On that fake "starving child in Gaza" story:
Not an apology
Not a retraction
And it was posted on @NYTimesPR, which has 88k followers, instead of @nytimes, which has 55 million
So a massive lie spread across the world, and now less than 1% of the people who saw it will ever see this pathetic little footnote https://t.co/yvGcPQXi8v— Emily Gian 🎗️ (@emilygian) July 29, 2025
The UK Government says that unless there is a ceasefire by September, it will recognise Palestine as a state.
It takes both sides to agree a ceasefire.
Why would Hamas agree to a ceasefire now?
— Benjamin Butterworth (@benjaminbutter) July 29, 2025
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Refusing a ceasefire has served Hamas very well so far. The more intransigent they are, the more the West panders to them. Why change course now?
liation in exchange for obtaining life evaluation certificates. This demonstrates that worker deployment is far from “voluntary contracts,” with the report defining it as “systematic exploitation” rather than legitimate contracting.
The report noted that human rights conditions deteriorate further after dispatched workers arrive in China. Their passports are immediately confiscated by supervisors, they face 24-hour surveillance in factory dormitories, and strict controls on movement make contact with the outside world virtually impossible.
Workers endure 12-14 hour workdays and routine verbal abuse, the report revealed. Those who attempt to escape face severe punishment if caught, or are forcibly repatriated and subsequently disappear without trace of their fate. This complete deprivation of workers’ freedom to refuse labor constitutes the core requirements of forced labor as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Forced labour – or slave labour. Take your pick.
pper tribunal Judge Christopher Hanson said: “Were MS to return to Algeria and be open about his sexuality, he would be at risk of mockery, harassment, discrimination and potential harm from non-state actors.
“Were he to wear women’s clothes and makeup, he would certainly draw negative attention to himself, and would likely be subjected to ridicule, hostility and possible harm."
Oh dear.
Couldn't he wear a burkha?
Anyway, don't the Algerians have a proud tradition of celebrating men who present as women? Olympic gold boxer Imane Khelif comes to mind….
will queue politely and accept the result. This is not policy; it is therapeutic prose—designed to soothe the conscience of a continent that outsourced its moral courage to metaphors.
Gaza already answered the question Macron refuses to ask. In 2005, Israel uprooted every Jew, dismantled every settlement, and even removed the dead. Gaza became a laboratory. The reagents: international aid, Israeli withdrawal, and Palestinian self-rule. The result: rockets, tunnels, human shields, and ultimately the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. The experiment ran for eighteen years. The conclusion writes itself….
There is a path forward. It is not a utopia, but it is achievable:
Palestinian reform must come before international recognition, not as a reward for avoiding it.
Hamas must be defeated, not “demilitarized.” You do not negotiate disarmament with a group that views compromise as apostasy.
Education must be de-radicalized, not subsidized. Palestinian children deserve books that teach coexistence, not maps that erase Israel.
The right of return must be relinquished, not romanticized. No peace will come from imagining that Tel Aviv is negotiable.
And finally, Israel must be recognized not merely as a fact, but as a moral necessity—a refuge state for a people nearly extinguished, and the only one of its kind.
Until those terms are met, every recognition letter, every UN podium gesture, every Elysée photo-op is an act of profound irresponsibility—a theatre of virtue where tragedy is the curtain call.
Macron’s letter is already being archived as “historic.” It is no such thing. It is the bureaucratic paraphrase of a failure to learn, a polished signature at the bottom of a diplomatic hallucination. The same moral calamity that allowed Europe to whisper through the rise of Islamism at home now shouts Palestine abroad, hoping it buys a little more credibility in the salons of global virtue.
What it buys, in fact, is a narrative in which Israel becomes the permanent villain for surviving and the Palestinians the permanent victim for refusing to evolve. It preserves grievance, fossilizes failure, and punishes memory. And it dares to call that “peace.”
Let it be remembered, when the next war breaks out—and it will—that the match was struck not in Rafah or Tel Aviv, but in the offices of those who mistook theatrical compassion for strategy, and who never paid the price for their illusions. Others always do.
