Latest news with #Sabbath
Spectator
2 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Is nothing private any more?
A few years ago, when I taught at university, a student who lived with their parents told me they had argued with their mother about what they described as 'queer identity'. The student had secretly recorded the argument and wondered what I thought about them using it for a piece of writing. I think their assumption was that because I'm a journalist I would embrace the idea. I did not. How did the UK become a place where young people think it's permissible to record a relative at home and make that recording public? Why has privacy been so easily discarded, and why have people welcomed its demise so they can control the behaviour of others? My assumption was that Strangers and Intimates would focus on recent decades and technology – with the erasure of privacy stemming from people having the means of surveillance to counter behaviour they think should be punished. But Tiffany Jenkins goes deeper than that, telling the story from the Reformation onwards, examining why people intruded on privacy long before the internet age, and why others fought for it: The fact is, we are all different in private. We may not be our best selves when we shut the door. We misspeak, we think the unthinkable, we let off steam, we rant and we rave, and we say and do stupid things. Privacy conceals harmful behaviour and impedes accountability, and yet we all require that place away from public view. That tension, between wanting to be left unchecked to behave as feels human vs the desire of society to protect people from harmful behaviour and accountability, is what drives Jenkins's book. In early 17th-century England, courts punished behaviour such as adultery, sex outside marriage, drinking in alehouses during church service and dancing on the Sabbath. They 'relied upon members of the community to police each other', Jenkins writes. As well as religious control, she tackles the impact of feminism, the more recent hawking of our private lives – Prince Harry and Big Brother get a mention – and the clampdown on freedoms. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 makes it illegal to say something even at home that could stir up hatred against people with protected characteristics: This is a historic change. Since the 17th century, it has been accepted that there is a crucial distinction between what a person says or thinks in private and their public speech, a demarcation between private life and public life. Only totalitarian governments ignored that. Jenkins takes care to remind us why privacy has been invaded, from a law against incest introduced in the 1600s to the killing of seven-year-old Marie Colwell in 1973 by her stepfather and the increased intervention that followed. But she also mentions the 'removal of 121 children from their parents in Cleveland in 1987, based on later disproved allegations of sexual and Satanic abuse'. So there is a line – but where to draw it? It has been misjudged many times, whether by a student recording a parent, Boris Johnson's neighbours revealing his quarrel with his partner over spilled wine (an example Jenkins refers to), or those online warriors who expose private messages with 'got receipts' chutzpah but show no awareness of the broader damage they are doing for a petty win. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, before email. Letters were private. Even when I started using email, at university and then work in the early 2000s, it was regarded as private. It was only when an infamous email (I won't mention the name, for privacy's sake) went viral that we realised the risk. Now we know emails are not private, so we're careful – the same as we are in all our messages and in our behaviour. We are always being monitored, so act accordingly. Towards the end of Strangers and Intimates Jenkins writes: The divide between public and private… has dissolved. The two realms have become indistinguishable, leading to confusion about the rules governing each and preventing the realisation of their respective benefits. For years it felt shocking that so many turned against free expression, and it seemed impossible that the tide could turn back again. But that tide has shifted a bit. Maybe the erosion of privacy could also be reversed, so we can behave in the more human way, as we once did. This book might be a start.
