Charles Braunstein

Interests: Politics, Infrastructure, Football (Man United), Cricket and Rugby

[Charles Braunstein @CharlesJayB]

@Mendelpol @Telegraph Conveniently he went to Stamford Hill not to Golders Green

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Purim begins tonight. A couple quick thoughts on the surprisingly strong message that it offers for a people at war.

In the Book of Esther, the Jews face the threat of annihilation. When Mordechai comes to Esther to ask her to intercede with the king -- at deadly risk to herself -- against Haman's designs, he bluntly tells her that even she, queen though she is, will not escape Haman's wrath.

"Think not in thy heart that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews."

And Esther, startled and afraid, offers this simple command in response:

"Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me..."

In the compilation of Midrashic commentaries known as Esther Rabbah, compiled from roughly the 500s to the 700s in Israel, the Sages are curious about Esther's order to "gather together" the Jews.

When the evil Haman was making the case for exterminating the Jews, they note in chapter 8 of the compilation, he explained that the Jews were "scattered and dispersed" -- evidence of their untrustworthiness, and also of their great vulnerability.

So when Mordechai reminded Esther -- scolded her -- that Jews sank or swam together, her response was not really about Mordechai's criticism, but about Haman's: We are vulnerable because we are dispersed. We must close ranks if we are to survive.

In the Talmud, Tractate Megillah 15a, the Sages note that Esther had to be pushed to do her part, to take those risks. Solidarity is rarely automatic. It usually requires an emergency, the lack of any other choice, in order to wake up those living in safety in the "palace" -- the wealthy, the secure, the distant. Mordechai’s warning, in the Sages' telling, wasn't a threat, but a statement of fact: In a war of extermination, the "safe" Jew dies last, but they still die.

And so Esther's reply is the reply of every Jewish leader facing every existential threat in the 2,500 years since she taught us this wisdom, this source of bottomless courage: The answer must be a great gathering together of the Jews, a solidarity stronger than the scale of the emergency.

This is not just a Jewish insight, of course. The great 14th-century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, perhaps the first sociologist worthy of the title, taught that "asabiyyah," social cohesion, was a more important factor in the success or failure of societies and war campaigns than any purely material factor such as military technology or prowess.

Esther taught the same, roughly 1,800 years earlier.

One of Purim's main ancient customs, a key mitzvah of the holiday, is the giving of gifts, usually food, to friends and the poor. It's called "mishloach manot," "the sending of portions."

Esther 9:22: "...days wherein the Jews had rest from their enemies... that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor."

The 16th-century Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, understood this ancient instruction to be the preservation of this great strategy of solidarity.

Haman's strategy wasn't just an accusation that the Jews were "scattered and dispersed," it was wish casting. He hoped they were so, or his plans would not succeed. The Jews, Haman argued, as Nasrallah and Sinwar and Khamenei would argue in our day, are inherently, innately lacking in the will and unity and sense of purpose required to survive.

Our victory over such enemies, the Maharal explained, is only complete when we demonstrate our interconnectedness, our responsibility for one another.

Jews overcome wars and oppression and all the tribulations of their history through the simple, ancient mechanism of deep and abiding solidarity. This is one of the core concepts of our bookshelf and our culture, an idea older than the prayerbook, older than Hanukkah.

Persia once threatened the Jews with extermination -- not Persia itself, but one extremist element in its politics. Persia also saved the Jews in that era and became a shining example of justice in the days of the Prophets.

Persia today once again raises up the would-be destroyers of Jews, though their machinations have all but demolished Persia itself rather than us.

And so today, our solidarity is not only for our own, but for the Iranians as well, that ancient, storied people who once saved us and who are now tormented by those who would annihilate us.

This Purim, I will pray for a free and happy Iran.

And as we pray, please don't forget to drink.

A lot.

Purim is the only holiday when we are literally commanded to get drunk.

But not alone. Purim isn't about personal joy, but about collective joy. Get drunk with people you love, people you would defend, people who would defend you. Find them, hold them close, and get drunk off your ass in their company.

Happy, joyous Purim to us all.

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

6 Against that background, the UK has three distinct legal bases to assist, militarily if necessary, its long-standing allies the US and Israel (and now other states in the region, too): (1) to defend another member state pursuant to collective self-defence; (2) to take proportionate action to avert continued Iranian attacks on the UK’s own bases and personnel; and/or (3) to prevent Iran from implementing its clearly stated genocidal intentions against the people of Israel.

