Vikram Rao

Dad | Husband

views personal, retweet ≠ endorsement

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Does Ben realise these guys are just the sequel to the story they started?

[Ben Obese-Jecty MP @BenObeseJecty]

Ant Middleton is an unrepentant racist who doesn’t think I should be allowed to serve in Government because of my heritage, despite having been born here. He doesn’t think Zia Yusuf should be allowed to either.

He’s also a violent thug who served a prison sentence after being convicted of assaulting two police officers.

Hardly a surprise then to see Rob Kenyon endorsed by one of his “heroes” in Makerfield, so desperate are Reform to stop haemorrhaging support to Restore Britain.

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Has Tom breathed anything about assaults on police in Belfast lately?

[Tom Tugendhat @TomTugendhat]

This man is asking you to make him prime minister. He wants to have power over policing and laws.

Why would you stop crime - any crime - in Polanski’s Britain if he’s going to side with the criminal?

He wants a lawless Britain where violence against the police is encouraged.

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Quite insulting that Jaishankar doesn't think anyone curious about what Rubio said in response.

[Dr. S. Jaishankar @DrSJaishankar]

Spoke to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this evening. I reiterated India’s strong protest at the attacks by the US Navy in the Gulf that killed three Indian mariners. Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified.

[richard bacon @richardpbacon]

Is there a single thing, @ZacGoldsmith, Netenyahu & Ben Guvir do that upsets you? Does ANYTHING they do in the West Bank upset you? More than a million people (300,000 kids) displaced in Lebanon. That?
No fully functioning hospitals in Gaza. That?
Are you cool with all of it.

[Daniel Seidemann @DanielSeidemann]

For many years, I took barbs for refusing to call Israel's policy in East Jerusalem "ethnic cleansing". After all, there were 60,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem in 1967, and 400,000 today. Occupation sucked, and included war crimes, but it wasn't ethnic cleansing.

That has changed now.

There are 3 Palestinian neighborhoods, all of whose residents are being or are about to be displaced: Batan al-Hawa and al-Bustan in Silwan, and Um Haroun in Sheik Jarrah. The latter two are being razed, or will be razed in the near future.

And immediately to the east, the Bedouin hamlet of Khan al-Akmar, adjacent to E-1, is about to be expelled, part of an attempt to "cleanse" Area C between East Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley of its Palestinian residents.

Regrettably, I can think of no other term to use other than "ethnic cleansing".

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

This is appalling, sickening, an abomination

WHAT is @Keir_Starmer doing? Has he even called a COBRA meeting?

Are all the people in the UK of equal worth to this Government?

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Please. Zahawi's drift to his current position started years ago, even with his 'true blue' rosette. And the Tory grassroots lapped it up. 'Citizens of nowhere', anyone?

[Luke Robert Black 🌳 @lukerobertblack]

.@nadhimzahawi you don’t have to humiliate yourself like this.

I’m aghast watching you shred your credibility live on air like this, shamefully trying to defend a position now several days in that no one can.

Baffling considering to what you used to believe ⬇️

[Alonso Gurmendi @Alonso_GD]

Israel kills a baby and the response I get is “accidents happen in war”. Israel has killed over 1,500 -yes one thousand five hundred- babies under one year old since 7/10.

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Appalling imagery aside, isn't she (even at an intellectual level) curious to know if the man or woman who murdered 7 month old Sam in Hebron is a British citizen who may return to our streets after his/her tour?

[Hadley Freeman @HadleyFreeman]

Perhaps they could be identified by being made to wear - and I don't know, I'm just spitballing here - a yellow Star of David?

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

Does she... think that WC was on our notes since the start of time, or what?

[Alex Phillips @ThatAlexWoman]

A serious country does not swap its greatest leader on its banknotes for little animals

Imagine India ditching Gandhi for a monkey. Or the USA dropping Washington for a racoon

This is the rot that is eating away at our confidence, identity and cohesion:

Bank dropped Churchill after being told he was ‘elitist’

https://t.co/SuovuH1DEU

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

@lukerobertblack @LGBTCons argh the same old 'Tories brought us equal marriage' BS. Luke. It was cross party. It passed *in spite of * the Tories in the HoC. They voted against it. You know this.

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

This is the Israeli military justification for attacking a Lebanese army patrol inside Leb territory - ‘the area is an active combat zone, and movement in the area requires coordination with the IDF’ The Israeli military is demanding Leb troops asks its permission to move around its own country 🧵

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

I expected this clickbait from Mr Pollard to be something different.

