Fissure opens in Whitehall

When I asked Nick Clegg at his joint press conference with Mahmoud Abbas about the increasingly combative nature of the UK government's language on settlements, I didn't expect him to escalate the rhetoric still further.

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Clegg ups rhetoric on settlements to Abbas's delight

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has described Israeli settlement building as "an act of deliberate vandalism" in a sign that the UK is hardening its rhetoric towards the Netanyahu government.

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UK set to talk tough to Israel as Abbas visits

The British government has stepped up its war of words with Israel over settlement building in advance of an official visit next week by Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Ministers have grown increasingly frustrated by what they see as Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigent position on the issue, which is seen as a serious hurdle to peace in the region.

The Jewish Leadership Council and the B

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Police open Twitter threat file

Police are now investigating three separate allegations of death threats from an antisemitic Twitter stalker who advertised himself as an Ed Miliband lookalike.

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Acting as cover for extremism is the real problem

As news stories go, it's about as straightforward as they come. A group of community activists keen to recruit in the Jewish community turns out to have a trustee who has made a public statement celebrating antisemitic terrorists who murder Jews.

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Margaret Thatcher: An embedding Zionist

Margaret Thatcher may not have had the visceral or spiritual connection to Israel felt by Tony Blair or Gordon Brown but her premiership marked a sea-change within the Conservative Party, which has defined its policy ever since.

Mrs Thatcher's anti-Communism and uncompromising position on terrorism made her naturally lean towards Israel in the Middle East.

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Twitter fails to act over Ed Miliband lookalike's anti-Israel death threats

The international social networking site Twitter has provoked fury after refusing to act against a user responsible for a stream of death threats and antisemitic abuse. Shereef Abdallah, who advertises himself as an Ed Miliband lookalike and claims to have worked on the Labour leader's election camp, began by targeting people identified as supporters of Tony Blair.

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Time to resign, Aidan Burley

Sixty years on from the end of the Second World War, Britain's role in the defeat of Nazism still dominates our national character. The evocation by some of the Churchillian "bulldog" spirit in the aftermath of David Cameron's Eurozone veto demonstrates how powerful such historical imagery remains.

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Labour realises a red line has been crossed by Paul Flynn

The Paul Flynn affair marks a high-water mark for a particular type of pernicious anti-Zionist sentiment in the mainstream British left.

At least I hope it does.

The Labour MP's use of the classic antisemitic trope of Jewish dual loyalty in the case of the highly-respected young ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, was a deeply sinister development.

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Questions Scots can't ignore

The JC is sometimes accused of scaremongering about antisemitism in the UK. I hope we get the tone right in reporting the facts on the ground, but I recognise it is important not create panic by overstating the problem.

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Islamophobia group relaunched

A parliamentary group to tackle Islamophobia has been re-launched at Westminster, with the support of MPs from across the political divide.

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