Mick Hartley

The lost world of Jewish Poland, before the Holocaust. Polish singer Olga Mieleszcsuk, with Polish Jewish composer Zygmunt Białostocki’s most famous song.

Read about her here (from 2018).

Raised as a devout Catholic, Olga set out on a journey of Jewish transformation during an interfaith visit to Auschwitz, a five-day retreat where she and other Poles met American and Israeli Jews as well as some German grandchildren of Nazi officers.

“When I started to sing in Yiddish, I had no idea about Jewish culture at all,” she said, recalling the emotional visit. “This world suddenly opened up to me in Auschwitz. I was there for five days doing meditation and tikkun olam [repairing the world]. A Hasidic rabbi sang in Hebrew and Yiddish, and I felt deeply connected with the place.”

Olga enrolled in a course on Yiddish music organized by Warsaw’s Shalom Foundation, eventually deciding it would be her mission to bring Yiddish back to the Jewish people — especially young Ashkenazim unfamiliar with the mamaloshen, or mother tongue, of their ancestors.

Six years ago, Olga underwent an Orthodox conversion to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem.

Yiddish tango? Oh yes. Despite the glamour of modern tango, there was always something mournful about it. Legendary Argentinian singer Carlos Gardel set the pattern in 1917 with his Mi Noche Triste, forever associating tango with the feeling of tragic love. It swiftly caught on in the gloomier parts of Eastern Europe – and particularly with Jews.

“In the 1930s, Warsaw was the capital of European tango, and most of the songwriters and composers of tango were Jewish,” Olga said in an interview at a Tel Aviv cafe. “Jews continued to write tango during the Holocaust. It helped them express their sorrow.”

The genre was kept alive by Polish Jews who immigrated to Palestine during and after the war, writing Hebrew lyrics to their original pieces.

“Here, they composed love tangos, not for women but for the land — even before Israel was established,” Olga said. “In the Warsaw Ghetto, there were lots of famous cafes where people used to perform. Some poets were writing cabaret and tango pieces. In the concentration camps, there was also the story of the Gold brothers, who had their own orchestra. One ran away to the East and arrived to Palestine. The other didn’t survive.”

But modern forward-looking Israel hasn’t shown much interest:

In perhaps a sad irony, Poland’s most famous Yiddish tango singer no longer performs Jewish music in Israel — mainly because so few Israelis are interested.

“My mission to spread Yiddish around Israel failed completely,” Olga said. “For most Israelis, Yiddish music is connected to the Shoah and with the haredi Orthodox world.”

Even her own husband, Shlomi, who is of Kurdish descent, can’t stand Yiddish, she said, noting that many Sephardim, or Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent, associate Yiddish with European shtetl dwellers.

“For Sephardim, Yiddish is the essence of the Diaspora,” she said laughing. “It’s like an illness.”

On the other hand, Olga said, Americans Jews appreciate klezmer even if they can’t always follow the lyrics.

“When I was in America, I felt like a star,” she said.

Here’s another of hers – “One of the most popular Polish tangos in late 30s. It was written by Władysław Lidauer, who died in the Warsaw ghetto.”

A Muslim convert:

I wonder what attracted him to Islam.

Detransitioners will end gender ideology for good because they are the undeniable proof that the entire dogma is absolute nonsense, and nothing ends nonsense like having to pay a lot of people a lot of money. pic.twitter.com/3XfnyvCbNg

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) January 31, 2026

Will any of the 'March for Palestine' crowd today object to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran flying on their march? https://t.co/nxuoe8dWz9

— Dr Paul Stott (@MrPaulStott) January 31, 2026

Karen Pollock at the JC on the dangerous erasure of Jews from the Holocaust:

It is no secret that antisemitism has exploded. But this oldest of hatreds has now become so potent that this Holocaust Memorial Day was spent having to remind people that the Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children.

Jews are being omitted – accidentally or otherwise – from the narrative. Our national broadcaster, the BBC, referred to six million “people”, without being specific about who these people were. A council in Hampshire remembered the “12 million people killed in the Second World War” without mentioning Jews. A community event in Bolton opined about Gaza.

The BBC issued a belated apology but British Jews can’t shake the question – why is this happening so frequently?

The painful reality is that the Holocaust is being distorted, rewritten and universalised before our eyes.

