Author: Mick Hartley

A few weeks back I featured a Tablet article from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science, arguing that the Gaza Ministry of Health was faking the casualty figures. Now here's an article in Fathom from Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone, and Gregory Rose – Statistically Impossible: A Critical Analysis of Hamas’s Women and Children Casualty Figures. This despite the figures being regularly cited by media world-wide – including of course the BBC:

The Gazan Ministry of Health (MoH) has repeatedly claimed that 70 per cent of Gazan deaths are women and children. We first found the claim in the MoH’s 11 December 2023 report. In 2024, the MoH has repeated this claim in all seven of its reports that we have been able to obtain so far this year (see Figure 2). The 70 per cent figure has also been widely cited in the media, with a recent BBC factcheck even using it to criticise IDF statistics on eliminated Hamas combatants. But how trustworthy is the 70 per cent statistic? It should be kept in mind that the Gazan MoH operates under the auspices of the Hamas government, giving it a vested interest in delegitimising Israel and demonising the IDF.

It turns out this ‘70 per cent’ figure is contradicted by the statistics that the MoH itself provides in its own reports. It is a disinformation tool founded on statistical manipulation rather than realities on the ground. The BBC ‘factcheckers’ and other western media could easily have determined this for themselves, using publicly available information….

But it didn't suit the anti-Israel narrative.

The chief Hamas strategy is to see more dead Palestinians. As I've said before, it's a strange war where the "attackers" do their best to minimise civilian casualties, while the "defenders" want to see as many dead as possible. 

Imagine teaching a child to be disgusted with their perfectly healthy body. To other it, to hate it, to want to change it, and to harm it. That is prima facie child abuse.

And that is what 'gender affirmative care' does. Its mission is to teach children that their current body…

— Read some Piaget please! (@prof_curiosity1) March 27, 2024

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Imagine teaching a child to be disgusted with their perfectly healthy body. To other it, to hate it, to want to change it, and to harm it. That is prima facie child abuse.

And that is what 'gender affirmative care' does. Its mission is to teach children that their current body is wrong and is the cause of their feelings of anomie and pain – natural feelings, which all children suffer at some time.

There is nothing kind or compassionate about teaching children self hatred as transgenderism does. Its purpose is to create disgust in the child in their own body. It is the opposite of teaching body acceptance and self care.

Yet, somehow, transgenderism has managed to twist that message to make it appear that 'gender affirmative care' is kind and beneficial to children. That body hatred is normal. That children have a 'gender identity' and can be born in the wrong body. And that drugs and surgery are the ONLY solution to this adult problem that has been smeared onto our children.

This is the scandal of scandals. Not just because so many children are being damaged by transgender ideology, but because ALL institutions set up to PROTECT children from child abuse are captured and complicit in the abuse. They, too, support children harming their own bodies. Our child protection systems have failed a significant systemic test. They are not fit for purpose. And as a social worker, I am ashamed of the 'leaders' in my profession.

ze: 11pt”>“Our state must push forward with its revolutionary struggle and construction projects with the determination to eventually occupy the territory of the South Korean puppet state and liberate the groaning masses who suffer from discrimination under the jackboots of the puppet regime,” the materials concluded. 

Ah those groaning masses in South Korea – enjoying standards of prosperity and freedom North Koreans can only dream about.

The official from the youth league chapter at the Chongjin Metal Mining University who delivered the lecture went off script while attempting to arouse hostility against South Korea and the Yoon administration.

“When the time is right, we will lay waste to Seoul, the capital of our enemies, through force of arms and erect a civilized country in which life is worth living on the wreckage of that land,” the official said, according to the source. 

However, the response elicited from university students in the youth league was wholly different from the one envisioned by the North Korean authorities.

“After the lecture, young people noted with envy that while North Koreans are dragged away for the slightest slip of the tongue, organizing protests isn’t regarded as anti-state behavior [in South Korea],” the source said.

padding-left: 40px”>Visiting the UK to raise money for survivors of the terror attacks, brothers Daniel and Neriyah were held after flying in from Brussels on Sunday night to speak at a post-Purim business lunch in Manchester the following day.

“They were asking us what we came to the UK to do and I started telling them that we went through the October 7 massacre and we’re here to share our story. When they heard that, they just flipped,” said Neriyah.

He said two border control officials started to “interrogate” them, asking if he served in the army and what they did. “He was absolutely trying to fail us, to find something that will mean we cannot go into the country,” he said.

Neriyah added: “I could tell on their faces that they didn't like us.”

Neriyah and Daniel gave the officials the details of the event they had flown in to attend, a luncheon hosted by a local Chabad and organised by the Jewish Business Network of Greater Manchester. 

One of the officials told them: “I don’t like what you came to do here,” Neriyah said.

He added that they were subjected to questioning for nearly two hours as they watched countless other travellers passing through border control in minutes.

A video taken by Daniel showed one of the officials saying to the brothers: “Just let us do the checks we need to do and keep quiet. Look at me. We’re the bosses, not you.”

Neriyah added: “In the end, after this they don’t have anything to blame on us. So they just gave us the passports and the cop says to me, ‘I want to make sure that you’re not going to do here what you do in Gaza’.

“When he said it to me I started freaking out and I didn’t feel safe, you know?”

Neriyah said he had heard reports of antisemitism in the UK but “didn’t know how big it was” until his encounter with border officials on Sunday.

“After what happened I don’t feel safe to come back to this country again,” he said. “This is my first time and my last time here.”…

The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region reported the incident yesterday and requested an “urgent investigation” by the UK Home Office. In a letter to Manchester Airport Group shared on social media, the Chief Executive of the council Marc Levy wrote that “the only reason for their detention and interrogation was because they are Israeli.”

