It is pretty simple: If Qatar can arrange for a hostage to be freed, they can influence the captors. Freeing one while others remain means they’re not just mediators — they’re complicit in keeping the rest in captivity. — David Wolpe (@RabbiWolpe) May 12, 2025 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Qatar are the (not so) hidden force now behind…

Melanie Phillips in the Times wonders how many of the London audience for Giant, the play about Roald Dahl's antisemitism, are in fact on Dahl's side. Last week I finally got to see Giant, the much-acclaimed play by Mark Rosenblatt about the antisemitism of the children’s author Roald Dahl. It’s superbly written and magnificently acted.…

Another BBC Arabic reporter. Honoured, this time. A BBC Arabic correspondent who previously praised the “exquisite journalism” of a Holocaust revisionist has been named as one of the winners at the British Council’s Study UK Alumni Awards. Layla Bashar Al-Kloub, a senior journalist at the public broadcaster, has also previously condemned the “Zionist entity”, labelled Israel as “terrorists”, and…

BBC Woman's Hour is starting, from today, to hear "different perspectives on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman under the Equality Act. We’ll look at the practical questions it raises for organisations, businesses and individuals". First up today, in keeping with its proud tradition of prioritising men at every…

You have to wonder what world Matthew Parris lives in. Why are we closing our eyes to Gaza’s horror? Why does the world look away? Are we simply bored, or do we flinch from the wreckage, the famine and the blood in Gaza? Are these horrors beyond the bandwidth of modern Britain as we burble…

This needed saying. A Times editorial: The arrest of four Iranians last week over an alleged terror plot, described by Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, as one of the biggest threats Britain had seen in years, underlined the ongoing and extremely dangerous attempts by Iran to kill dissidents living abroad, sponsor terrorist attacks and spread…

Joan Smith at UnHerd on the Government-backed data bill that opens the door to gender self-ID: If MPs get their way, people could soon be entitled to possess an officially sanctioned app that falsifies their sex. The proposal effectively introduces a form of self-ID in this country, flying in the face of last month’s Supreme…

Photos from a bike ride down the Lea to Docklands: Lea boats by the Hertford Union Canal. Black and blue. New build. Dockland trees. Millwall Inner Dock. View from Rotherhithe. With cruise ship. Bascule bridge at Surrey Quays.

(1) MAJOR BREAKING STORY ON THE DARLINGTON NURSES This is why it is untenable for men to have access to female changing rooms in the NHS. Karen Danson, a Darlington nurse, anonymous until now, has gone public on her chilling story on how, after saying that she has experienced… pic.twitter.com/FqkOaBemRH — Christian Concern (@CConcern) May…

The embrace of gender has led, predictably enough, to an increased stress on sex stereotypes – as exemplified by the latest Met Gala, where men are men, and women, especially, very much dress and present themselves as pornified fashion objects. Those who feel they can't match these fantasy visions of masculinity and femininity, as a…