It should go without saying that there is a clear consensus amongst leading historians, authorities and museums that the Holocaust refers specifically to the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis and their collaborators. The Nazis’ aim to wipe out the Jews was referred to as their “Final Solution to the Jewish question”.…

In a world where antisemitism is allowed to run rampant, it has somehow become controversial to tell the truth; to be honest that the Holocaust was the systematic and state-sponsored attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. It happened, and could only happen, on the back of millennia of antisemitism. We often hear well-meaning people talk about why the Holocaust is important, and one reason often given is “because it could have happened to me”. But the Holocaust was not an example of people against people, or an example of good vs evil. Jews were not crammed into gas chambers because they were people; people were crammed into gas chambers because they were Jews.

It matters not because it puts Jewish suffering above other suffering and not because Jews want sympathy. It matters because it is the truth.

Antisemitism festered for decades under the cover of anti-Zionism, coming originally from the Soviet Union but combining with anticolonial elements on the hard left. The October 7th pogrom suddenly allowed all that to burst out as naked antisemitism, as the old pieties were swept away. People – on the left, it has to be said – suddenly found themselves able to voice what they’d felt all along. They always resented having to bow before the suffering of the Jews, and at last they could turn the tables – with barely disguised glee. October 7th was like 9/11 in that way. The world changed.

The oldest hatred was back. We’d fooled ourselves into thinking it was dead and buried – but here we are.

Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry at the JC on the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’ across European universities.

Not a week passes without another open letter from academics – often amassing hundreds or even thousands of signatures within days – denouncing Israel in the strongest terms. Across Europe, dozens of universities have now severed ties with Israeli institutions, citing alleged complicity in genocide – or at the very least, systematic war crimes.…

In reality, the accusation of genocide is as obscene as it is absurd. Netanyahu and his far-right cronies may be guilty of many things, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that Israel intends to exterminate Gazans, and abundant evidence to the contrary. The eagerness of Western intellectuals to nonetheless accuse Israel of genocide is by now depressingly familiar, as is their blindness to Hamas’s cynical war tactics and the extraordinarily difficult conditions under which Israel has had to pursue its legitimate aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. In my latest book, Het verraad aan de verlichting (The Betrayal of Enlightenment), I trace this reflex to a postcolonial ideology that casts the West as perpetual oppressor and anti-Western forces as inherently virtuous victims.…

In the Low Countries, where I live, my stance on Gaza has left me increasingly isolated within the ivory tower. The rector of my alma mater, Ghent University, declared that any academic questioning the genocide in Gaza can no longer rely on the protections of academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” Five professors have called on the previous rector to discipline me for my “Zionist-tinged” views. I’ve also been deplatformed twice at the University of Amsterdam for my view on Israel.​

It’s not that Boudry is alone in his views. Many, in fact, share his views but are afraid to speak out.

And yet, for the past two years, I have been receiving regular emails from academic colleagues that can be summarised as follows: “I completely agree with you and am glad that you’re fighting this battle, but please keep it quiet – I don’t want to get into trouble.” The social pressure to condemn Israel has become so intense that many “dissidents” no longer dare to speak out.

This reluctance to speak up gives rise to what psychologists call pluralistic ignorance: people mistakenly assume that they are alone in holding a dissenting opinion and therefore either remain silent or misrepresent their own views, inadvertently perpetuating the illusion of consensus and raising the social cost of dissent, as Steven Pinker notes in his book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.

So he asked academics to share their anonymous views on Gaza and Israel.

A senior lecturer at a Dutch university writes: “I’m afraid to share my thoughts freely with my colleagues and feel restricted in my freedom to speak openly about this.” A philosophy professor describes the academic debate on the war in Gaza as effectively “impossible”, writing that “Critical voices are silenced through exclusion, dismissal, and sometimes even violence. In such circumstances, I don’t feel compelled to express my critical thoughts openly.” Another Dutch lecturer admits: “I certainly keep my mouth shut about my views to my colleagues.”

A colleague at my own faculty calls the accusation of genocide “sickening” and a form of “cynical manipulation”, yet she is terrified of speaking out. She avoids the topic in conversations with colleagues and students, confessing to “self-censorship” to protect herself. Another academic explains why: after signing a petition opposing the anti-Israel boycott, he was “shunned for weeks by colleagues in our department”. Yet another professor said he received a warning “to be careful what I say around certain colleagues”. In today’s academic climate, speaking out in support of Israel is widely regarded as tantamount to “academic suicide”.

A grim read.

The “Gaza genocide” accusation is a baseless claim that signals ideological allegiance precisely because it defies logic and evidence. Deep down everyone understands that it’s nonsense, but that is precisely what allows it to serve as an ideological litmus test. Breaking the spiral of silence will require more people to step forward and call out such nonsense, thereby lowering the social cost of dissent.