7 The US and the UK are in the same legal position; accordingly, if the UK Government’s position (as reported) is that the UK cannot itself take offensive military action to support the US and Israel, the UK Government must also consider that the US strikes were unlawful.

8 Some questions for the UK Government:

(a) Does the UK Government consider that the US and Israeli strikes were unlawful?

(b) Why could we not join the leaders of Canada (Liberal) and Australia (Labor) and offer unequivocal support?

(c) Why are we not actively assisting our several other allies in the region, throughout the Gulf and beyond, who have now also been attacked?

(d) Specifically, is it the UK’s position that we can help those states defend themselves against missiles once launched, but we can’t actively assist them in taking out the missile launchers?

The legal debate about these matters is important. And any government should be cautious before using or endorsing lethal force. But when your first point in responding to targeted strikes on a tyrannical regime which has sought to attack, and which still plans attacks against, your own citizens both at home and abroad, is “We did not participate”, you need to rethink your analysis.

Last night’s speech delivered by the Prime Minister was, frankly, embarrassing. He laid out all the threats to the UK – including clear physical threats to my own community – but then failed even to say that he supported military action to remove those threats. His overriding concern was simply to make it clear that the UK did not participate in the US and Israeli strikes.

In that context, lack of participation is not a badge of honour; it is a mark of shame. It is amoral evasion dressed up as legal principle.

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

I disagree with Lord Hermer KC, the Attorney General. I don’t accept that international law requires our Prime Minister to deliver a pusillanimous statement setting out the UK’s position whose first point is “We did not participate”.

I’ve set out the gist of my approach below. ⬇️

The Prime Minister has refused publicly to support the US and Israel strikes, and also refuses to allow the US to use UK bases, because of international law advice he has reportedly received from Lord Hermer.

International law ought to provide a mechanism to restrain and, if necessary, end despotic and tyrannical regimes such as that in Iran. If the doctrines of international law prove unable to restrain Iranian terrorism and mass murder, and tie the hands of democracies while forcing them to stand and watch Iranian atrocities, international law will have failed. It will have become a fundamentally immoral system of law, and one which is worse than worthless in the modern world.

To be clear: I don’t believe that it is. I think international law is important, and both can and should provide a just legal order. I do, however, have serious questions as to the moral attitudes of some of its expositors; too many international lawyers serenely promote an analysis which ultimately protects tyrants.

Seven points, and some questions:

1 The inherent right to use force in the face of an imminent attack from a hostile nation which is responsible for a pattern of hostile actions exists for good reason: a country cannot be expected to remain idle and just wait for the next attack.

2 Iran has repeatedly threatened to attack the UK’s bases and personnel. Those threats come in the context of persistent Iranian attempts to launch attacks on UK soil, too; the Director General of MI5 has stated, and the PM confirmed last night, that the UK has responded to tens of Iranian-backed plots, presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents. There is also a constant barrage of cyberattacks; while not all cyberattacks are armed attacks in sense of Article 51 of the UN Charter, some may be, and all confirm not just hostile intent but action pursuant to such intent.

3 The UK’s long-standing allies, the US and Israel, were right to consider that they faced further attacks prior to their recent military action, given that (i) Iran has previously attacked both states directly and also through its many proxies; (ii) Iran has repeatedly stated its intent to destroy Israel; (iii) Iran was assessed to be on the brink of acquiring a nuclear capability with uranium enrichment at 60% (which can only be for military use); and (iv) Iran already possessed – as demonstrated by its recent attacks – a sophisticated and effective long-range delivery capability which Israel cannot fully neutralise with defensive weapons.

4 The acquisition of a nuclear capability by Iran represents a genocidal risk for Israel and its people. Iran’s repeatedly stated aim is to wipe the State of Israel, and its inhabitants, off the face of the earth. The slogan of the proxies through which Iran has often attacked Israel is: “God is greater, death to America, death to Israel, curse to the Jews, victory to Islam”. In these circumstances, whether they are characterised as part of an ongoing armed conflict with Iran or as a new use of force based on self-defence, Israel’s actions are justifiable.

5 The UK (and also the US) is permitted under international law to use force to aid another state which is acting in self-defence. Moreover, the UK is under an obligation in international law is to prevent genocide, not just to stop it: stopping an on-going genocide is required, but it necessarily means that action was taken too late.

1/2

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

I stand with our allies in the US and Israel as they take on the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its vile regime. The same regime that carries out attacks on the UK and on our citizens, that seeks to build nuclear weapons that would threaten our country and that brutally repressed pro-democracy protests only months ago and murdered thousands of its own people.