New Statesman
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Living by the sword
'T his will go down in history,' said Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his wartime press conference on 16 June. 'What we're saying today, I must say – as a son of a historian,' he continued, 'will go down not only in the annals of our nation, but also in the history of humanity.' Netanyahu's mention of his historian father was not a meaningless aside, but the reflection of the deep influence that his father's ideology, conceptions of Jewishness and world history, and ideas about power and powerlessness, continue to exert over his decision-making. Indeed, Israel's current war against Iran owes it shape, at least in part, to Netanyahu the elder's world-view, to which the son has always seen himself as faithful. Netanyahu is not a religious man. He does not observe the Sabbath or follow a strict kosher diet. Perhaps he does not believe in God. But he does believe in history – that the history of Jews has its own course and logic (perpetual, existential danger), and that Jews are meant to serve as an example to the Judaeo-Christian West (as a healthy nation willing to fight and die for its sovereignty). He did not merely come to these ideas on his own. He inherited them. Benzion Netanyahu, who died in 2012 aged 102, was a scholar of the Spanish Inquisition and, no less significant, an uncompromising right-wing ideologue. As a young man he served as secretary to Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, the charismatic leader of the militant but secular Revisionist Zionists, whose adherents hoped to claim both sides of the Jordan River for a Jewish state. Some within the Revisionist ranks drew inspiration from the authoritarian Sanacja movement of Piłsudski's interwar Poland and the Blackshirts of Mussolini's fascist Italy. In his best-known historical work, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, Benzion Netanyahu controversially claimed that the Inquisition was not only, or even primarily, aimed at rooting out vestigial Jewish observance among the Marranos (Jews whose ancestors had been forced to convert to Christianity), but constituted the invention of the racial anti-Semitism that would reach its exterminationist terminus under Nazism. Born under tsarist rule in today's Poland, Benzion possessed a dark and pessimistic view of the world and the place of the Jews within it. 'Jewish history,' he once told the New Yorker editor David Remnick, 'is in large measure a history of holocausts.' Benjamin Netanyahu, the family's middle child, has made this catastrophic world-view his own. He has also largely adhered to his father's ideological legacy. In the early 1990s, he rose to national political prominence as the fresh face of the right-wing Likud Party and opponent of the Oslo Accords and the dovish Yitzhak Rabin's Labor-led government. For nearly his entire political career, Netanyahu has aimed to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Indeed, it has been one of the central animating goals of his life. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But while Netanyahu is a territorial-maximalist, he is not a messianist. The radical, religious West Bank settlers, with whom Netanyahu has found common cause, believe that the Palestinian dilemma can be solved (or eliminated) through an apocalyptic conflagration that would lead to the expulsion of the Palestinians from all the territory under Israel's control and end, they hope, with the dawning of the Messianic Age. Lately, Netanyahu has embraced some of the religious right's rhetoric: the idea of 'transferring' Palestinians out of Gaza; referring to Hamas as 'Amalek', after the biblical Israelites' enemy, whom they are told by God to wipe out. But this reflects domestic realpolitik more than genuine conviction. Instead, Netanyahu has tended towards a kind of brutal realism. Rather than the settlers' preference for a 'decisive' eschatological rupture, his preferred approach is an indefinite and, if necessary, eternal war of attrition. 'I am asked if we will live forever by the sword,' Netanyahu once said in 2015. His answer is 'yes'. He does not consider the Palestinians a real people deserving of national self-determination. He remains convinced that, after enough oppression, devastation, punishment and humiliation, they will surrender their dreams of freedom, and if not, that they can be subjugated in perpetuity. It is this logic that, in part, accounts for the way Israel's criminal destruction of Gaza has been executed – and why Netanyahu has refused any postwar arrangement that would allow for independent Palestinian self-governance. In his 1993 book, A Place Among the Nations, Benjamin Netanyahu sketched out his theory of machtpolitik, which has guided his successive administrations for more than 15 years. And while in the realm of domestic politics Netanyahu is known for his flagrant mendacity, when it comes to geopolitics, he has been rather more consistent. According to his strategic vision, military might is the only guarantee of security. 'The only peace that will endure in the region,' he writes, 'is the peace of deterrence.' There is, in other words, no such thing as real peace; there is only preparation for the next round of fighting. Or as he put it, 'ending the state of war is a must, but that will not end the possibility of a future war'. For Netanyahu, Israel's only way to guarantee its survival is to maintain overwhelming military supremacy such that it can threaten any potential rival with outright defeat. Weakness, it follows, is an existential threat. 