Roland Oliphant in the Telegraph on the end of Kurdish-run Rojava:

For Kurds, it was the nearest thing they had to a country. For idealistic foreigners, a noble experiment in socialism. For the West, a convenient ally against terror group Islamic State (IS). Now, the entity known as Rojava – an independent Kurdish statelet in north-eastern Syria – is at an end.

Launched two weeks ago, a Syrian government offensive against Rojava’s Kurdish fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has routed them from a vast swathes of the Euphrates valley, including the country’s largest oil field and the sprawling al-Hol prison camp.

Troops have advanced towards a second camp at al-Roj, which holds women – including Britain’s own Isis bride Shamima Begum. Alarmed US forces have been evacuating the remaining male Isis prisoners to fresh camps in neighbouring Iraq.

Now the sides say they have reached a final peace settlement – one that amounts to a Kurdish surrender.…

The offensive reflected the determination of former jihadist, now Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa to unify the country under central rule for the first time since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. It also demonstrates his willingness to use force to do so.

It also underscores his success in wooing the great powers in the region: his offensive against Rojava has been supported by Turkey, given the nod by Israel, and largely ignored by the US, Britain and France – formerly the SDF’s main patrons and allies.

For the Kurds, it is a bitter betrayal and a hard lesson in realpolitik: despite shedding blood alongside US forces to defeat IS, and gallantly guarding the terror group’s prisoners ever since, their erstwhile allies have decided that they are no longer useful.

The al-Hol prison camp? That’s where some 24,000 prisoners are held, most with links to ISIS. The Kurdish SDF were guarding them – and now they’re not.

A possible ISIS resurgence, then? Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was himself a former jihadi, though not with ISIS – and he’s made the right noises about continuing to police the camp. But what does Turkey want? They’re largely pulling the strings here, and they have no love at all for the Kurds.

"She was referred to as Jennifer O’Brien throughout a sentencing hearing."
She? No, "HE"
He is a man. Stop insulting your readers @DailyMirror #NotOurCrimes https://t.co/XxBCQ2oskM

— Gill R (@thespiralquirk) January 29, 2026

From the Mirror article:

A TikToker has been jailed for raping a woman ‘at least 10 times’.

Jennifer O’Brien, 34, was locked up for 17 years for sexual and violent offences committed against the victim who told the court of the ‘deeply damaging’ effect her ordeal has caused her.

The defendant, who the court was told transitioned from a man to a woman, raped the victim despite her making it clear she did not want sex. O’Brien, known as Jennifer Nieve on TikTok and has tens of thousands of followers, was alleged to have become ‘aggressive’ if she did not comply.

Referred to as ‘Jordan O’Brien aka Jennifer Nieve’ in court documents, the defendant was found guilty after a five-day trial at Manchester Crown Court last year. She was convicted of rape, assault by penetration, threatening with an offensive weapon and another serious offence.

Lovely eye-lashes though.

Hanging in the White House, alongside family photos https://t.co/y49F2H856z

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) January 29, 2026

From the article:

Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s key negotiator, welcomed the news, saying: “Good. A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Indeed.

Not only must North Koreans attend the showing of propaganda videos: they must pay attention. There’s a new drive to “root out the attitude of perfunctory participation where only bodies are present”. The Orwellian dream lives on.

Amid ongoing propaganda film study sessions praising the greatness of Kim Jong Un in South Hamgyong province, authorities are treating young people who dozed off during the sessions as serious political issues.

A Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province reported on Jan. 30 that workplaces in Hamhung and other regions have conducted propaganda film study sessions since early January, and authorities are subjecting some young people to ideological struggle sessions for dozing off.

In the past, when people dozed off or chatted with others during study sessions or lectures, lecturers would simply give warnings. However, authorities have recently been responding harshly by treating such behavior as serious political issues and putting offenders on the stage of ideological struggle sessions, the source explained.…

The documentary films shown in recent propaganda film study sessions focus on highlighting that Kim is working day and night to improve people’s lives, and that workers are building rural houses and constructing local industrial factories under his guidance.

North Korea requires everyone to participate in such sessions, which serve as powerful tools for regime propaganda and unity. However, people who feel fatigued by the repeatedly glorifying messages only participate in the sessions perfunctorily without concentrating.

Accordingly, authorities have ordered party committees to organize ideological struggle sessions featuring those who show insincere attitudes during study sessions for the purpose of raising vigilance.