Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke

Born in Yorkshire, but moved to where my heart was, to find that over the centuries, prior generations of my family did the same. Blue and White.

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

Well said @KemiBadenoch you understand clearly the situation.

The #antisemitsm now in the UK is making #Jews think about leaving, many to #Israel. What places are left for Jews to feel safe in?

Ironic that the antisemites wanting to destroy Israel are forcing Jews to go there.

[Osher Feldman @OsherFeldman]

An absolute masterclass. 💥

Piers Morgan tried to trap Kemi Badenoch on Israel, but she brilliantly destroyed his logic using straight facts:

How she won the argument:

Alliances > Feelings: Piers hyper-focused on specific politicians. Kemi shut it down with real geopolitics: "Israel is an ally of the UK."

The Media Blindspot: Piers only talked about costs. Kemi flipped it by pointing out a massive benefit: Israeli intelligence actively helps protect British citizens.

Fixing the Logic: Piers blamed Israel for civilian casualties. Kemi corrected the cause and effect instantly: "Hamas uses innocent civilians as human shields. That is what has caused the scale of the violence."

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

Powerful report from @itvnews looking at the issue of antisemitism in the Britain, from the doctor who has been told by colleagues that they won’t help someone from Israel to the kids who have ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘we will finish what Hitler started’ shouted at them as they got the bus home from a shopping centre while onlookers did nothing (see clip).
Full report below 👇🏼

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

Precisely.
Will #Iran call off #Hezbollah from attacking #Israel, and disarm them, if Iran gets a guarantee, as they are demanding, that the US and Israel will not attack them?
Or does the world expect that Israel just stand there and allow itself to be attacked, time after time?

[Talk @TalkTV]

Andrew Fox says settlements in Southern Lebanon were set up as "forward fighting positions", which means "every single house" has a military connection.

"Everyone can criticise Israel, but no one ever gives them an alternative."

@JuliaHB1 | @Mr_Andrew_Fox

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?
Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity.
The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.
British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be.
Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity.
Then there is the history itself.
This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat.
Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these.
Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.)
And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard.
Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

How have we found ourselves in a world where talking about ancient artefacts and history has become too dangerous?
My piece below 👇🏼

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

When ancient history and the truth upsets a specific section of society who force the cancelling of everything that they object to, because it calls out their lies and hatred.

#Israel #Jews and #Muslim #Arab #Antisemitsm

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

The British Museum has cancelled a Jewish Culture Month event on Ancient Israel and Judah due to ‘security concerns’.
If publicly-funded institutions cannot host such events without folding to pressure, serious questions arise about that funding.
@britishmuseum @George_Osborne

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

Today, banned in Europe and elsewhere because they are #Jews and from #Israel.
Created to escape persecution, and now prevented from playing because of #Antisemitsm.

Full circle back to the dark days.

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

The Palestine Orchestra (now Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) founded in 1936 by Polish violinist Bronisław Huberman providing refuge for persecuted Jewish musicians in Europe. Held inaugural concert in Tel Aviv on Dec 26, 1936, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
https://t.co/dvNwe00BoT

[Nova Exhibition @novaexhibition]

London, we are open.

The Nova Exhibition London has officially arrived in East London.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for opening week.

The journey begins now. Purchase your tickets here: https://t.co/Hb3W0Vk5DD

[Rawan Osman روان عثمان @RawaneOsmane]

A quick stop in Europe before returning to Israel gave me a moment to reflect.

On my flight to Canada, I read Douglas Murray’s response to Nicholas Kristof and the now-infamous allegation that Israelis train dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. I laughed, because Murray’s sarcasm was probably the only appropriate response to a claim so obscene, delusional, and humiliating for both the author and the publisher.

But I was not shocked that The New York Times gave such a story mainstream legitimacy. Modern antisemitic libels rarely arrive openly anymore. They are repackaged as activism, humanitarianism, or “anti-Zionism,” then amplified by institutions that are supposed to safeguard truth.

And honestly, in a New York where Zohran Mamdani can seriously emerge as a major political figure, the circulation of such madness no longer feels surreal.

Instead of merely pointing out that experts considered the allegation biologically impossible, it is worth asking a larger question: what kind of society reaches a point where millions are prepared to believe the unbelievable?

Antisemitism is indeed becoming normalized, but it is only one symptom of something much deeper: the normalization of madness itself.

How did we reach a point where children are taught, sometimes even in schools, that their gender is entirely detached from biology and subject only to feeling? Where cross-dressing in public is celebrated as avant-garde while anyone defending social norms is mocked as backward? How did the family, the nucleus of every functioning civilization, become something many intellectuals openly ridicule?