'If you lack the power to protect yourself,' Netanyahu writes, 'it is unlikely that in the absence of a compelling interest anyone else will be willing to do it for you.' It is here that echoes of his father's world-view can also be heard: the experience of the Jewish people in the 20th century – specifically, the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust – is taken as proof that defencelessness is a death sentence while sympathy is much less an insurance policy than the force of arms. The world stood by idly when the Nazis sent Europe's Jews to the gas chambers; there is no reason to expect that, were the Jewish state to find its survival jeopardised, the world would act differently this time. Such a view is widely shared in Israel and has been almost since its establishment. It was a pillar of Israeli defence strategy many years before Netanyahu came to power. It is the reason why Israel sought nuclear weapons of its own, and why it has acted unilaterally on many occasions to destroy the military capabilities of other states it sees as threats to its survival. In 1981, for instance, Israeli fighter jets destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor located deep in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The success of the operation gave rise to 'the Begin Doctrine' – after the prime minister Menachem Begin, Jabotinsky's successor as leader of the Revisionist movement, who authorised the strike (and who came to power in 1977 in Israel's first transition of power from left to right). Begin vowed that in the future Israel would carry out pre-emptive attacks to stop any enemy state from gaining nuclear capabilities. In 2007, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli warplanes bombed a suspected nuclear reactor in Bashar al-Assad's Syria. Israeli leaders have warned for years that Iran was next on the list. In 2012, Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly and brandished a cartoon to illustrate his claim that Iran's enrichment levels were approaching those necessary for a nuclear weapon. Over the subsequent decade, Netanyahu warned many times that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute an unacceptable threat to Israel, and that he would take action to eliminate it. Iran, for its part, has long claimed that it does not seek to possess nuclear weapons, notwithstanding its leadership's repeated, lurid promises to destroy the Jewish state. That an Israeli strike did not occur in years past owed much to dissent within Israel's military establishment, about whether Israel itself possessed the capabilities to take down Iran's nuclear programme on its own and whether it could withstand a potential Iranian counter-attack. Netanyahu has gambled his legacy on Israel's current war against Iran. He has said more than once that he hopes to be remembered as the 'protector of Israel'. And while the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 cast doubt on his claim to be Mr Security, it is clearly his hope that by destroying Iran's nuclear programme and, as he has not so subtly hinted, toppling the Islamic Republic's regime, he will restore his flagging domestic reputation and rewrite his place in history, masking with a stunning military operation the deadly, colossal intelligence and operational failure that preceded it almost two years earlier. Still, for Netanyahu, and indeed for many Israelis, what is at stake is much more than that – nothing less than the shape of the post-Cold War order. It has long been both Netanyahu's conviction and policy goal that Israel's integration and normalisation into the Middle East can be achieved without granting the Palestinians a state. Successive Netanyahu administrations have pursued the de-Arabisation and isolation of the Palestinian national cause, perhaps most spectacularly in the form of the Abraham Accords, brokered by the US in 2020, which Netanyahu believes even Saudi Arabia could one day join. Iran, through support for its proxies – in particular, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah – has constituted the most significant obstacle to this vision of removing the Palestinian issue from the global agenda, as well as the last standing substantial military rival to Israel's armed forces in the region. By taking down the Islamic Republic, or at least its nuclear programme, Netanyahu hopes not only to eliminate a threat he perceives as existential, but also to realise his long-held geopolitical fantasy. Yet the ongoing attempt to do so could just as well result in catastrophe – for the region and perhaps the world. At the time of writing, it is too early to know where the balance of power will lie after the last bomb is dropped and the final missile fired. The paradox of Netanyahu's perpetual struggle for Israel's security is that, in practice, it has meant that Israelis live under near-constant threat. For Palestinians it has meant decades of military occupation and, since 7 October, utter devastation, war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu's dream of a new Middle East – devoid of any military rival, absent any prospect of Palestinian self-determination – has only brought more death. [See also: Ideas for Keir] Related
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Even as They Are Driven Into Bomb Shelters, Many Ordinary Israelis Support the Attack on Iran
