Laura Rosefield

Divorce Consultant - helping to manage the process making it less stressful and less costly. Singing mum of 12yo boy.

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

Here's my @JewishChron review of @simonmontefiore 's The Cauldron: 'Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of the Middle East is a masterpiece'

https://t.co/qutldXUZfL

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s last book was a history of the world. It’s almost as if he decided on this next project as the punchline to some sort of intellectual joke: how do you find something more difficult to tackle than the world itself? Try the Middle East!

But his history of the last century in the Middle East is no joke. It is a masterpiece, a book so superbly written, so judicious in its wisdom, so compelling in the scope of its analysis and storytelling – and so straightforwardly unputdownable in the sweep of that telling – that it surely stands as Sebag Montefiore’s greatest achievement to date.

The Cauldron is a book that should be read both by experts, who need to take on board Sebag Montefiore’s arguments, and by lay readers for whom it provides the perfect synthesis of how and why the Middle East is the way it is.

The Cauldron’s 528 pages may seem a daunting prospect. It covers 19 states across 126 years – from the Sultan’s decaying empire in 1900 to the Third Gulf War – told in what Sebag Montefiore styles as two acts. First come the empires, with their sultans, pashas and proconsuls – a story that ends in 1945. Then we have the story of the independent states ruled by presidents, kings and imams, ending with the wars that followed the October 7 massacre.

But Sebag Montefiore knows how to keep the reader with him, and this series of stories is (as with his earlier Jerusalem, The Romanovs and The World: A Family History) told through people: kings, assassins, spymasters, poets and fanatics. Sebag Montefiore has a gift for the telling detail, such as his depiction of the young Ayatollah Khomeini as a seminarian in Qom, studying Aristotle and Ibn Arabi and writing Sufi love poetry under a pen name; and Muammar Gaddafi trying to buy Nasser’s corpse for $500 million.

The Cauldron’s introduction reminds me of the opening of Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, the volume of his biography of Lyndon B Johnson that deals with LBJ’s senatorial career.

That starts with a peerless history of the Senate itself, to give the reader the context needed to approach Johnson’s later story. Likewise, Sebag Montefiore sets his starting point – 1900 – in the context of the previous centuries that shaped the region.

His introduction is a commanding 5,000-word history of the Middle East (which he defines as an arc from Morocco’s Atlantic coast – home for centuries to his own family, the Sebags – to the Persian Gulf, and from the Nile delta to the Bosphorus and Hormuz), which makes the reader eager to be taken through the story to come.

Several themes of the book are set out early on. Geography, for example, is key: nothing can be understood without knowing that Israel’s waist is nine miles, Hormuz 34, Bab-el-Mandeb 16 and the Bosphorus 750 metres – or without the geology of Ghawar’s 100 billion barrels and the South Pars/North Dome gas field.

Similarly, “divinity and doxology are as crucial as rocks and rivers. It is impossible to write about the Middle East without at least some interest in the nature of holiness, the human craving for a link to divinity through cults that share and enforce consolingly ritualistic lives and places where God is perceived to be closer to man”.

In the Middle East, history fuses with theology into “an unbreakable rampart of absolutist faith”, and, as Sebag Montefiore puts it, “it is hard to negotiate maps and timetables with people who await the Mahdi or Messiah”.

Sebag Montefiore stresses the strange bedfellows in the region: the Syrian civil war’s tangle of enemies, the Abraham Accords, and Israeli soldiers manning Iron Dome to defend the Emirates against Iranian missiles in 2026. On the other hand, the Middle East is the only region on Earth becoming ever less diverse – Christians down from 20 per cent of the population in 1900 to 4 per cent today, and in Iraq from 14 per cent to 0.4.

The nation-state, Sebag Montefiore asserts, is an imported European idea badly matched to a multi-sectarian patchwork; he notes the irony that Western media, law and academia still promote nationalism for the region having rejected it at home, and calls the pretence that some failed states function “international cosplay”.

But the idea that the region is uniquely ungovernably violent is “a historical illusion”. Its history is filled with dramatic reversals that mock every preconception: “Kingdoms, empires and cities, heroes, monsters and fools fight and reconcile, gamble and deal, rise and fall. The prizes are power, salvation and safety. Survival is everything; no one wins for long; the caravan moves on; the spark wheel spins and spins.”

The book proper begins with what Sebag Montefiore identifies as one of the two key pivots of the past (loosely defined) century – the story of how in 1902 25-year-old Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, sometimes referred to as Ibn Saud, restored his fallen family to power in Riyadh. Having taken power, “Abdulaziz moved into the palace of his grandfather – and the modern history of the Middle East began.”