Under my leadership, the Conservative Party will always put our national security first and work with our allies to make the world a safer place.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

During the worst of the days of the hunger crisis in Gaza in the past six months, Hamas deliberately hid literal tons of infant formula and nutritional shakes for children by storing them in clandestine warehouses belonging to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The goal, as I said then, was to worsen the hunger crisis and initiate a disaster as part of the terror group’s famine narrative in a desperate effort to stop Israel’s onslaught against Gaza and force the return of the UN’s aid distribution mechanism, and away from the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Now, activists in the Strip are documenting the waste and deliberate disposal of tons of infant formula, nutritional children’s shake, and children’s powdered milk, which Hamas had hoarded away, given the saturation of the coastal enclave with humanitarian aid after the ceasefire two months ago.

When countless other Palestinian activists and I from Gaza said this back in July, August, and September, we were villainized, attacked, threatened, and made into pariahs by the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex and activist mafias, even though for Gazans, the evidence was so clearly apparent before our eyes. What those in the West continue to fail to understand is that there is no being pro-Palestine without also having a serious vigilance against Hamas’s continued manipulation of international public opinion to hide behind the Strip's civilian population's suffering, something that the terrorist organization’s own actions have led to and created.

Never allow yourself to be a useful idiot in Hamas’s propaganda. You can have compassion for the real suffering of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza, and demand Israeli action to facilitate aid entry into the coastal enclave, while still holding Hamas accountable for its part in causing a hunger and starvation crisis in the first place.

[Matthew Syed @matthewsyed]

My speech to the Conservative Party Conference on how to reverse the UK’s decline.

I didn’t hold back. The state has grown in every sphere, almost without people noticing; a wild move to the left over two decades.

Farage is a socialist (look at his actual economy policy!) who will take us further down this path.

Only realism can save us.

#CPC25

[Charles Braunstein @CharlesJayB]

My friend @Ezra_Cohen_ has shared some interesting thoughts on how to the government could raise money to fill the black hole. Take a look!

[Ezra Cohen @Ezra_Cohen_]

NEW from me for @britishprogress: we’ve found 10 politically uncostly ways the Chancellor can raise £4.2 BILLION to plug the fiscal hole, without breaking manifesto pledges.

They range from removing exemptions on vintage cars to banning large cash transactions. The full list ⬇️

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

https://t.co/opYWzZyV4x

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

A 🧵on some legal issues arising out of the US strike on Iran’s nuclear installations: ⬇️

1               The inherent right to use force in the face of an imminent attack from a hostile nation is well-established in international law and for good reason: a country cannot be expected to remain idle and wait until it is actually attacked.

2               Iran has repeatedly threatened to attack the UK’s bases and personnel if the UK ‘assists’ Israel, with no clarity as to what Iran deems or might deem to be ‘assistance’, nor the scale of its intended attack. Those threats come in the context of a persistent Iranian threat to life on UK soil, too; the Director General of MI5 recently stated that since the start of 2022 the UK has responded to 20 Iran-backed plots, presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents. There is also a constant barrage of cyberattacks; while not all cyberattacks are armed attacks in the sense of Article 51 of the UN Charter, some may be, and all confirm not just hostile intent but action pursuant to such intent.

3               The UK’s long-standing ally, Israel, was right to consider that it faced an imminent attack prior to its recent military action, given that (i) Iran has previously attacked Israel both directly and through proxies; (ii) Iran has repeatedly stated its intent to destroy Israel; (iii) Iran was assessed to be on the brink of acquiring a nuclear capability with uranium enrichment at 60% (which can only be for military use); and (iv) Iran already possessed – as demonstrated by its recent attacks – a sophisticated and effective long-range delivery capability which Israel cannot fully neutralise with defensive weapons.

4               The acquisition of a nuclear capability by Iran represents a genocidal risk for Israel and its people. Iran’s repeatedly stated aim is to wipe the State of Israel, and its inhabitants, off the face of the earth. The slogan of the proxies through which Iran has often attacked Israel is: “God is greater, death to America, death to Israel, curse to the Jews, victory to Islam”. In these circumstances, whether they are characterised as part of an ongoing armed conflict with Iran or as a new use of force based on self-defence, Israel’s actions are justifiable.

5               The UK is permitted under international law to use force to aid another State which is acting in self-defence. Moreover, the UK is under an obligation in international law is to prevent genocide, not just to stop it: stopping an on-going genocide is required, but it necessarily means that action was taken too late.