How did we reach a point where religion, whether divinely inspired or socially constructed, became viewed primarily as a source of oppression and evil, causing millions to abandon not only faith itself but also the moral frameworks attached to it, including the Ten Commandments, perhaps the most influential social pact ever created to regulate human behavior?

And more tragically still, how did we reach a point where the very people who carried that moral tradition into the world, the Jews, are increasingly portrayed as the embodiment of evil itself?

This did not happen overnight. It happened through decades of cultural conditioning, ideological indoctrination, moral relativism, and the steady erosion of the ability to distinguish right from wrong, truth from falsehood, good from evil.

And in such a world, the wolf becomes the lamb.

The United Nations can appoint Iran or Turkey to human rights bodies. Bashar al-Assad can receive protection in Russia after overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. World leaders can still roll out red carpets for Iranian officials while the regime hangs dissidents, beats women in the streets, and fuels regional chaos across the Middle East. Even the Pope can honor the Iranian ambassador while the Islamic Republic continues to execute its own people and export instability throughout the region.

Self-proclaimed feminists can enthusiastically cheer movements and regimes that systematically abuse women, imprison them, beat them, force them into submission, and sometimes even kill them, as long as those same regimes happen to oppose Israel.

Homosexual activists can wave the flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, movements that would execute them without hesitation.

And eventually, in a civilization that has lost its moral compass entirely, a man can identify as a woman, a woman can identify as a cat, and a dog can rape a Palestinian.

#Israel #nyt #TenCommandments #shavuot

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Bill Maher on the Islamic slaughter of Christians in Nigeria: "They are literally trying to wipe out the christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this? They don't care because the Jews aren't involved"

He's 100% correct.

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

@jonsac @nicolelampert @yvonneridley This is the @yvonneridley that said #Hamas treat the hostages well and gave them goodie bags when released.

She is more than stupid, rather very sick. It's not worth your health @jonsac to get so worked up about.

Sometimes I wonder why we, #Israel don't let them go into #Gaza

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

That is Lieutenant Colonel Or Ben Yehuda, commander of the CARACAL unit near Gaza.

On the morning of October 7th, she opened her eyes and saw Hamas in front of her.

“I look up at the sky, then lower my head again, glance to the side, and there are maybe five pickup trucks coming toward me, full of motorcycle riders. There are terrorists leaping between the sand dunes and the trees, all of them wearing vests and uniforms, moving in our direction, and I can’t even count them properly with my eyes. It’s hundreds. Hundreds.

And farther back, on the distant road, I see columns of Gazan civilians simply walking toward us, some armed, some not.

And I say to myself: ‘That’s it. This is where I die. Right here, exactly where I’m standing now. This is where I die.’

Then I said to myself: Fine. If this is the end, then I’ll end it well. I’ll die with honor. I’ll do the best I can. And I’ll fight until my very last drop of blood.

So I turn to my soldiers, a group of twelve heroic fighters waiting for me to tell them what to do. I turn to them with half a smile.

Later, they told me I smiled; I didn’t remember it.
And I tell them: ‘Come on, let’s tear them apart!’
And they all shout back: ‘Yalla!!!’

They come to the embankment with machine guns, with everything they can carry, and we position ourselves there and start firing at everyone approaching the outpost. We’re shooting like mad. At some point, we had a LAU missile with us, so we fired it at one of the Hamas pickup trucks. The truck exploded in a massive blast, something unbelievable. There must have been huge amounts of explosives inside, and the explosion took several of the motorcycle riders with it.
And little by little, I suddenly realize many of them are beginning to retreat, turn around, and flee back the way they came.

And suddenly I understood: yes, we’re doing something significant here.

We were there for about half an hour, and then, in the middle of all the chaos, I suddenly hear the tracks of a tank behind me.

It was an unbelievable sigh of relief.

I told my deputy company commander: ‘Stay here! I don’t know whose tank this is — I’m going to get it!’
It was already around eleven o’clock. I start moving backward, advancing toward the tank through the concrete barriers, and suddenly I realize a terrorist is jumping at me from point-blank range, and in another second, he would’ve been hugging me.

And my luck was that I already had a round in the chamber and my finger on the trigger. It was literally a question of who shoots first, and I shot first.
The terrorist collapsed in front of me.

And I froze for a moment, like, what was that? What just happened?
Then I hear my deputy commander yelling from behind me:
‘Commander! Commander! Are you okay?’
I look at myself, I’m okay.
I turn back toward him and signal with my hand: everything’s under control.
He runs up after me, looks at me, and says, ‘What… what just happened between you two?’
And I tell him: ‘Exactly what’s going through your head right now.’
But the tank!

