PCC rules no breach over Steve Bell Gaza cartoon

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that it is unable to take further the matter of a controversial cartoon about Israel and Gaza published in the Guardian last month.

Steve Bell's drawing, featuring Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppet-master pulling the strings of Western leaders, attracted allegations that it applied antisemitic tropes.

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Enough of knee-jerk responses

A s the fires fade, as the dust settles on the graves of the latest children to die in a battle that seems destined to repeat itself with depressing regularity, and as world leaders breathe a sigh of relief that an all-out war was, this time, prevented, it should be clearer than ever that there can be no military solution to this relentless conflict.

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Hamas minister plans to create a Palestinian Defence Ministry

A Hamas minister has announced that the party may create a Palestinian defence ministry in response to the Israel-Gaza situation.

The decision, announced during a ceremony to honour Palestinian officers on Wednesday, came in response to the latest outbreak in which more than 150 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed.

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Open mouths but closed eyes

OK. I agree that the semi-hysterical revelries commissioned by Hamas once its cease-fire with Israel had been announced reflect a kind of madness. Much of the Hamas infrastructure is in ruins. A number of key Hamas operatives have succumbed to their wounds. Neither Iran nor Hizbollah came to Hamas's aid. Nor did its Egyptian godfathers of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Easy life obliges us to face hard facts

It has been pretty easy for my generation. In Britain's leafy Jewish communities, the children of the 1980s grew up with the freedoms that our grandparents were denied and the opportunities to which our parents could not aspire. Sure, it came with a deep awareness of the past and, at times, with the terrible mantle of survivor guilt ("You're having a bad day?

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Northern Ireland councillors end Gaza twinning

One of Northern Ireland’s smallest towns has reversed its controversial decision to twin with Gaza.

Councillors in Moyle, County Antrim, voted to end the partnership with Gaza’s municipal authorities at a meeting on Monday.

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