Israel has taken on the eerie quiet of a ghost town. Shops are closed, streets nearly empty. The occasional car races to its destination. In the supermarkets, many shelves are empty, usually of basic necessities: No bread, no milk, no eggs, no diapers and no bottled water for what may be extended stays in bomb shelters. Israelis have stocked up not knowing what their government is planning and how this will unfold. Israel's sudden attack on Iran that began at 3 a.m. on June 13, Friday, didn't catch only the Iranians by surprise. No one in Israel expected a full-scale assault—not before the end of the school year; before talks on Iran's nuclear program ended between the U.S. and Iran; or before the controversially lavish, wedding of Avner Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, set to take place three days later. When the sirens first went off in towns and cities across the country very early Friday morning, many people stayed in bed, knowing that earlier campaigns had wiped out the rocket capabilities of Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Israel's western flank, and Hezbollah, on its northern border. An impending attack wasn't on their radar. 'I was preparing food for the Sabbath on Friday morning, kubbeh and borekas, and I turned on the radio and was shocked,' said Rivka Benayim, a cashier at a supermarket in Jerusalem. Her store had no baby wipes, fresh chicken or tomatoes and very little milk. 'I had no idea we were at war with Iran.' Israelis now realize that a tit-for-tat with Iran is nothing like a barrage of rockets from Palestinian militants in the Gaza, or from Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. The reach and destructive power of Iran's missiles has made everyone feel vulnerable. 'Hamas fired rockets made out of traffic sign poles,' said Shlomo Alkobi, 25, an employee at a cellphone company service center, at work in a job classified by the Isareli government as essential. 'Those are like kindergarten games compared to Iran's ballistic missiles.' So it is that, since the first barrages landed, even more Israelis than usual have been heeding the Home Front Command's alerts that flash on their cellphone screens, TV sets and radio programs when the missiles get close, often accompanied by a frightening screeching alarm. In Israel, there are three types of "safe space." Any apartment building constructed after1992 has a reinforced room, or mamad, in each apartment (a requirement put in place after Saddam Hussein's Iraq launched Scud missiles toward it during the First Gulf War). Older buildings may have a shared bomb shelter under ground. For people who find themselves driving when the sirens sound, or on foot, or in a building with no reinforced space, the only option is to run to a public shelters that dot populated areas around the country. During a Hamas missile barrage, an elderly relative of mine would settle for sitting on the steps in the stairwell of his second-floor apartment in Bat Yam, a coastal suburb of Tel Aviv. But with the Iranian salvos, he has been making his way down to the building's first-floor bomb shelter a couple times a day and waiting with the rest of the tenants for the all clear. His first time down there, he was appalled to discover it was filled with a thick layer of dust, and the clutter of bicycles and a baby carriage. On the second night, his focus was elsewhere. An Iranian missile struck an apartment building 500 meters away from his. Five people were killed. 'We could feel the shock waves underground,' he said. Many Israelis are shocked by the level of destruction. While Israel's military does not reveal damage to its installations, it encourages people to film damage to civilian areas. Israeli reporters say they have never seen such devastation, at least in person; the results of their military's work in Gaza appears on TV. Some communities are entirely unprotected. The desert villages of Bedouin Israelis lack shelters because the government refuses to recognize their settlements. Residents have been entirely exposed; some have taken cover under highway bridges. Many villages of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian (who account for 20 percent of the country's population) also lack shelters. But in those that do have them, the assumption that they would not be targeted by Iranian missiles has been enough to keep some from seeking whatever shelter might be available. The illusion shattered Saturday night, when a missile that appeared bound for the northern city of Haifa struck a villa in nearby Tamra, killing four women from the Khatib family. Locals point to video taken from their rooftops and say the missile fell after an Iron Dome anti-missile battery tried to intercept it, changing its trajectory. The victims had a safe room built in their home, but had not entered it. Israel has long claimed that it avoids civilian casualties, while accusing Iran of intentionally targeting noncombatants. But Israeli strikes on Iran, which began with precise strikes on leading regime figures, have also killed scores of civilians. A human rights group put the total at 406 through June 15. Iran may also be targeting senior security figures in Israeli residential buildings. Over the last year, Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet, has uncovered nearly 30 cases of espionage and subversion by Israelis, mostly Jews, recruited to work for Iran. In some cases, Tehran sought to gather information on former senior