Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades

Author of 16 books - 7 thrillers, 9 non-fiction inc. The Last Days of Budapest. Thriller critic @ftweekend TV critic @thecriticmag - and editorial trainer

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Take a trip back in time to Budapest in the Second World War with the introduction to our film about the city's hidden wartime history based on my bestselling book The Last Days of Budapest. Link to the full version below @GeorginaCapel @HoZ_Books @public_affairs

[Aspects of History @AspectsHistory]

#Substack

All Around the World

Budapest in Wartime, by @adamlebor
https://t.co/ya07YyICCt

The Spice Race, by @crowley_roger
https://t.co/IvQkZKVg2o

For fans of The Rest is History
https://t.co/GDltX5mj2J

Please subscribe and support.

#twitterstorians #historyteacher

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Most welcome @tombradby !

[tom bradby @tombradby]

Thanks to @FinancialTimes and @adamlebor for this epic review. I've been a bit bowled over in general by the reviews for Red Scorpion. So if you are looking for some escapist entertainment this summer, how about the story of the doctor who goes to work for an enigmatic businessman - only to discover he is not quite what he seems? #thriller #redscorpion

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Smart, informed take by @ShippersUnbound on Tony Blair's essay

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:

- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap
- defence spending is too low
- the triple lock is unsustainable
- without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution
- we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea
- migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state
- any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement
- we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable
- Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly

Blair basically says all that.

The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:

- judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast
- the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs

None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it

Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.

Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Puppen Klinik (Dolls clinic) - so unbearably poignant

[Katja Hoyer @hoyer_kat]

I'm in Weimar where there are traces of the people I wrote about everywhere. This was Hedwig Hetemann's shop where she repaired toys for children. It was destroyed by the SA in the pogrom of 1938 because she was Jewish. Nobody helped her. She became withdrawn and isolated. 1/2

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

We thank you and your colleagues for your courage and determination to make these horrors a matter of record.

[Cochav Elkayam-Levy @CochavElkayam]

All I can say right now is- we did it. We really did it. It was such a difficult journey, but we made it through.
This is, in many ways, a final act of justice for the victims.

They are silenced no more.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. 🙏❤️

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

We need this at Waitrose

[Kyle Orton @KyleWOrton]

#Russia: in a village not far from Moscow in 2008, a local was asked why the population was so antisemitic: "It is because the Jews have a secret vegetable they eat so they don’t become alcoholics like the rest of us. And they refuse to share that vegetable with anyone else."

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Thank you @DanLinnaeus

[dan linnaeus @DanLinnaeus]

Two documents on sexual violence in the Gaza conflict were published over the last twenty-four hours. One is a three hundred page evidentiary record built over two and a half years to support criminal prosecution of Hamas and its collaborators. It examined over ten thousand photographs and video segments, conducted over 1,800 hours of visual analysis, ran more than 430 formal and informal interviews, mapped victims across 52 nationalities, and is the culmination of the scholarship and analytic contributions of dozens of leading figures in their field led by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, with principal contributor Hon. Irwin Cotler, and distinguished contributors including David Crane (founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone) and Yuval Shany (former UN Human Rights Committee). It is endorsed by internationally recognized notables such as Ambassador Isabelle Rome (France’s Ambassador at-Large for Human Rights), Alice Wairimu Nderitu (Former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide), Noëlle Lenoir (Former Justice on the French Constitutional Court), Aharon Barak (Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel) and Mukesh Kapila (Former Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), among many others.

The other is Nicholas Kristof’s lascivious New York Times opinion column accusing the Israeli state of systematic sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children, supported by Hamas-linked figures at Euro-Med and a documented, self-admitted sexual harasser of minors, Shaiel Ben Ephraim, who lost his junior research fellowship at UCLA over the scandal. It is based on uncorroborated testimony from mostly convicted and suspected terrorists who accuse Israel’s security apparatus of training dogs to rape. The most accredited source it leans on is that of Issa Amro, one of Kristof’s two named witnesses, who holds EU and UN human rights awards and is an HRW fellow. After being convicted in Israeli military court in 2021 of six counts, three for participating in demonstrations without a permit, two for obstructing security forces, and one count of assault for pushing a settlement guard, he was sentenced to a 3-month suspended sentence, 2 years probation, and fined about 3,500 NIS. Amro told the Washington Post in February 2024 that he was threatened with sexual assault during a 10-hour detention on October 7, yet in Kristof’s column, the same October 7 detention has him as a victim of rape -- his own first-person account of the same event contradicts itself. The other, Sami al-Sai, one day after the Hamas massacres, while bodies were still being recovered from the kibbutzim and fighting was ongoing, posted celebratory content praising “the green flag” flying across the West Bank, “over the camps of the occupier and his tanks,” and “decorating the foreheads of the heroic fighters.” About a year before Kristof’s column, al-Sai gave testimony about his alleged abuse to a domestic anti-Israel NGO, B’Tselem, that has been at the center of its own fair share of sourcing scandals. B’Tselem’s account did not include the specific, graphic details that surfaced in Kristof’s column: being sodomized with a carrot, a female guard grabbing his genitals, or finding “other people’s vomit, blood and broken teeth” on his skin from other detainees.

