Sudi Pigott

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@bindelj It feels like that at many airports now, too far.

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

This sounds very interesting @neilbuttery you’re prolific. Hope the writing is going well too.

[Dr Neil Buttery @neilbuttery]

New podcast episode alert!

Food History Treasures of the @GuildhallLib with Peter Ross.

Today we are talking about the food history collections in the 600 year old Guildhall Library.

The British Food History Podcast is available on all podcast apps.
https://t.co/DZgMdE4AMp

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

Once again we ask:
Why has the UK STILL NOT designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation? It was embarrassing before, it’s off the scale now. Great article by @potkazar https://t.co/quRRGykrfO

[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.

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@bindelj @euanmccolm Totally

[Henshi @HenshiG]

Our collective heart is shattered and our blood calls out for justice.

A young Jewish woman — a 23-year-old nurse — was viciously assaulted on the NYC subway in broad daylight. A woman screamed the medieval blood libel “Jews are eating kids!” at her, “I smell the kids on you,” then choked her, threw her to the ground, beat her, and ripped out chunks of her hair. The victim ended up hospitalized with a concussion.

This wasn’t random rage — it was pure, ancient Jew-hatred unleashed in 2026 New York.

And where is Mayor Zohran Mamdani? Four days of deafening silence. No condemnation. No statement. No leadership.
This is not leadership. This is complicity.

When the highest elected official in our city refuses to speak out against a brazen antisemitic attack — especially amid a shocking 70% surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes — it sends a clear message: Jewish New Yorkers are fair game. Mamdani’s rhetoric, his policies, and his selective silence have helped foster an environment where medieval blood libels are shouted on our subways and Jews are targeted for simply existing.

This young woman could have been any one of us. Any Jewish mother, daughter, sister, grandmother riding the train home. She is someone’s child. Someone who chose to heal others — and was brutalized for being Jewish.

How many more attacks will it take? How many more silent days from City Hall?

We are not strangers in this city. Brooklyn, our neighborhoods, our history — we built lives here after the Holocaust. We deserve to ride the subway, walk the streets, and live without fear.

Enough. Call out the hate. Demand leadership that protects every New Yorker — including Jews.

Silence in the face of blood libels and violence is not neutrality. It is permission.

My heart weeps for this young woman.

Never again means never again — not even in 2026 New York.

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Does he want them to wear yellow armbands too?

[Michel Roux Jr @michelrouxjr]

Great start, let’s keep the momentum
#VATstheproblem https://t.co/aDT48LARTk

[מיכל וואכטל-חלמיש @MichalHalamish]

מארועי אמש-
הבחורה הכיפית לידי זאת סבתא שלי. ואתמול חגגנו לה 100 שנים.
בשמלה חדשה ולוק הורס, היא הודתה לכולנו שבאנו ,קראה מזמור לתודה, ובירכה- שהחיינו וקיימנו והגענו לזמן הזה.
בגיל 18 הסתיימה המלחמה , היא נותרת עם אחות אחת ובמשקל 33 קילו.
אתמול, יותר מ-150 צאצאיה, ענו ״אמן״

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@neilbuttery @CountryfileMag @CartfordInn Totally agree.

[Zac Goldsmith @ZacGoldsmith]

Unbelievably there are still westerners pretending they don’t believe Oct 7 was an abomination on every conceivable level. The reason, I assume, is that being honest to themselves about what happened would mean acknowledging they have actively supported the people behind it.
But for anyone interested, here are the vast and diverse array of sources used by the Civil Commission to compile their report.
The acrobatics required to pretend it’s all made up are Olympic level, but hate does that to people. It is a poison.
…

The Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes Against Women and Children (a non-governmental Israeli body) published its report Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled on 12 May 2026. 
This 280–300-page document is the most comprehensive independent investigation to date into the systematic sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) committed by Hamas and affiliates on 7 October 2023 and against hostages in Gaza. 
It draws on a dedicated “war crimes archive” the Commission built immediately after the attacks (preserving materials later removed or lost) and follows trauma-informed, survivor-centred, internationally recognised standards. 

