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On this day—October 20, 2022
Days after Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it is worth remembering what her work actually produced.
This day three year ago, the UN released a report that was never an investigation. It was a predetermined conviction of the Jewish state.
Pillay chaired the UN Human Rights Council’s “Commission of Inquiry” on Israel, created in 2021. She had already signed calls to “sanction apartheid Israel” before she was appointed. Her fellow commissioners made provocative statements showing their level of “impartiality.” For example, Chris Sidoti said accusations of antisemitism are “thrown around like rice at a wedding” while Miloon Kothari complained that “the Jewish lobby” controlled social media and questioned why Israel belonged in the UN at all.
The commission issued a call for submissions and received millions documenting Jewish victims of Palestinian and Arab attacks. Pillay later said she had not seen them and that “all of them would be pro-Israel.” The final report contains none of it. The word “terrorism” does not appear. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad do not appear. Suicide bombings and the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians are reduced to a single vague reference to the “detrimental impact of armed attacks.”
The report’s own summary states that it addresses only “the human rights implications for Palestinians.” Recommendations target only Israel and urge the ICC to prosecute Israelis. None are directed at Palestinian authorities.
Meanwhile, no Western democracy voted to create the inquiry. Instead, the so-called “Human Rights Council” that did includes China, Venezuela, and other authoritarian states. Commissioners like Pillay were chosen purposefully because their hatred for Israel made it clear they would start with the conclusion of its guilt.
This is what Nobel Peace Prize is given for today: honor the person that erased Jewish victims, ignored millions of submissions about them, and demonized and defamed the world’s only Jewish state.
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Last night extremist pro-Pal students at KCL abused and harassed a Bahraini analyst who promotes diplomacy and the Abraham Accords. They shouted in Arabic “where will you go from Allah?”. They hate anyone who wants peace.
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🚨 Shocking attack on a Jewish woman in Clapton Common in London. This was the second assault after another Jewish woman was punched in the face. There’s potentially many other victims. Just horrifying.
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A man jailed for immigration deception after a judge condemned his “deliberate, extended manipulation” of the system is now the BBC’s principal data scientist for Responsible AI, helping shape how the corporation uses AI and how news is represented through it.
Hicham Yezza (picture here with Moazzam Begg, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee) was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2009 after falsely claiming he had permission to remain in Britain. He had overstayed his visa by more than five years. He later successfully appealed against deportation and is now a British citizen.
Before joining the BBC, Yezza also described Hamas rocket attacks as “resistance”, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and called it an apartheid regime built on stolen land.
He founded the pro-Palestinian Ceasefire magazine and later joined BBC Monitoring in 2021, where The Telegraph says he produced reports concerning Gaza.
His current BBC role involves guiding responsible AI policy and developing benchmarks for how AI assistants represent public-service news.
There is an extraordinary contrast here.
When the Asserson Report used AI alongside data scientists and other researchers to analyse millions of words of BBC Israel-Hamas coverage, the corporation responded: “We have serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyse impartiality.”
Yet the BBC now entrusts a senior role in determining how AI should approach and represent news to someone who had publicly expressed such strongly anti-Israel views before joining it.
The BBC says Yezza’s controversial statements and immigration case pre-date his employment, that he has not breached its social-media rules while working there, and that he stopped working for Ceasefire when he joined. So that's all OK then!
An extraordinary background — and an extraordinary contrast in the BBC’s attitude towards AI scrutiny of news.
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Students supported Mao
Students supported Castro
Students supported Khomeini
Students supported Hitler
Students supported Mussolini
If find yourself blindly supporting every student lead movement, you’ll be wrong very often, in many eras, on many issues.
A good rule of history: if you find yourself opposing a student movement while siding with the ruling class, you're wrong. Every time, in every era, whatever the issue.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Student movements have not always been on the right side of history. Mao's student Red Guards persecuted hundreds of thousands. Students helped Castro and Khomeini rise to power, and Nazi student groups opposed the Weimar Republic.
britannica.com/topic/Red-Guar…
encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…
aei.org/education/actu…
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✈️ WATCH: Israeli Comedy Show Eretz Nehederet Turns Flydubai Terror Attack Into Hilarious “Fauda in the Skies” Parody Featuring Hero Israeli Plumber
Israel’s Eretz Nehederet has given the Flydubai hijacking ordeal the Fauda treatment. Its sketch, “Fauda in the Skies,” draws on the story of Yaniv Hayoun, the Israeli plumber who helped thwart the attack.