officials in the security establishment, including their home address and daily routines. In Rishon L'Tzion, south of Tel Aviv, an Iranian missile struck near the former home of a former high ranking security official early Saturday, June 14. Asked if he believed he might have been the target, he told Maariv newspaper that if he was, the Iranians 'haven't updated their lists since 2007.' Israel's death toll reached 24 in four nights—far less than in Iran, with more than 220 killed —and a fraction of the number of Palestinians killed in an average day in Gaza. Yet for Israelis, it's a jarring loss. In the 17 years between 2004 to 2021, only 32 civilians were killed inside Israel by rockets out of Gaza. Even so, many here are excited by the attack on Iran. Israelis are expecting nothing less than regime change. Religious Jews were filmed dancing in celebration in an underground parking lot where they took cover during an air raid siren. 'They have been threatening to destroy us for years,' said Alkobi, the cell phone merchant. 'We are removing the threat. I want to annihilate them. Assassinate the whole regime.' Ayala Hasson, an anchor on Israel's national television, called it a 'dramatic historic day' and had difficulty suppressing her smile. On the radio, an Israeli news reporter thanked a pilot for his service before interviewing him. But not all Israelis are cheering. Some expressed wariness of how the new war would end. Others remained focused on the one it interrupted. 'They no longer open every TV program with a mention of the number of hostages and the days in captivity,' Dani Elgarat, whose brother Itsik died in capativity, wrote on X. 'There is no discussion in the studios about the kidnapped people…From today, we are counting barrages, missiles, and deaths, not hostages. Netanyahu reset the war clock, and erased the calendar of desolation. Don't forget, echo, keep counting, don't be silent until they return.'
North Wales Live
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- North Wales Live
Black Sabbath: Homecoming special edition on sale now
Heavy metal legends Black Sabbath will play their final farewell gig at hometown Birmingham's Villa Park on July 5, where the original line-up will play together for the first time in more than 20 years, supported by a stellar cast of rock and roll A-listers. You can buy your special edition HERE With new interviews and rare pictures, Black Sabbath: The Homecoming follows Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward from their very first pub gig to the forthcoming stadium supershow dubbed the greatest heavy metal show ever. In this special edition, members of the band speak of their hopes and fears, the battle to overcome health issues, and much more, alongside tributes from big names on the Villa Park bill, an essential album guide, reviews of past homecomings, and even Sabbath tourism tips. Read about the movie that gave the band its name, the surprise reunion that wasn't supposed to happen, and the role fickle fate has played in the band's success – and learn about the charities who will benefit from the Back To The Beginning show. Crucially, this is Black Sabbath past, present and future – because although Villa Park may be the band's swansong, there's exciting news of more to come from the four Brummies who invented heavy metal. They think it's all over. Well, it isn't yet … Click HERE to buy online and have it delivered directly to your door, or you can purchase it in participating supermarkets, high street retailers, and independent newsagents from June 25, 2025. Online postage and packaging costs apply.
Wales Online
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Black Sabbath: Homecoming special edition on sale now
Black Sabbath: Homecoming special edition on sale now With new interviews and rare pictures, Black Sabbath: The Homecoming follows the band from their first gig to the forthcoming final farewell. Heavy metal legends Black Sabbath will play their final farewell gig at hometown Birmingham's Villa Park on July 5, where the original line-up will play together for the first time in more than 20 years, supported by a stellar cast of rock and roll A-listers. You can buy your special edition HERE With new interviews and rare pictures, Black Sabbath: The Homecoming follows Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward from their very first pub gig to the forthcoming stadium supershow dubbed the greatest heavy metal show ever. In this special edition, members of the band speak of their hopes and fears, the battle to overcome health issues, and much more, alongside tributes from big names on the Villa Park bill, an essential album guide, reviews of past homecomings, and even Sabbath tourism tips. Read about the movie that gave the band its name, the surprise reunion that wasn't supposed to happen, and the role fickle fate has played in the band's success – and learn about the charities who will benefit from the Back To The Beginning show. Article continues below Crucially, this is Black Sabbath past, present and future – because although Villa Park may be the band's swansong, there's exciting news of more to come from the four Brummies who invented heavy metal. They think it's all over. Well, it isn't yet … Click HERE to buy online and have it delivered directly to your door, or you can purchase it in participating supermarkets, high street retailers, and independent newsagents from June 25, 2025. Online postage and packaging costs apply.
