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1 month ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | Howard Jacobson
There are walkers and joggers, sitters and standers, sleepers and sloggers. It all comes down, in the end, to which we more comfortably inhabit: our bodies or our heads. I am so dedicated a sitter that it can surprise me to discover I even have a body. Whether I began with a shape ideally suited to sitting or acquired chair-friendly contours over years of writing at a desk I don’t know.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson |Olivia Marks-Woldman
Dear Reader, Today we are pleased to announce an exciting new chapter in The Jewish Chronicle’s 184-year history by welcoming our new Editor, Daniel Schwammenthal. Daniel joins us here at the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper from the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute in Brussels where he served as its director.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Kasra Aarabi |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
“We zealous youth will not forget cowardice of the decision makers [in Syria]”, a young radical from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian regime’s paramilitary, tells me. Fault lines are emerging in the IRGC over the handling of Syria, which resulted in the collapse of Bashar al-Assad. The younger radicals are enraged at what they see as the “abandonment” of Syria. These divisions within the IRGC are causing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, major problems.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Keith Black |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
On October 7 2023, thousands of savage Hamas terrorists, determined to slaughter as many innocent civilians as possible, broke the beautiful tranquillity of a Shabbat festival morning and inflicted unimaginable horrors on thousands of men, women, and children across the south of Israel. Since then, Israel has fought a war of defence, determined to rescue the hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas, and to ensure that these terrorists can never again perpetrate these atrocities.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Keren David |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
I bring good news – because someone has to, in a world where Jews are feeling attacked and gaslit. Strangely, both of my titbits of positivity involve graveyards, but that’s 2024 for you. The first involves my father’s grave, the wording of which has been a subject of hot debate with my siblings.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Osher Feldman |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
Waking up last Friday morning to the news that a synagogue in Melbourne had been firebombed felt like waking up to bushfires raging out of control in the middle of summer: terrifying but, sadly, not unexpected. Since October 7, when Hamas unleashed its horrific attacks on Israel, Australian Jews have been living with increasing fear and isolation.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson |Olivia Marks-Woldman
The other day, an Israeli intelligence officer who shares information with British agencies in London told me about her work. “Iran is the big focus for us. But for the British, it is maybe third on their priority list,” she said. Fair enough. Tehran may be a grave threat to Britain but due to its apocalyptic obsession with Jerusalem, it poses a far greater danger to Israel. Despite the differences in priorities, however, the Britain-Israel intelligence collaboration has long been very fruitful.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Yossi Melman |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
Officially, the Assad regime fell on December 8 when rebel forces seized Damascus in a swift offensive that lasted just over a week. But the countdown to Syria’s collapse – and with it, the erosion of Iran’s influence in the region – began much earlier, on September 17. On that day and the next, thousands of pagers – hand-held communications devices used by Hezbollah – as well as radio gear exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Nicole Lampert |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
There have been so many incidents that have seemed upside down since October 7 that sometimes it is all too much to bear. The celebrations in the street on October 8, the way the BBC keeps parroting Hamas lies, the fact that the murder of Israelis led to record antisemitism in the UK, the Jew hate marching down our streets every weekend while the police watch on. I could go on. But few examples have been more stark, in my eyes, than what is happening this week.
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2 months ago | 
thejc.com | Orli Peter |Jake Wallis Simons |Gavin Schaffer |Howard Jacobson
When Syrian rebels captured Damascus earlier this month, CNN described their jihadi leader, Mohamed al-Jolani, as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary”. Other journalists praised his “rebranding” with values of “tolerance” and “pluralism”, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations cast his win as a victory for “justice and freedom”. What is going on? Can’t the media see what is in front of their faces? As a neuropsychologist, I was intrigued.