6               Against that background, the UK has three distinct legal bases to assist, militarily if necessary, its long-standing allies the US and Israel: (1) to defend another member state pursuant to collective self-defence; (2) to take proportionate action to avert Iranian attacks on the UK’s own bases and personnel; and/or (3) to prevent Iran from implementing its clearly stated genocidal intentions against the people of Israel.

7               @Keir_Starmer’s statement welcomed the effect of the US military action in destroying much of Iran’s nuclear program, but is notably silent on its legality, a silence no doubt attributable to his @attorneygeneral who, reportedly, has (unspecified) legal concerns.

8               The US and the UK are in the same legal position; accordingly, if the UK Govt’s position (as reported) is that the UK cannot itself take offensive military action to support Israel, the UK Govt must also consider that the US strike on Iran’s nuclear reactors was illegal.

The UK Govt cannot welcome the ends but prevaricate about the means. So: what is our Govt’s stance on the legality of the US military action. I support it. Does @Keir_Starmer?

[Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger]

On the left is ICJ President Nawaf Salam today calling on Israel to halt its Rafah offensive.

On the right is Salam in 2016, then the Lebanese ambassador to the UN, accusing Israel of apartheid, war crimes, and terror.

Peak impartiality right here

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

A short thread on the favourite slogan of anti-Zionist Jews - and how it very powerfully expresses a very basic disconnect from the rest of us.

🧵

[Charles Braunstein @CharlesJayB]

Was wonderful running the London Marathon today for Camp Simcha. However having to run the route with Palestinian Flags adorned to 10s and 10s of Lamp posts along the route and then a runner shouting "Free Palestine" at me puts a bit of a downer on such a great day for London!

[Mitchell Cohen @MitchellCohen93]

Yesterday, over 600 alumni of Universities in Leeds joined @samanthadmagnus and I calling on the @UniversityLeeds together with @GillianKeegan and @halfon4harlowMP to take devicisive action on antisemitism on campus!

Thank you to everyone who supported!

[United Synagogue @UnitedSynagogue]

"Calling for the murder and rape of a young family is outrageous and we expect the authorities to take swift action. These despicable actions are sadly only the tip of the iceberg on British campuses where Jewish students have been facing threats since October 7. We call on all those able to de-escalate tensions to do so.
We stand in solidarity with University Jewish Chaplaincy, the Union of Jewish Students, Leeds J-Soc and Hillel together with student leaders across UK campuses as they seek to support Jewish students at this challenging time." Michael Goldstein, President, United Synagogue

[Sam Magnus-Stoll @samanthadmagnus]

This is my local Hanukkiah this morning - only 4 days after the bulbs were stolen and a sticker about the war left in the middle. I don’t know how this needs saying but destroying Jewish symbols *isn’t* an act of resistance or solidarity. It’s an act of hatred and cowardice.

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

This is the al-Salam Hospital, in Mosul.

When ISIS terrorists seized it in 2016, @hrw explained international law as it actually exists, not as it would want it to exist to stop Israel defending itself:

"Armed forces or groups should not occupy medical facilities, undermining their protected status and placing civilians and civilian objects at risk. Even when medical facilities are used for military purposes, they are only subject to attack after a warning has been given, setting a reasonable time limit, and after the warning has gone unheeded."

[MEMRI @MEMRIReports]

#ICYMI: Egyptian TV Host Ibrahim Eissa Slams Hamas Official Mousa Abu Marzouk’s Claim That Gaza Civilians’ Safety Is the Responsibility of the U.N., Not Hamas: This Is an Insolent and Disgraceful Statement; Hamas Government Must Step Down #Hamas #Egypt #Palestinians #Gaza

[Boris Johnson @BorisJohnson]

Almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War it is shocking to hear nakedly anti-Semitic chants on the streets of London today. There are people who plainly want to ignore the Hamas massacre of October 7. They want to wipe Israel off the map. That is what they were chanting for today. They must not and will not succeed. I thank the police for all their efforts to keep people safe - but we must all do more, because an ancient hatred is rising again in Europe. It must be stamped out.

[Michael Dickson @michaeldickson]

Israel Opera sings a beautiful rendition of 'Bring Him Home' from Les Misérables as a tribute to the 220+ innocent Israelis who were ruthlessly kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and are currently being held hostage in Gaza.
We say, with a unified voice: #BringThemHome.