the police can’t locate them.”
ABC pointed out that while sexual relations between individuals of the same are in fact punished by the Moroccan Penal Code with prison time and this may lead to plausible grounds to seek asylum protection in Spain, “it is not enough to just say you are homosexual” to be granted asylum.
“It is not essential to have already been the victim of an assault or an arrest, but there must be a sufficiently substantiated risk,” ABC stressed.
Such cases, the newspaper explained, are assessed by Spanish authorities who determine whether there is in fact a well-founded fear of persecution based on sexual orientation if a so-called asylum seeker applicant were to return to Morocco. Verification involves a series of interviews overseen by police ofifcers and extensive questionnaires that can un as long as “15 pages.”
“The Office of Asylum and Refuge reviews each case. Specialists assess the consistency of the account, personal circumstances, possible threats or acts of violence, any documentation provided, and information about the situation in the country of origin,” the newspaper explained. “They may also request clarification when there are significant contradictions.”
Numerous instances of large numbers of migrants suddenly presenting asylum requests on alleged sexual orientation persecution are not a new phenomena, but rather, a frequently recurring practice across several European nations.
As Breitbart News pointed out in September, hundreds of migrants from Pakistan have made similar allegations to request asylum in the United Kingdom under the purported claim that they had to flee from their homeland because they are “gay.”
In April, a report from the BBC revealed the existence of a “shadow industry” helping migrants pretend to be gay to substantiate their asylum applications in Britain, alleging a purported persecution on basis of their sexual orientation back at home.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has condemned the planned early release of the woman who hid the knife used to murder Henry Nowak, calling it “an insult to decency”.
Kiran Kaur, 53, was jailed for three years in July for assisting an offender after removing the weapon used by her son, Vickrum Digwa, to kill the 18-year-old student. She is due to be freed this December under Labour’s early release scheme, around the first anniversary of Henry’s death.
“The mother of Henry Nowak’s murderer is set to be released early this December thanks to Labour”, Farage said. “That would be one third of the way through her sentence. This is an insult to decency.”
Henry was walking home from a night out in Southampton when Digwa fatally stabbed him before falsely claiming that the teenager had racially abused him. Believing his killer’s account, police arrested and handcuffed Henry as he lay dying, despite his repeated pleas that he had been stabbed and could not breathe. The officers’ failure to provide immediate first aid is now under investigation by the police watchdog.
Digwa was subsequently jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years, while his mother received three years for taking the murder weapon home to obstruct the investigation.
Kaur, an Indian national, is eligible for the government’s deportation scheme, however no decision has yet been taken on whether she will be removed. She is also appealing against her three-year sentence, with a hearing scheduled for early November.
Her expected release comes as Labour frees thousands of prisoners to ease overcrowding. Around 650 were released this week, following 700 earlier this month.
Farage demanded that Kaur face the full consequences of her crime: “She disposed of the murder weapon. She should serve her sentence in full and then be deported.”
by Giulio Meotti
The New York Times, which apologized and had to remove after publication an unfortunate sentence from an article on NAZA (the sentence was: “Israelis continue largely to see themselves as victims of October 7″), is the only misstep in an operation chiselled to perfection, with the pro-Palestinian communications machine running at full speed.
The documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, in which anonymous voices accuse Israel of genocide, is a kind of “Merchant of Venice” with the IDF in place of Shylock. The creditor who becomes the executioner. Premiere it at one of the world’s most prestigious festivals and show it to a handful of journalists, film critics and celebrities already aligned with political correctness. Late entry into competition: NAZA is announced in Venice on 24 August.
“Not bringing it would have been cowardly,” says the director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera.
Win a prize. Beat the applause record. Spark a chorus of enthusiastic reviews that denounce “Israeli genocidal policy.” Make sure Israeli politicians and military officials condemn it, with some ministers evoking the loss of citizenship for the two directors. Present that condemnation as further proof of the film’s courage. Ignore Hamas’s enthusiasm for the film as an embarrassing detail; the Israeli condemnation exhibited as further proof of truth.
Thus, once fixed on the big screen, a myth is much harder to dismantle. Now the documentary is hailed in the world’s movie theaters.
Venice was the perfect stage.
Last year it was “The Voice of Hind Rajab” that received a standing ovation of 23 minutes and 50 seconds, later sold to the press as “the longest in the history of film festivals.” The film does not take viewers to Gaza, but to Ramallah. The story unfolds in the offices of the Palestinian Arab Red Crescent. We do not see the Gaza neighbourhood from which Hind’s family was fleeing. We do not see Israeli forces, Hamas terrorists, the tunnels, the evacuations or the warnings. The tragedy is severed from the events that precipitated it. The war becomes an abstraction. Responsibility lies only with the Israelis, who are never named. The Jewish State exists only as a faceless, voiceless presence: an invisible force, pure evil.