Sebag Montefiore writes that “even Abdulaziz would have been amazed at the success of his dynasty and his realm. He would reign during the fall and rise and fall of empires – Ottoman, French, British – that dominated his region, and through two world wars, into the nuclear-powered years of US-Soviet rivalry, through holy wars, civil wars and the creation and disintegration of new states, secular and Islamist, royal and nationalist, Muslim and Jewish. And as late as 2025, a son of his would still be ruling the Kingdom in the age of the iPhone, drones and X, when a US president, Donald Trump, would fly into this same Riyadh, now a gleaming towered modern metropolis, and call Saudi Arabia ‘the centre of the world’.” As he then writes: “This book is the story of how that happened.”

It’s fitting that The Cauldron ends in 2026 with the death of Ayatollah Khamenei in an air strike, because the other pivot on which The Cauldron hangs is the 1979 Iranian revolution. Sebag Montefiore argues that this was a moment on the scale of 1789 and 1917. Khomeini was a “murderous modern revolutionary and political strategist of the rank of Lenin, Stalin or Mao”. Grasp that and the next 50 years fall into place.

The Cauldron would have been a valuable work had it stopped in 1979 – because there has long been a need for a readable, serious, ambitious history of the past century or so in the Middle East. By taking it to 2026, however – a bold step for a book whose entire point is that it is a work of history – Sebag Montefiore has written something far more important, both invaluable and necessary. Lies started to be spread about October 7, 2023 from October 8, and those lies have taken hold across the world. There are few other historians of Sebag Montefiore’s stature who could have challenged the lies and the myths simply by doing their job and writing calmly and – patently – objectively. It is to Sebag Montefiore’s huge credit that he has stepped up to do this, mainly by allowing the facts to speak for themselves – especially the words of the perpetrators. Hamas’ Ghazi Hamad promises “a second, a third, a fourth” October 7. Its second chairman Khaled Mashal shrugs: “Thirty million Russians died to defeat Germany. In all wars there are civilian casualties. We are not responsible.” Sinwar, warned that 10,000 Gazans might die, retorts: “Let it be 20,000.”

But as Sebag Montefiore argues, Israel may be able to win on the battlefields but it has “totally lost” the narrative war. Hamas controlled the casualty figures, presenting every death as civilian and claiming there was no war with its fighters at all, only massacre.

The Cauldron’s conclusion is salutary and needs to be absorbed: add up every death in every Middle Eastern war from 1900 to today and the total roughly equals a single front of the First World War, or the Congo war of 1996 to 2003. It comes nowhere near the Second World War’s Asian theatre (20 million dead) or its Eastern Front (30 million). Eighty years of Arab-Israeli conflict, the Gaza war included, have killed around 150,000 people. The Partition of India killed a million in a few months. Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s killed 200,000, Iraq half a million, Syria 600,000, and Sudan, “in a tragic class of its own”, two million in its first civil wars, 300,000 in Darfur and more than 150,000 since 2023. The world’s fixation on the Jewish state’s wars is grotesquely out of proportion to their scale.

That notion is nothing new: but Sebag Montefiore’s magnificent work is not merely new. It is a masterpiece that demands to be read.

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

The real reason relationships end is because no one wants to parent their partner.

That's how respect and attraction is lost.

Here's what you expect from a partner:

[Libriscent @libriscent]

"You're just too sensitive."

Translation:

"Your reaction to my disrespect is inconvenient for me, so I’m going to gaslight you into thinking your reality is the problem."

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

You'll also notice all conversations revolve around them, their issues, and their emotions. There's little space for you in the relationship

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

If you're around someone with high narcissistic traits you'll start to notice shifts in your body. You'll have tightness in your chest, increased heart rate, headaches, or anxiety that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

Instead they:
- blame others and deflect
- labels others as "too sensitive" "too dramatic"
- avoid or shut down when confronted
- lash out (dominating or controlling behaviors)
- take all feedback as criticism

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

Dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits feels exhausting and draining. This is because they rarely see the role they play in situations, and they rarely take accountability.

Their personality is a defense mechanism.

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

When someone doesn't develop fully emotionally, they can end up with many narcissistic traits. These are traits they develop to cover up their: shame, feelings of inadequacy, and fear or abandonment.

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

Arrested development looks like:
- Fragile self-esteem
- Heavy dependence on external validation
- Difficulty acknowledging flaws
- Inability to understand emotions of others
- high entitlement
- low ability to deal with frustration or disappointment

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

Narcissistic traits come from arrested development. Arrested development means someone stopped emotional or social growth. They age physically, but not mentally.