Comedian Eran Zarachovitz impersonates Lior Raz as a plumber turned action hero, calling for wrenches to overpower the terrorist. Then, in the middle of the airborne rescue, he announces that he needs to get a part from his car.
The show promoted the spoof with a suitably reassuring caption: “The skies have never been safer.”
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I have asked for Idris Sheikh’s sentence to be reviewed as unduly lenient.
Care workers who abuse their residents must be severely punished, but Idris Sheikh is currently likely to serve only a third of his 20 month sentence.
I can’t be doing with trivial sentences for such crimes against vulnerable people who need care.
A former Bradford care worker has been jailed for sexually abusing a vulnerable woman in a care home.
Idris Sheikh, 46, of Carlisle Place, was convicted unanimously in August of engaging in sexual activity with a mentally disordered female.
Bradford Crown Court heard Sheikh carried out three different forms of sexual touching, while his DNA was found on the victim’s clothing.
The woman was considered too vulnerable to give evidence in person, with the prosecution case instead relying on disclosures she made to care home staff and evidence gathered by police.
Sentencing Sheikh to 20 months in prison, Judge Christopher Smith said he had abused the trust placed in him and told him he would never work in the care sector again.
Sheikh continues to deny the offence and will remain on the sex offenders register for ten years.
#Bradford
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FAMILY TOLD YEARS AFTER HER DEATH
Ever refreshed your inbox for an answer that never came? The case against Fiona McGowan was dropped and nobody mentioned it to her.
Fiona McGowan died in 2009, aged 47, waiting to face court over £30,000 that the @PostOffice system showed as missing from her Edinburgh branch. She ran it with her partner Phil Cowan.
The system was called Horizon. Phil Cowan says the area manager's first question was how soon they could pay the money back. She was charged with false accounting, which means recording figures wrongly in the books.
Phil Cowan says he only found out years later, through a freedom of information request, a legal way to ask public bodies for their records, that the case against her had been withdrawn before she died. He says nobody at the Post Office ever told them.
He told the @Sunday_Post she may well be alive today if she had not been facing court.
Watch the end of the @itvnews clip, where a Post Office statement says it is deeply sorry for the suffering the events of the Horizon scandal brought. Events did it, apparently. In July 2025 the same Post Office said it apologises unreservedly for the suffering Post Office caused.
Then read the Post Office website. It calls the scandal a dispute that mainly concerns whether a computer system was reliable. A dispute. It also says today's Post Office puts justice and redress for victims first.
I see this everywhere. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry @PostOffInquiry found Post Office staff knew, or should have known, that Horizon could produce errors, and the company kept pretending it was accurate. Now Horizon takes the blame, the Post Office turns up as the saviour and history gets rewritten.
The Post Office is owned by the UK government and in Scotland the Crown Office @COPFS handles prosecutions, so the state owns this too and had at least 2 numbers to ring.
Her family only learned the truth years after she died. How is that human? How is that even a process?
Nobody told Fiona McGowan. Not even by post..
Sources
@Sunday_Post @DailyMailUK @edinburghpaper @TheScotsman
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🚨 DEUTSCHLANDS VERGESSENE GEISEL: Erst stoppte Berlin ihre Rettung – dann verschwand Sonja Nientiet im Schweigen dreier Außenminister!
Am 3. Mai 2018 wird die deutsche Krankenschwester Sonja Nientiet in Mogadischu entführt. Sie ist nicht zum Urlaub in Somalia. Sie arbeitet dort für das Internationale Komitee vom Roten Kreuz, bildet Menschen in Erster Hilfe aus und hilft ausgerechnet dort, wo Gewalt, Terror und Elend zum Alltag gehören.
Ein Wachmann, der sie eigentlich beschützen sollte, soll den Entführern geholfen haben. Sonja wird aus dem Gebäude gezerrt und verschleppt. Ein ebenfalls entführter kenianischer Kollege kann entkommen. Sonja nicht.
Seitdem ist sie in der Gewalt mutmaßlicher Dschihadisten.
Acht Jahre. Acht Jahre ohne Freiheit. Acht Jahre Angst. Acht Jahre, in denen deutsche Regierungen wechselten, Minister kamen und gingen – während Sonja Nientiet in Somalia zurückblieb.
Doch das eigentlich Unfassbare kommt erst noch:
Nach einem Bericht der „Bild“ gelang es dem Bundesnachrichtendienst etwa zwei Jahre nach der Entführung, Sonjas Aufenthaltsort zu ermitteln. Eine Befreiungsaktion wurde vorbereitet. Das Kommando Spezialkräfte trainierte für den Zugriff. Amerikanische Dienste lieferten Aufklärungsinformationen, die USA wollten geeignete Black-Hawk-Hubschrauber bereitstellen. Selbst der damalige KSK-Kommandeur soll zur Erkundung nach Mogadischu gereist sein.
