Views expressed are my own, not my firm's.
London
Joined May 2011
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Ben Rogoff retweeted
This is the wife of Britain's National Security advisor.
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Sarah Helm, wife of the UK national security adviser Jonathan Powell, has far worse social media than was reported at the weekend. She's compared Israel to the Nazis; defended Hamas; and questioned reports of their mass rape. Me for the Spectator. spectator.com/article/reveal…
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Sarah Helm, the wife of Britain's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, took flak last week after appearing to support Palestine Action, the banned terror group, on Twitter. The police looked, but took no further action.
The Spectator can reveal that there is vastly more material, far more controversial than this, in Helm's tweets.
Helm has defended Hamas, questioned reports of mass rape by the terror group, blamed the 7 October attacks on the creation of Israel in 1948, compared Israel to the Nazis, and appeared to praise Syria's then dictator Bashar al-Assad for remarks in which he had called the Jewish state an 'outlaw colonial entity' populated by 'herds of settlers that are closer to barbarism than to humanity.'
She has also called for western military intervention against Israel and attacked her husband's own government for its 'complicity' and 'appeasement' towards Tel Aviv. Here are some of the highlights.
✍️ Andrew Gilligan
Article | spectator.com/article/reveal… | @mragilligan
Ben Rogoff retweeted
According to the Palestinian Authority's official school textbooks for grades 6 through 9:
• The Canaanites were Arabs
• Palestine grew tomatoes and potatoes in the 600s
• Muslims invented zero and reached America in the 800s
• The Third Crusade was in 1291, sent by "Britain"
• George Washington declared independence at the "Third Philadelphia Congress"
• World War I was fought by the Axis
• Israel burned al-Aqsa
• A terrorist who killed 13 children on a bus killed "soldiers"
• Ancient Israel did not exist
This is what UNRWA and PA schools are teaching to children.
Let's take a journey through the Palestinian Authority's fantasy world.
🧵
If you’ve still got that shameful black armband, perhaps you could pop it back on after that woeful clearance and Watford goal @conorcoventry
#cafc
Ben Rogoff retweeted
This senior aid to Andy Burnham surely has to be sacked? With his wife clearly being a security risk. mol.im/a/16214595
Ben Rogoff retweeted
I think it's inevitable that Jonathan Powell will step down as National Security Adviser.
How can he possibly continue in that position when his own wife has publicly supported a proscribed terrorist organisation?
The optics are horrific.
His position is untenable.
This senior aid to Andy Burnham surely has to be sacked? With his wife clearly being a security risk. mol.im/a/16214595
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Police assess Palestine Action post by national security adviser's wife bbc.in/4zCNScu
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Sarah Helm, a shill for Palestine Action, Francesca Albanese and Hamas, isn't just Tony Blair's former chief of staff, she also happens to be the wife of Jonathan Powell, ie, Andy Burnham’s National Security Adviser.
Ben Rogoff retweeted
You probably haven’t heard of Sarah Helm. She is a journalist, author… and wife of Jonathan Powell, Britain's National Security Adviser, the man at the very centre of the state's fight against terrorism.
Yesterday, responding to reports that Sally Rooney's books may no longer be sold in Britain over her alleged support for Palestine Action, she posted this on X: "God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action."
Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist organisation. Under the Terrorism Act, expressing support for a proscribed group is a criminal offence. Hundreds of people have been arrested for doing exactly that.
Perhaps Ms Helm will say she was being loose with her words. But the household of the man responsible for Britain's national security is not where you'd expect to find what looks very much like a declaration of support for a banned terror group.
Does Downing Street have anything to say? Does it hell.
Ben Rogoff retweeted
The Prime Minister’s Office:
The facts surrounding the confrontation near Abu Falah, during which Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was allegedly assaulted, remain unclear and are under investigation.
Israel unequivocally condemns violence against anyone—Jews, Arabs, Christians or journalists. Those responsible will be held accountable.
But serious questions remain. Reports indicate some 200 Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths. Footage shows masked individuals on both sides hurling objects, amid reports of fireworks fired at Jewish youths. Other footage appears to show Levine knocked down and immediately helped to her feet by the same unidentified individual.
The investigation must establish the facts, including who initiated the violence.
We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.
The facts must determine the conclusions. Not the headlines.
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Opinion: When Obama speaks, millions of people listen. If he truly believes that it is “undeniable” that Jews “took land off people," then he is an antisemitism superspreader.
jpost.com/opinion/article-91…
Ben Rogoff retweeted
These books shown were seized from schools in Gaza during the war. The material raises a question every plan for Gaza’s future must confront: how do you undo years of indoctrination?
Hamas has worked to embed its ideology far beyond its armed ranks, reaching children who should have been protected from it. That influence will survive the destruction of tunnels and the confiscation of weapons unless there is a sustained effort to challenge what children are taught.
Gaza needs demilitarisation and deradicalisation. Rebuilding schools while leaving the teaching of hatred intact would help prepare the ground for another war. Palestinian children deserve the chance to grow up without being groomed to fight it.
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Chris Sidoti—a UN human rights commissioner who co-authored a report bizarrely accusing Israel of genocide—claims: “We do not rely on media reports.”
He is then confronted with a section of his report that insanely asserted that 83 percent of those killed in Gaza were civilians. The report takes this as evidence that Israel "deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians."
But this claim rests entirely on one Guardian article, which took an IDF database of 8,900 militants listed as dead or “probably” dead, subtracted it from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s 53,000 deaths, and called everyone else a civilian.
Did the commission check any of this? “No, we didn’t...we literally do not know.”
Ben Rogoff retweeted
When France joined the UK in unilaterally recognising a ‘state of Palestine’ more than a year ago it did so under the proviso that democratic elections must be held within a year.
Those planned elections have now been cancelled until September 11 next year (one can only guess why this date was chosen).
It’s almost as if you cannot trust a thing the Palestinian leadership agrees to.
#Palestine | Announcement of the postponement of Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections
Ben Rogoff retweeted
Israel just unearthed a 2,000-year-old section of Jerusalem aqueduct that brought water to Temple Mount.
There was no Palestine then. No Islam either.
There was a Jewish kingdom in Judea, with Jerusalem at its heart and the Second Temple still standing.