In five years, one of these documents will be cited in international tribunals, in court filings, and in academic literature. The other might still be a Wikipedia footnote about a press controversy that likely ended Kristof’s career.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Essential listening about essential reading

[Matti Friedman @MattiFriedman]

Thanks to @AvivaKlompas and Boundless Insights for this podcast on my essay "Introduction to Gazology":
https://t.co/HFSvuh5dhI

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

We are in a time-slip, going back to the future

[Alex Hearn @hearnimator]

“The Jew will not cease to murder until his path is blocked by international justice.”

It could have been written today. We often see this idea represented. The quote is from Der Sturmer, February 1936

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

The essence of Nazism

[Cowboy Tcherno Bill @RudiGeerts]

“It was not Hitler or Himmler who deported me, beat me, killed my family members. It was the milkman, the neighbor, the shoemaker, the doctor, who were given a uniform and believed they were the superior race.”

Karl Stojka, Roma Auschwitz survivor

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Thank you for this informed post - I had no idea there were Libyan Jews at Bergen Belsen.

[Uri Kurlianchik @VerminusM]

These are Libyan-Jewish survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp returning home after the liberation of the camp. The Inscriptions on the train reads "Going Home" and "To Tripoli."
As soon as they returned, 140 Jews were murdered and hundreds were injured in a pogrom in Tripoli. A dozen more were murdered in a smaller pogrom in 1948. In 1967, massive anti-Jewish violence erupted and at least 18 Jews were murdered. Soon after, the Libyan government expelled the remaining 5,000 Jews and confiscated their property.
Today, no Jews remain in Libya and all synagogues have been repurposed to destroyed.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

https://t.co/URFwvcDQVN

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Honoured to be George and Alicia Karpati Lecturer at @DrewUniversity on May 7. I will be discussing my book The Last Days of Budapest and more with President Dr. Hilary L. Link. Do join us online at 7.00pm ET. Link below:

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Great idea. But we need to somehow work in the phrase 'As approved by Sir Tony Brenton'

[Marika Cobbold @Marikacobbold]

I'm setting up The Good Jew Project. Right-thinking Jews deserving of life, liberty and happiness, will be able to order their identifying badges straight from our website. We're currently workshopping a Star of David with a big blue ✔️ across it. What do y'all think?

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

How long do we think the dance would last? I would give it around 30 seconds in Gaza, maybe a minute in Ramallah. Ironically, their appropriation of the two main symbols of Palestine, the flag and keffiyeh, would likely provoke even more fury.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

It would be fascinating to see these young women do this dance in public in Gaza, or even Ramallah.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

It would be fascinating to see these young women do this dance in public in Gaza, or even Ramallah.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

Ask any Palestinian or Arab whether anything in this dance (women dancing in crop tops) looks like Palestinian heritage, culture, or imagined future. The answer is no.
I have no idea what these flotilla kids think Palestine is.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Yes indeed. During the Second Intifada more than 140 suicide bombings killed many hundreds of Israelis and injured hundreds more. 'Globalising' this means suicide bombings in the UK, as has already happened in Manchester and London. It's very straightforward. There is no ambiguity here.

[Dave Rich @daverich1]

It’s very simple: the Intifada was a campaign of suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Calling for it to be “globalised” means bringing it here. That isn’t “criticising Israel”. It’s inciting violent hatred.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

No, obviously 😀

[Vladislav Davidzon @VladDavidzon]

These 75 year old Ukrainian Jewish women at the cafe in Brighton beach are flirting with me for the third day in a row- want to know all about my love affairs- one of them asked me if the girl(s) I am dating is/are hotter than she is ….

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

Thank you for your service, really.

[Alex Hearn @hearnimator]

Doing anything nice this weekend? I’ll be standing guard outside the metal gates of my synagogue, wearing a stab proof vest.

How the other half live.

[Adam LeBor - wordsmith of all trades @adamlebor]

This is simultaneously revolting and very useful. It shows what much of the British establishment actually thinks about Jews and explains why we are where we are. Perhaps he could help us write our confession, our distancing of ourselves from Israel and advise on a plea for forgiveness.

[Marika Cobbold @Marikacobbold]

In his very own Modest Proposal, former ambassador Sir Tony Brenton tells British Jews that if we don't like being firebombed, stabbed and shot, all we need to do is publicly submit to - and pass - his political purity test. Good-oh, Sir Tony.