Die Rettung schien zum Greifen nah.
Dann stoppte der damalige Außenminister Heiko Maas (SPD) laut diesem Bericht die Operation. Seine Begründung: Die Aktion könne in einem Blutbad enden und Sonja oder beteiligte Soldaten das Leben kosten.
Das Risiko war zweifellos gewaltig. Aber ebenso gewaltig waren die Folgen dieser Entscheidung: Die Rettung fand nicht statt. Sonja blieb bei ihren Entführern. Die Spur verlor sich.
Dann kam Annalena Baerbock ins Auswärtige Amt. Wieder vergingen Jahre. Es gab keine Befreiung, keinen öffentlich erkennbaren Durchbruch und keine Antwort darauf, wann Sonja endlich nach Hause kommt.
2024 starb Sonjas Mutter Christel im Alter von 84 Jahren. Sie hatte jahrelang auf die Rückkehr ihrer Tochter gehofft. Sie starb, ohne zu wissen, ob Sonja überhaupt noch lebte.
Im Frühjahr 2025 dann das erschütternde Lebenszeichen: Sonja sitzt in einem schwarzen Tschador vor der Kamera, sichtbar gezeichnet. Ihre Gesundheit habe sich verschlechtert. Nur die Hoffnung, ihre Liebsten wiederzusehen, halte sie am Leben. Unter Tränen bittet sie die Bundesregierung um Hilfe.
Doch ihre Mutter konnte sie nicht mehr wiedersehen.
Seit dem 6. Mai 2025 heißt der verantwortliche Außenminister Johann Wadephul (CDU). Auch unter ihm ist Sonja nicht nach Hause gekommen. Noch im Juni 2026 verweigerte die Bundesregierung im Bundestag jede konkrete Auskunft zu ihrem Gesundheitszustand, ihrem Aufenthaltsort oder zu neuen Initiativen für ihre Freilassung. Man äußere sich grundsätzlich nicht zu Entführungsfällen.
Bis heute bleibt nur diese erschütternde Bilanz:
Heiko Maas ließ die vorbereitete Rettungsaktion stoppen.
Annalena Baerbock brachte Sonja nicht zurück.
Und Johann Wadephul hat bislang ebenfalls keinen sichtbaren Mühen erkennen die Krankenschwester heim zu holen.
Darum muss die Frage jetzt lauter werden:
Herr Wadephul, was tun Sie konkret, um Sonja Nientiet lebend nach Deutschland zurückzuholen?
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On this day—October 18, 1976
Soviet Jews could neither practice their Judaism nor help but be constantly reminded they were different. Many sought to emigrate to Israel. For the communists, this was blasphemy against the state.
This day, 13 Soviet Jews walked into the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and demanded the written explanations for their emigration denials. The regime answered by busing them into a forest outside Moscow where they were beaten to a pulp.
They came back the next day anyway. Then, more followed. After an empty meeting with Interior Minister Shchelokov, the demonstrations continued. On October 25, police arrested 22 protesting Jews, including Natan Sharansky. They were charged with “hooliganism” and locked up. Some wore yellow Stars of David.
The pattern continued: arrests, beatings, and some were sent into Siberian exile. Sharansky would spend years in the Gulag on fabricated treason charges.
The refuseniks kept on returning, documenting, and refusing to disappear. Their persistence, and the Western attention it forced, helped keep the issue alive until the gates finally opened.
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Look at their faces. You can barely read their names and their age without breaking into tears.
The Islamic Republic is preparing to hang these innocent women and men.
Stopping these executions must be a global emergency. Every second counts.
Say their names. Stop the hangings NOW.
#StopExecutionsInIran
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is an MP in Somalia THIS WEEK defending the mutilation of little girls because it benefits men.
I am running out of words for the sheer inhumanity of these men. And the female politician laughing behind him should be ashamed. But that would require a conscience.
Around 99% of Somali women and girls have undergone #FGM, yet politicians openly defend this horrific abuse.
And what do we do? Keep pouring billions into Somalia while pretending it is building a functioning state.
Why are British taxpayers funding institutions whose politicians show such contempt for little girls?
Not another penny without accountability. I am sick of this madness.