Meanwhile Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler had to give up being seen in Venice. The former because she is Israeli, the latter because he raised funds for the Israeli army. It seems that about a hundred Italian pro-Palestinian Arab actors and directors did not want to see them in Venice and asked that Gadot and Butler be boycotted. No scandal.
Then NAZA arrives.
24 and a half minutes of applause, just enough time to surpass “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” with director Barbera watching the clock waiting for NAZA to set the new record. Meanwhile Susan Sarandon at 79 donned the clothes of victimhood (“I am excluded from Hollywood because I am pro-Palestinian”).
The Guardian, a British newspaper with a glorious past and an ideological present, is the film’s main producer and will now stream it for free. The same Guardian that hosts articles by Marwan Barghouti: serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison not because he dreams of “peace,” but because he ordered the killing of many Israelis in the Second Intifada. Since 2 January 2001, the day it published an article by Faisal Bodi titled “Israel has no right to exist,” the Guardian has made anti-Israelism an editorial badge of honour.
And here the producers of NZA enter the scene.
They are the director of the highly awarded “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer, and his producer, James Wilson. On Oscar night, Glazer caused a scandal by saying he did not want his own Jewishness and the Holocaust used to justify Israel’s war against Hamas. In NAZA coinciding with Israel’s commemoration of the anniversary of the Holocaust, we see the façade of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and the programme that includes “Shoah,” Claude Lanzmann’s masterpiece.
Shortly afterwards, one of the military figures who all appear in shadow in the film recalls a trip to Poland with his family to honour the memory of his ancestors who were exterminated and then says: “The Nazis were the devil, but what am I?”
A refined blow. The Shoah is not denied: it is used as a mirror for Israel. There is no need to erase Auschwitz. It is enough to reflect it onto Israel.
But Lanzmann, who died in 2018 in Paris, was one of the filmmakers most committed to Israel’s defence and also made a five-hour documentary titled “Tsahal” on the Israeli army.
The analogy with “The Zone of Interest” is taken up by Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi in an article published on 12 June this year, referring to an advertisement by actress Gwyneth Paltrow for a residential complex in Herzliya. The thesis is that Israeli civilians living eighty kilometres from Gaza are complicit in Nazi-style evil.
Also involved in NAZA is +972 Magazine, an Israeli far-left outlet which has received grants from the Open Society Foundations every year from 2018 to 2024, totalling $562,900. George Soros’s Open Society has always been aligned against Israel. It is not a conspiracy. It is an ecosystem. This does not prove that Soros and the Open Society financed NAZA.
But the funding and the context are not irrelevant. Apart from reader donations, over the years the magazine that produced NAZA has also received funding from foreign foundations linked to progressive causes (“How we are funded” on their site is very transparent), such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The latter is linked to the Green Party in Germany.
Let me repeat: It is not a conspiracy, it is an ecosystem.
This year a film financed by Qatar (a financier of Hamas) through the Doha Film Institute, “La Maison du Vent,” instead won the Lion of the Future in Venice. Of more than eighty films in contention this year on the Lido, eight were projects supported by the Doha Film Institute. And here we return to NAZA. Because James Wilson, one of the producers of NAZA and Jonathan Glazer, its executive producer, are also the producers of “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” financed by the Doha Film Institute.
It does not matter that Israel dropped seven million leaflets on Gaza, made more than seventy thousand direct phone calls, sent more than thirteen million text messages and left more than fifteen million pre-recorded voice messages to inform civilians of the need to leave combat zones, indicating where to go and which route to follow, or that it used drones equipped with loudspeakers.
None of this matters to those who accuse Israel of “genocide.” Who built the tunnels? Who occupied them? Who stored weapons there and held innocents hostage? Who declared that the tunnels were meant for fighters rather than civilians? Not relevant.
The twenty-five minutes of applause for NAZA were not for the film: they allowed Venice’s cultured and well-off audience to reassure themselves of their anti-Zionist passion (but not antisemitic, they repeat, since they always find a Jew ready to blame his own people).
Would they have applauded an Israeli documentary that described with the same meticulousness Hamas’s methods, the 1,200 Israelis killed in less than three hours, the thousands of tunnels dug under Gaza? Would the Venice hall have stood up?
Someone, perhaps. Perhaps twenty-five seconds.
Because, to put it in the words of Soviet writer Sergei Dovlatov, “progressive humanity demands of Israel a noble suicide.”
The next anti-Israel applause in Venice will last twenty-six minutes.