Levy condemned the abuse, writing that the brothers “suffer from PTSD and had come to the UK to speak of their experiences as survivors of terrorism” only to be abused by a Border Official who “was motivated by antisemitic intent.”

A nice illustration of the happy alliance between Islamists and the hard left, as played out on the Free Palestine demos in London and other western cities just about every weekend:

Hizbullah MP Ibrahim Mousawi addressed the World Workers Party International Assembly against Imperialism in Support of the Palestinian Resistance, held in New York City on January 21, 2024. Mousawi said that Hizbullah appreciates the demonstrations and statements of the World Workers Party, is fighting the Israelis and struggling against them, and the participants of the Assembly are completing this mission in another way and style. He said: “We are together one front against Israel, against the United Staes, […] and against all the Western hegemony.” The event was planned to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. Video of Mousawi’s address was uploaded to the YouTube channel of the World Workers Party.

From the Telegraph:

The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue.

“You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials.

“But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public,” he declared in his harshest comments since taking over Kabul in August 2021.

“These are all against your democracy but we will continue doing it. We both say we defend human rights – we do it as God’s representative and you as the devil’s.”

He's really looking forward to it.

“The money that they receive from the international community as humanitarian aid is just feeding them against women,” Tala, a former civil servant, told The Telegraph from the capital Kabul.

“As a woman, I don’t feel safe and secure in Afghanistan. Each morning starts with a barrage of notices and orders imposing restrictions and stringent rules on women, stripping away even the smallest joys and extinguishing hope for a brighter future,” she added.

“We, the women, are living in prison,” Tala said, “And the Taliban are making it smaller for us every passing day.”

What a betrayal that was: Biden and the US walking away and handing the country back to the Taliban.

A new survey from the Daily NK "reveals the alarming state of women’s rights in the DPRK":

Information on women’s rights in North Korea has largely been based on defector testimonies and reports submitted by the DPRK government to international organizations. But a recent survey conducted by Daily NK, with the support of the Embassy of Canada to the Republic of Korea, aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the situation. The survey involved 30 North Korean women living in the country and 10 North Korean defectors.

The survey findings were alarming. More than half of the respondents reported being sexually victimized by officials in state institutions like the national police agency and correctional centers. Furthermore, a shocking 73% said they had experienced situations in the workplace, military, or markets where officials pressured, manipulated, or tricked them into engaging in sexual activities in exchange for promotions or business opportunities.

These results highlight the widespread nature of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment in North Korea. This survey reveals the harsh reality that North Korean women face, which starkly contrasts with the regime’s portrayal of their lives. It underscores the urgent need for increased awareness, protection, and enforcement of women’s rights in North Korea.

The survey can be seen here.

ar didactic purpose. ‘This is not about the past’, he said back in December; ‘it’s about now’. We shouldn’t say ‘look what they did then’, he more recently declared in his infamous Oscars speech, but ‘look what we do now’. The point of The Zone of Interest is that the Holocaust could happen again – or, more disquietingly, that it could be happening right now. The omission of Höß’s personal capacity for physical violence is part of this refashioning of the Holocaust into an urgent modern warning: if such a thing could have been perpetrated by ‘ordinary’ bureaucrats, then we really ought to be on our guard.

Where does all this lead? Unsurprisingly, post-7 October, to Israel. The highest-rated review of The Zone of Interest on the website Letterboxd reads: ‘Truly horrifying how many people are going to watch this movie, rate it highly and bestow it awards and whatever, and then still be pro-Israel. This is literally about you.’ Glazer would seem to be open to this line of interpretation. Like so many artistic engagements with the Holocaust, The Zone of Interest exaggerates what is universal about the evils of Nazism at the cost of what was particular. This allows it to make a comment, perhaps even a ‘warning’, about contemporary politics – while sacrificing vital historical truth in the process. If Glazer’s Oscars speech is anything to go by, that might have been the point all along.

Not so much, then, the powerful film about the Holocaust that the critics claimed, more like another effort to remove its appalling specificity and present it as some kind of parable of human evil – performed by dull and shallow people who didn't really think about it, but were just doing a job. The banalisation of the Holocaust, in other words.

Here's a post of mine on Eichmann and Arendt from 2022, on the occasion of the release of “The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes”, where we hear Eichmann interviewed in Argentina, expressing pride in the part he played in the extermination of Europe's Jewish population:

“In conclusion, I must say to you… I regret nothing. I have no desire to say that we did something wrong,” Eichmann said in the recordings.

“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews I would say with satisfaction ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy.’ Then we would have fulfilled our mission. And thus, to my regret, it was not to be,'” Eichmann is heard saying in parts of the recordings that feature in the film and in which he was apparently referring to the entire Jewish population of Europe on the eve of the Holocaust.

It's the same old tactic we've seen in news reports since Oct. 7th: first the lies against Israel, then the truth:

A story on Al Jazeera’s website accusing Israeli soldiers of raping women during the attack against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists inside Shifa Hospital has been reportedly deleted.

The story was reportedly live for 24 hours before it was taken down.

Qatar-based news organisation Al Jazeera has not officially referred to the retraction, Jerusalem Post wrote.

Al Jazeera columnist and former director Yasser Abuhilalah tweeted: “It was revealed through Hamas investigations that the story of the rape of women in Al-Shifa Hospital was fabricated…

“The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.”

Well that's OK then.

many girls and women appreciate what this category offers, FIDE is correct to take the steps necessary to protect its integrity.

It's a strange pursuit, perhaps: pushing pieces round a board to defeat – to crush – your opponent. Despite the formal observation of decent manners – the cold hand-shake at the end – there's always the hint of humiliation dished out to the loser. To be really good you need to be obsessive, and very competitive – standard male characteristics. One woman commenter noted that the reason she gave up chess at college was because the mens' reaction when she beat them was so off-putting.