In fact, he has a point. A register of *all* dual national war criminals would be an excellent idea.

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

Here's my @Telegraph column, 'Zack Polanski wants a Jew register. What could be more sinister than that?'

https://t.co/l1z6YW44ez

I’ll say one thing for Zack Polanski: he knows a winning strategy when he sees one. When he became leader of the Greens last September, he spotted straight away that the secret to boosting the party’s poll ratings – and thus electoral success – was straightforward. Dump the green stuff and focus on Gaza.

There was a ready-made group of voters for whom Gaza is the only issue that really matters, waiting to be courted by any party which turned itself into the anti-Israel train. That group fell into the Greens’ arms when Polanski arrived on the scene.

He has been masterly in his care of them, not least in his skilful elision of being anti-Israel with being Jewish himself. It provides a much-used “get out of jail free card” when the Greens’ professed anti-Zionism slips into accusations of barely disguised anti-Semitism.

But even by Polanski’s standards, his demand that any dual British-Israeli citizen who has fought for Israel against Hamas in Gaza has their name listed on a database – a list, in other words, of bad Jews – is breathtakingly blatant.

The Green leader has signed an open letter sent to Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, which calls on the Government to act in the name of “public safety and justice” to “track the movements of Brits who have served in the IDF” and “subject them to secondary screening where necessary at ports of entry”. Britons, that is, who just happen to be Jews.

Israel has national service, and all Israeli citizens (with the exception – which is deeply controversial in Israel – of some religious groups) are conscripted to the IDF at 18. Many have been called up as reservists when they are older.

Polanski is thus calling for a large proportion of British-Israeli dual citizens to be listed on a database. “Nobody wants to live next to a potential war criminal,” the letter organised by campaign group Declassified UK states. Presumably then, Polanski wishes to refuse entry to or deport any British-Israeli who has served in the IDF.

You will notice one obvious element to this demand. There are wars on every continent. There are accusations of war crimes in all those conflicts. But Polanski has said not a word about British dual citizens – or even those of sole UK nationality – who have fought in any of those wars, either ongoing or historic.

I wait, for example, for Polanski to demand a list of dual-nationality Britons who fought in one of the most brutal post-1945 conflicts, the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence. The nine-month conflict led to the death of up to three million Bengalis and the displacement of 10 million refugees into India.

This is not merely historic. War crime investigations are still going on. But no Israelis were involved (let’s be honest: no Jews). So Polanski is silent – not least because many new Green voters are drawn from those communities.

By signing the letter, Polanski doesn’t only demand that Britons who have fought in Gaza be put on a database. He goes far beyond that. The letter calls says “travellers with Israeli travel documents or arriving from an origin of Tel Aviv airport” should be subject to “potential secondary screenings at ports of entry”. For Polanski then, any Israeli should be marked out for special screening.

As for the allegation of genocide against Israel, it is, at the very least, hotly contested. But there is a well-founded allegation of genocide against the Chinese in its treatment of the Uyghurs. Does Polanski demand that any Chinese national arriving in the UK is deemed a suspected war criminal? Of course he doesn���t.

If Jews aren’t involved, neither Polanski nor any of his fellow Greens could give a damn. Polanski may be Jewish, but his party’s strategy could hardly be clearer.

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

@CamillaTominey Nope. Tories voted against it in the House. As you should well know. It was a cross party effor that passed *in spite of* the Tories.

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

To be fair some of us spotted Tim's batshit craziness even back when he was a Tory.

[Luke Robert Black 🌳 @lukerobertblack]

Tim - you have fully lost it. Suggesting that there is some kind of conspiracy is honestly mental. You don’t have to be this belligerent and partisan.

Go outside and touch some grass, my goodness!

[Vikram Rao @conViktion]

@MonkEmma @Katie_Lam_MP That is weird. She cannot be *that* stupid.

[David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch]

@nadhimzahawi With respect Nadhim the issue you raised was 'fighting age' not the means by which you arrived (means which you will have to agree were not available to many of these channel crossers). But you know this really which is why you disappoint me so much

[Kitch @DHKITCH]

Rich coming from Julia Hartley-Brewer, whose career has featured enough offence, smear and bad-faith provocation to fill a warehouse.

Palestinians holding a marathon in the middle of devastation is not a contradiction.
It is a reminder that human beings still try to live through horror.

Mocking that does not make her incisive.
Just callous.

[Riss @zero_foxx]

@JuliaHB1 Imagine being such a filthy slob of a woman you mock amputees. Are you mad they survived, Julia?

https://t.co/Of846cuNKj