Jonathan Freedland

“[[Keir Starmer|[Keir] Starmer]]'s message was that he knew the country had put Labour in chiefly to get the Tories out – but that he hoped that he might, through a spell of solid governance, secure the public's trust.It is an unusual kind of political logic – having won an election, he now hopes to win over the people – but it fits the times.Britons are exhausted, wary and sceptical. They have seen the big promises, charismatic performers and grand schemes – Brexit, levelling up – all come to nothing.”

“But Hamas can enjoy a wicked smile of satisfaction: it laid a deadly trap – and Benjamin Netanyahu led Israel right into it.”

“And yet, 7 October 2023 is also a landmark event in Jewish history. It will be remembered as a byword for Jewish vulnerability, the more painful for coming in the very place where Jews were supposed at last to have shaken off the powerlessness that blighted them for two millennia.”

“But it was a pogrom that came to Israel last weekend, multiple pogroms in fact, as lethal as any that cut down the Yiddish-speaking Jews of the early last century or, in repeating patterns, the centuries before.”

“The word pogrom was not meant to exist in Hebrew. In the new Israel, the very idea of Jews being murdered en masse, their children butchered before their eyes, was meant to have been banished to the realm of bitter memory.”

“Some have taken this episode as a cue to assert that no one knows more about racism than Jews, that no one has suffered more than we have. This is to play Abbott's game, to assert that there is a "hierarchy of racism", and that my pain trumps yours. But this is not a competition; and if it is, it's not one any of us would want to win. Instead, we should join hands with those who, like us, have endured racism and hatred for a long time. Jews, black Britons, Asian Britons, Muslims, Irish people, Travellers – we have one big, sad thing in common. Those who hate one of us tend to hate us all.”

“When it comes to Diane Abbott, two important things need to be said first. One is that as the first black woman elected to parliament, she will always have an important place in the political history of this country. The other is that, according to one study, she receives more abuse, both racist and sexist, than any other woman in parliament, and by some distance.Yet both of those facts only make her letter all the more dispiriting, even baffling. How could someone with such direct experience of racism show such little understanding of how it works for people who are not the same as her?”

“This poses its own danger for democracy. Because there can be no collective decision-making – which is what democracy amounts to – without a collective, agreed-upon basis of facts. If we can’t first agree that the house is on fire, we can’t begin to talk about putting out the flames.”

“The Republican party’s shift away from democratic norms is no longer confined to one man, even if he embodies it and accelerates it. It is embedded in the ethos of the party now. Reversing that trend is a daunting prospect because of another shift, one that has been apparent for a while but which is taking especially vivid form in these midterm elections. It is the polarisation of information, so that Americans now exist in two distinct spheres of knowledge, each one barely touching the other.”

“I am the son of that terrified little girl and I always will be.”

“[After referring to his March 2016 column cited above.] But these warnings were cast aside, dismissed as politically motivated smears rather than cries of pain and concern from a community that, for generations, had seen Labour as its political home. The dismissal came from the very top: when that column of mine appeared, Corbyn was filmed declaring it to be "utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness".”

“We thought the United States would step back from the abyss. We believed, and the polls led us to feel sure, that Americans would not, in the end, hand the most powerful office on earth to an unstable bigot, sexual predator and compulsive liar.”