Key sources include:
•  430+ formal and informal testimonies and interviews collected over two years from survivors, direct witnesses, released hostages, family members of victims, first responders (including paramedics and ZAKA volunteers), soldiers, and experts. Victims represented 52 nationalities in addition to Israelis. 
•  Front-line responders’ accounts and site evidence — explicit testimony and observations from first responders, emergency personnel, and military personnel who recovered bodies, treated survivors, and worked the attack sites (Nova festival, kibbutzim, roads, etc.). 
•  Extensive visual and forensic archive — over 10,000 photographs and video segments (more than 1,800 hours of analysis), including perpetrator-recorded footage, bodycam and security camera recordings, open-source material, and geolocated datasets from the attack sites. 
•  Victim and family statements — direct accounts from survivors of sexual violence, released hostages describing abuse in captivity, and families of murdered victims, often cross-referenced with visual evidence.
•  Open-source intelligence and expert consultations — geolocation-supported verification, interdisciplinary expert review, site visits, and meetings with affected communities. 
•  UN and prior international investigations — the report builds on and incorporates findings from UN reports, notably the March 2024 report by UN Special Representative Pramila Patten on sexual violence in the context of the 7 October attacks, as well as other UN documentation. 
•  Official records and primary materials— forensic reports, communications, and documentation preserved in the Commission’s independent archive that are no longer publicly available. 
The Commission systematically cross-referenced all materials by time, location, and pattern, identifying 13 recurring forms of SGBV used deliberately across multiple sites and phases (attack, abduction, captivity, and digital dissemination). All evidence was handled under ethical “do no harm” protocols. 
This body of primary, multi-source evidence (testimonies + visuals + archives) forms the core of the report’s conclusion that the sexual violence was systematic, widespread, and integral to the Hamas-led assault.

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@karekenj hurrah!!!

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@LanceForman @MarkACropper And Kemi is a bloody impressive speaker and can imagine her not taking any nonsense from any foreign leader.

[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

[Maarten Boudry @mboudry]

A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one not made publicly available, to protect the privacy of the victims.

The worst part of this video is not what it displays, but who is displaying it: the perpetrators themselves. Gleefully. Sadistically. Unabashedly. Most of the footage was filmed by Hamas terrorists on their GoPro bodycams, some also by ordinary Gazan civilians on their cellphones.

Even the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities, but Hamas brags about theirs for the entire world to see. The killers are euphoric throughout the massacre, and their relentless, ecstatic cries of "Allahu Akbar" (punctuated by the occasional "Kill the Jew!") are simply nauseating.

Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear — one with his eye socket hanging out of his face — asking his brother whether he thinks they're going to die, while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade in their saferoom helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter.

Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another "Zionist colonizer" getting what he deserved, right?https://t.co/JvfJEtk8LA
Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy.

There is some evidence of sexual violence in the video — the charred corpse of a young woman with her legs splayed and her genitals exposed — but not much. Apparently even Hamas draws a line somewhere: they are not as proud of raping Jewish women as they are of murdering them. Or, more likely, they simply didn't want to embarrass the delicate sensibilities of their legions of useful idiots in the West.

But yes — there was rape. Not "rape" in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a new damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women's rights NGO. (video summary here: https://t.co/LTTjiO1s7E)

Across its 180 pages, the report describes "a recurring pattern of rape and gang rape; sexual torture; mutilation; targeted shooting to the face, head and genital area; forced nudity; binding and restraint; genital burning; objects inserted into intimate areas; post-mortem sexual humiliation; and execution during or after sexual assault."

And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like "take off your pants," "lie down," "spread your legs," and "don't make trouble." I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases?

I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game.
https://t.co/PoKUfIHeXV

[Sudi Pigott @sudipigott]

@ZacGoldsmith @JuliaHB1 Thank you for saying this

[Zac Goldsmith @ZacGoldsmith]

This is the single most shocking testimony I have ever seen. 

Even more shocking is that so many people that I (& probably you) know decided on that day that the people behind this perversion deserved their active public support.
It is hard to have any faith in humanity when we see how easily large groups of people can be manipulated into supporting activities too cruel and disgusting even for the devil.
And not because they understand it, but simply because they see that as the fashionable position to take.

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

One of the biggest crowds at the Demo Against Antisemitism was from the Iranian contingent.
While Israel and Iran are at war, British Jews along with the anti Ayatollah Iranian Brits and Israelis living here have formed a really special bond.

[Chez Bruce @ChezBruce]

Congratulations Simon - superb film-making.