[Dr. Nicole LePera @Theholisticpsyc]

How to deal with someone who has a high level of narcissistic traits:

[Rob Rinder @RobbieRinder]

On the holiest day of the year we are attacked at a Manchester synagogue. Our children walk to school behind barbed wire protected by guns. Yet some still answer this atrocity with “what about…” This is my country, the sanctuary my grandfather found after surviving the Holocaust, promising freedom under the rule of law. Today I pray for the victims, thank the brave who responded and wonder if that promise is fading. A community this small cannot stand alone. If you believe in Britain (wherever you’re from & whatever your faith) you must stand with us. Many Jews cannot imagine a future here and history tells us what follows when that happens.

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

Sheikh Salem has been living in a tent outside of his village of Rahat as a protest to bring back the hostages. His tribe has been here since before the Ottomans. When I asked him why he does it he said “because they are my family”.

He did the same for 5 years for Gilad Shalit.

[James Cleverly🇬🇧 @JamesCleverly]

How can there be peace when Hamas are committed to the eradication of Israel?

This is an official from Hamas committing to repeat the atrocities from 07/10 again and again.

[John Aziz @aziz0nomics]

Who remembers after 9/11 when the U.S. was accused of genocide for invading Afghanistan to dismantle Al-Qaeda?

Who remembers when mere weeks after 9/11 Western capitals filled with mass protests calling for the abolition of the USA?

No? This didn't happen?

Why??? 🤔🤔🤔

[Ben Goldsmith @BenGoldsmith]

In quiet moments, do you wonder a little why your social media friends are so frantically posting and spreading misinformation about just one conflict thousands of miles away? Does it seem strange to you that they are so fixated on this one comparatively tiny conflict when they seemingly have zero interest in all the others raging around the world right now? (600,000 civilians inc children killed in the last year in Sudan, 375,000 blasted to smithereens in Yemen by one of the best funded militaries in the world, countless dead in Ethiopia-Tigray, Azerbaijan-Armenia, China’s hard-oppressed Uighur Muslims, the poor Kurds endlessly smashed up by Turkey, East Timor, the list goes on.) Presumably the keyboard warriors and the marchers among your friends know that Israel, in the wake of one of the most horrific terrorist atrocities the world has ever seen, has no option but to do something, anything, to prevent it from happening again, and again, even though Israelis want nothing more than to live in peace with their neighbours? ‘Ceasefire now!’ they demand; ‘Peace!’ How do you do peace with an enemy which will settle for nothing less than your total annihilation? The answer to your wondering is this: An ancient, inexplicable, hateful obsession with Jews, with their religion, their race, and now with their one tiny country. As Douglas Murray recently said, “sometimes a flare goes up and you get to see where everybody is”. Well look around you now at the assorted antisemites, Lord Haw Haws and useful idiots demanding that Israel, our friend and ally, a beacon of democracy and freedom sitting there right between Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, does nothing to defend itself, or rather ceases to exist, as they sing their jaunty genocidal little chant “from the river to the sea”, and remember who they are and where they stand, and why the Jewish people so badly need their own safe haven in a world that periodically flares up with hatred for them.

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

I’ve heard a lot of people complain recently that they can’t criticize Israel without being accused of being an antisemite. In fact, it’s very easy to criticize Israel without being called an antisemite, I do it all the time.

Here's a helpful guide:

🔷 If you advocate for an “Intifada”, which means a violent uprising against the Jews in their homeland – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is “Occupying Gaza” without knowing that Israel forcefully removed all 9,000 of its residents from Gaza in 2005, and since then the only Jews living in Gaza have been 229 hostages that Hamas kidnapped - you’re an antisemite

🔷 If you chant from the “River to the Sea”, meaning the elimination of the sovereign state of Israel and home to its 9 million residents – you’re an antisemite

🔷 If you think indiscriminate violence against civilians by a bloodthirsty mob is a form of "resistance" – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there is “ethnic cleansing” without understanding that Israel does everything to minimize civilian casualties including pleading with the local population to evacuate before an attack - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there is “genocide” without saying that if Hamas lay down it’s weapons today there would be peace, but if Israel does the same it will be eliminated - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say “Free Palestine” without acknowledging the Palestinians refusal to in fact “free Palestine” themselves by signing all the offers Israel offered it over the years asking for only peace in return – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is a “white supremacist” country despite more than half of Israeli jews being from Arab and north African countries – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is a “settler colonialist” state, despite Jews being indigenous to the land and Israel being a sovereign country for 75 years – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say indiscriminate violence against civilians by a bloodthirsty mob is a form of resistance – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you call Israel an Apartheid country without acknowledging that Arab-Israelis have equal rights and freedom of religion in Israel, and are freer here than in any other Mid East country – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you refuse to acknowledge the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and instead call it “the situation” or “the tensions in the Middle East” – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you oppose Israel because you stand with Muslims, but never made a peep about hundreds of thousands killed in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Iran etc. – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you stand with Palestinians, but don’t demand rights for Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon where they have none -- you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you refuse to believe the IDF, but think Hamas is a legitimate source of information – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you believe everything Hamas says, except their charter where they say they want to kill all Jews - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say murdering 1,400 men, women and children and kidnapping 229 is a response to Netanyahu being “right wing” – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If your response to a massacre is to call for a "ceasefire" instead of the immediate release of the hostages and dismantlement of the perpetrators - you may not be an antisemite, but you're really dumb.