I remember — I can’t let it leave. We need it.
I ran quickly toward it, and because I’m used to working with my tank crews, I started signaling to them in tank hand signals: ‘Terrorists there, behind me, do this, shell over there!’

And he’s with us, he understands immediately.

And for the first time, I suddenly have additional force joining me.
We make some kind of flanking maneuver, take up a strong position, and simply fire toward wherever the terrorists are coming from. We keep firing and firing, and they start pulling back. And I understand — all of us understand — that if we don’t continue fighting right now, those terrorists will get past us and reach all the communities behind us.

At a certain point, my deputy commander and his radio operator are hit by an RPG and collapse to the ground. So we pull them out of there.

Then I call friends of mine who are pilots flying Yasur and Yanshuf helicopters, and I ask them to come land at the helipad near the outpost, because I’ve evacuated wounded soldiers there and I need them to clear our casualties out. And it actually happens. They arrive, they land, and they evacuate the wounded for me.

Meanwhile, my medical unit is there the entire time treating casualties, loading them up, evacuating them to the helipad. We managed to bring there the wounded from the APC we had seen, the wounded from our battalion, and several civilians we picked up along the way — people who escaped from Kibbutz Sufa, from Pri Gan, and from other places. They all received treatment from my incredible medical team — those angels — and the helicopters I called in evacuated them to Soroka Hospital, where they finally received proper care.

There were also many dead in that battle.
There were dead.
And I remember one moment at the end, when everything was over, just minutes before they came to evacuate the bodies. There was a moment when they were lying there side by side, and I walked between them, gently touching their faces, stroking them softly, telling them I was sorry, and closing their eyes.

And I remember telling myself in that moment that those people, who were now making their final journey, were unbelievable heroes. They fought there like lions to save Kibbutz Sufa. They fought until their last drop of blood."

From Or's book 'book One Day in October'.

[צלם בהתהוות 📸 @ArielTanamiPHD]

@weimanadav @leftwing100 הייתה גניבה לפנות בוקר של עדר של מתיישב ממש ליד.
אולי הם פשוט מחזירים את הצאן למי שהוא שייך באמת?!

[Zac Goldsmith @ZacGoldsmith]

“What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything? What kind of a twisted pervert turns rape into necrophilia by shooting a woman in the head while he is still defiling her?
What kind of ‘freedom fighters’ go into battle with a set of handy Arabic-to-Hebrew phrases, including ‘take off your pants’, ‘lie down’, and ‘spread your legs’?
What self-respecting human being presses nails, scalpels, a hammer, an axe, screwdrivers and other household tools into a woman’s genitals?
How hard do you have to rape someone, and with what, to shatter their pelvis? Who shoots a young girl in the face and then films her mutilated corpse on her brother’s mobile phone?
The answer is: Hamas terrorists. This is the stark reality of what they did to men, women and children on October 7, 2023. And the world must never forget.”
@WestminsterWAG

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

🚨 SILENCED NO MORE: THE REPORT THE WORLD CAN NO LONGER IGNORE

A new 300-page report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children documents what so many tried to deny.
@theCC07
After a two-year independent investigation, the Commission reviewed more than 10,000 photos and video segments, over 1,800 hours of visual material, and conducted more than 430 interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, returned hostages, experts, and families.

Its conclusion is clear:
It was systematic.
It was widespread.
It was part of the terror strategy.

The victims were never silent.
The world was.

Now the evidence is on record.
Share this. Amplify it.
REPORT IN COMMENTS

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

@artscroll @DBashIdeas Kohanim

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

We need to hold a conversation as to whether the '#antisemitsm' @ZackPolanski claims that he receives is a perception of an unsafety or whether it's actual unsafe.

[Rachel Millward @rachelmillward]

The only party led by a Jewish leader, who’s faced Nazi salutes and antisemitic abuse on our streets this month, wasn’t invited.

Reform's leader, with a track record of antisemitism, is invited.

I know, like every party, we’ve got work to do on tackling antisemitism. But tackling hate requires cross-party solidarity, not ideological gatekeeping.

https://t.co/BVQ5CyPgOK

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

October 7 created a problem for Israel’s critics: the brutality of what was perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists was undeniable and self-documented. To prevent sympathy for Israel, the narrative had to by shifted quickly.

@MattiFriedman is on the Boundless Insights podcast explaining Gazology. Find us where you find podcasts 🎧

[Ian Grant - the Expat_Tyke @ExpatTyke]

If you talk about globalising the #Intafada listen to this English nurse

#Hamas terrorism in #Israel

https://t.co/deDkzaqjjr