But very much worth reading in full.
No political group that's arisen in Palestine has ever signaled a willingness to recognise Israel. No political group that's willing to recognise Israel would stand a chance in Palestine – Gaza or the West Bank. And the more they show their hatred of Jews, and their readiness to resort to violence, the more so many in the West, from Macron on down, are willing to appease them.
More on Saturday's London "trans rights" parade – a misogynistic hate march – from Jo Bartosch at UnHerd:
Trans activism has always attracted bullies. I received my first threat nearly a decade ago — and since then, women’s rights campaigners I know have faced stalking, assault, bomb threats, and legal harassment for trying to organise meetings. Others have been pushed out of jobs or dragged through the courts.
For years, this behaviour was ignored by politicians, while Stonewall, celebrities and HR departments lent a sheen of legitimacy to demands that were unhinged from the start.
But the shine has now worn off. Thanks to a resurgent women’s movement and the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming that sex means biology, the trans lobby has been dragged into the daylight. It’s come as a shock to activists who, just a few years ago, were on the brink of rewriting the law.
And, in the cold light of day, as we wake from the gender nightmare, the rampant misogyny at its heart becomes too obvious to ignore.
There was no mandate for this movement’s demands. Changes to law and policy were pushed through by stealth, with lobby groups co-opting employers through training sessions and model policies. But when the public caught on, they said no. And for those used to getting their way, “no” is frighteningly unfamiliar.
The Government should have listened to those who first sounded the alarm. Feminists — many of whom recognise the tactics used by abusers — warned that this was never about kindness. It was always about coercion. Now, with “Arm trans people” as a rallying cry, the direction of travel is obvious. The placards at Trans+ Pride weren’t a glitch. They were a sign of things to come.
We have been warned.
Dr. @Miriam_Grossman articulated so well that the concept of gender identity has been fraudulent from its very inception. If you or your child were harmed by gender "medicine," contact us for support and to learn more about your legal options. @BrandonMShow @FTC pic.twitter.com/oFHq2UOYUI
— Transition Justice (@TransJusticeOrg) July 29, 2025
fore things go from bad to worse.
This is already happening. In the meantime, news consumers worldwide were galvanized over the weekend by disturbing photos like those of the Gazan child Muhammad al-Matouq, who appeared on the front page of Britain’s Daily Express and then on that of The New York Times and elsewhere as the symbol of Israel’s cruel starvation of innocents. After the photographs were seen around the world it became clear that the child in fact suffers from cerebral palsy and other conditions unrelated to starvation. The suffering child ended up being less the intended symbol of Israeli evil than of how genuine misery can be put to use by practitioners of narrative war.
You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true: The disaster they’ve engineered in Gaza fuels the global campaign against Israel. That’s presumably why the crescendo of hunger stories coincided on Friday with reports that Hamas has now hardened its positions in the talks, leading to their suspension. (One of Hamas’s top demands, according to an American official cited by The Wall Street Journal, is shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.)
One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop.
emitism in [add the name of a city or country]’. In reality, however, in Britain in 2025 there is every place for antisemitism. Always and everywhere.
the war narrative to be about the suffering of Palestinian civilians, destruction of Gazan infrastructure and nothing else – for the obvious reason that this ensures steady public pressure on Israel and damages its war efforts & global image /2
— Kamel Amin Thaabet (@K_AminThaabet) July 28, 2025
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"Hamas is giving Western media sources & their audience exactly what they have an appetite for: a restoration of the supposed truth -which went out of kilter on Oct. 7-that the Israelis are a brutal people with agency & that the Palestinians are helpless victims with no agency
"This restoration is also a palliative to guilt about worldwide mistreatment of Jews, past and present.
"For examples the likes of the French and Irish governments need feel no guilt over their shameful WWII roles if the Israelis are the new Nazis, perpetrators of genocide and mass starvation. They *want* these things to be true.
"In sum: it is a fact that the dominant war narrative outside of Israel and the Jewish press is Palestinian civilian suffering – and this is by calculated design. It is Hamas' great victory."