🔷 If you say Israel attacks indiscriminately, and not in precise airstrikes against Hamas targets that happen to be purposly placed in schools, hospitals, and mosques – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel attacks just to “punish” Palestinians, and not in order to prevent more harm to Israelis from stockpiled weapons and terrorists – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If the only Israeli perspective you are willing to listen to are a few fringe Israeli academics or artists who hate their country – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you “stand firmly” against antisemitism when the perptrator is someone from across the political divide, but mix words over Palestinians massacring Jews in Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you oppose “victim blaming” but feel the need to put horrors of October 7th “in context” whenever they are mentioned – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you’ve ever said “believe all women” but demand to see autopsies before believing women were raped in front of their friends’ eyes – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you’ve ever proudly declared that “hate has no home here” but don’t speak up against harassment of your Jewish friends– you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you support indigenous people yet don’t care that Jews have had a steady presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you're an LGBTQ+ ally…I can’t even do this one, it’s too stupid.

🔷 If you’re more concerned with exactly how many babies were beheaded instead of why the babies lost their heads – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say people are brainwashed by watching Fox News, but that Palestinians who are fed a steady diet of Jihad-glorification and Jew-hatred in their textbooks and children’s shows are freethinking freedom fighters – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Gaza was “stolen” from a country called “Palestine” and not won in battle against Egypt, who controlled Gaza until 1967 when they tried to destroy Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Arab terrorism against Jews is solely a response to settlements, meaning it only began in 1967 when Israel won a war against Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza) after they tried to destroy Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there was a sovereign country called “Palestine” with a president and a flag before 1948 instead of the British Mandate of Palestine – you’re an antisemite (and also ignorant).

🔷 If you say poor living conditions and lack of food in Gaza are the fault of Israel and don't mention Hamas spends billions of foreign aid dollars on weapons I you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel cuts off electricity to Gaza, without acknowledging that Israel itself provides the electricity in the first place, and that Hamas repurposes virtually all the electricity and fuel for terrorism – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you blame Israel for Gaza running out water, but not Hamas who ruins the water infastructure and takes the water pipes and repurposes them as rocket launchers – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you compare the bloodlust of Hamas, an elected government that controls Gaza, to a few fringe extremists who exist in Israel like they do in every society – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you are afraid to call out Hamas terrorism because you think it’s offensive to Muslims – you’re an antisemite, and also racist.

🔷 If you don’t call out Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza through which they could send relief and take all the refugees, but refuse to - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you call to “end the blockade” without acknowledging that the blockade is only on 2nd use materials, and is a response to the smuggling of weapons aimed at Israel into Gaza – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you compare death tolls like they’re basketball scores without acknowledging that Hamas is the source, and that they use their own people as human shields, preventing them from leaving dangerous areas despite the IDF warning them to - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you worry about Palestinian refugees but not about tens of thousands of Israeli refugees from the north and south who have had to evacuate their homes because of Hamas & Hezbollah – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you’re not an antisemite but merely an antizionist, meaning you oppose the mere existence of a safe haven for the Jews in their ancestral homeland alongside it’s neighbors - well, you get the idea.

If that doesn’t help – know also that you are also hurting Palestinian chances for afree and independent state.
You are actively pushing for war and fighting from the comfort of your home, instead of peace and co-existence. How does that feel?

[Rabbi Shmuel Reichman @ShmuelReichman]

Simply beyond words!

Kevin Chen, Canadian pianist and winner of the Arthur Rubinstein Competition, made a surprise change to his program last night at Carnegie Hall.

In an act of solidarity with Israel, and in showing his support for those who were taken hostage, he opened his recital with Israel‘s national anthem, Hatikvah.

Thank you for supporting Israel, and may it inspire everyone else to do the same!

[יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad @YosephHaddad]

30 children are being held in Gaza by Hamas! Do you understand that?! 30 children!!! No one knows what conditions they are kept in, what the status of their health is, or how barbarically the terrorists treat them...
30 children have been kidnapped in Gaza for almost two weeks! The world is talking about humanitarian aid to Gaza - what about our children?!?

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

EVERYONE SHOULD BE FOLLOWING @imshin

Some of the most valuable, interesting, original content on Gaza on X and in the world at large.

Do yourself a favor and visit his profile and scroll and read for at least the next 20-30 minutes, longer if you can.