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I just want to remind everyone that 88% of trans inmates in Canada are sex offenders. Only 11% of Canada’s non-trans male inmates are sex offenders, by the way, so we’re talking about a group of men who are literally 8x more likely to be sex offenders than the general male prison population. That’s who the Canadian government has decided to put in cells with some of the country’s most vulnerable women.
If you think that this predilection for sexual offending doesn’t also carry over to the non-incarcerated trans population, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to put down the crack pipe, because only a crackhead could seriously believe that.
Trans-identifying men are paraphiliacs, and paraphiliacs are some of the most dangerous men on the planet. Studies have found a 20% rate of transvestism in sexually sadistic criminals, and a 40% rate of transvestism in sexually sadistic murderers. One study found the rate of transvestism in sexually motivated killers to be as high as 54%, and everyone reputable who has seriously studied the subject has found a high frequency of genital and gender dysphoria in the perpetrators of sexually motivated violence, with an even higher frequency among sexually motivated murderers.
In short, these men are dangerous, and the ones who are incarcerated are the absolute last people who should ever be locked in cells with women.
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Today is the sixth anniversary of the murder of Samuel Paty, the history and geography teacher who was beheaded by an Islamist near his school in Conflates-Sainte-Honorine, outside of Paris.
He had shown students the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on freedom of expression, in which he emphasised that students could choose not to look at the cartoons if they were offended.
In the UK, the Batley Grammar school teacher is still in hiding due to threats to his life after he too showed students cartoons of Muhammad in a lesson about freedom of speech.
The Labour government's Islamophobia definition will make it even harder to talk about the brutal murder of Samuel Paty. At the Free Speech Union there has been a four fold increase in cases where people have been penalised for criticising Islam.
To help the fight against Islamic blasphemy laws, join the Free Speech Union or donate to our crowdfunders which are dedicated to stopping the Islamophobia definition taking hold and for helping people who get into trouble for criticising Islam
- link below.
We stand in solidarity with Mr Paty's family and his colleagues and all those who continue to risk their lives by challenging sacred values and encouraging others to think critically about them.
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Ashok Kumar made very plain at yesterday’s press conference that there was a significant mandate for “Zionism is racism” to become Green Party policy. He is clear it cannot be overturned easily and that Green MPs views are irrelevant to it. He is also very explicit that this anti-Semitic position is what the Green Party holds now. Individual members must face the fact that you cannot divorce yourself from this extreme position and focus only on the environment. You are fascist or you leave and stop being fascists. It’s sort of simple really. Don’t be the naive and willing scaffold for those who loathe Jews.
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Settler colonialism requires a mother country that sends settlers to extract resources for the metropole.
If you think Jews returning to the Land of Israel is “settler colonialism,” then please name the Jews’ “mother country.” You can’t.
Jews returning to their historic homeland had no mother country. They were fleeing the countries that persecuted them. They invested capital into a poor land with few natural resources rather than extracting it. They revived and updated a Semitic language native to the region that never stopped being used.
The “settler colonial” myth is nothing but a slur.
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Shame on @BBCWomansHour for asking about discrimination against transgender people in interview about NHS single sex provision without also contextualising the fact that failure to provide single sex facilities is a form of indirect sex discrimination.
"It's a complicated situation"
"We need to think about timelines"
Although Darlington Nurses case was mentioned I heard nothing about the facts of indirect discrimination.
🤬
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“Iran is not a chessboard for your ideological battles. Our suffering is not yours to interpret to fit your politics. If you genuinely care about human rights and the Iranian people, start by listening to us, even when our voices challenge your ideology.”
Many have not listened. Fact is you can speak over Iranian voices and spew your bile over western media. That’s free speech. But it comes with consequences. The very tales you spin are narratives that keep a regime in power that continue to execute innocent protesters, some as young as 17, at a rate of 6 a day.
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LS v NHS England [2026], LS indirect sex discrimination & harassment claim upheld as:
"there is no express legal right for a trans person to use the single-sex facilities of their gender identity under the EqA 2010 or the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulations 1992;"
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🚨 We're already hearing that some NHS Trusts are looking for ways around the guidance.
🔄 "Case-by-case" exemptions. Replacing single-sex spaces with larger gender-neutral facilities. Reducing women to small cubicles instead of restoring proper provision.
⚖️ The law is clear.
📢 @NHSEngland must act swiftly and decisively against any Trust attempting to frustrate implementation.
⚠️ Consider this fair warning: if it happens, nobody can say they didn't see it coming.
🤔 If Trusts knowingly ignore the law and guidance, will NHS indemnity still apply, or will the public be left footing the bill for avoidable legal claims? 💷