Medical journal made me ill

Dear Editor of the British Medical Journal,

I have just taken delivery of your February 28 edition and have, as usual, been enjoying its contents. There were two compelling papers on the “Effectiveness of nurse delivered endoscopy” and you entertain your readers also with a meta-regression analysis of randomised controlled trials on the association between change in high density lipoprotein and cardiovascular disease morbidity.

Oh, and you devote more than seven pages to complaining that Jews send you too many emails.

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Israel itself is their real target

When HL Menken was editor of the New Yorker, he hit upon an excellent way of dealing with the huge number of letters he received every day. Whatever the correspondent said — praise, complaint, advice, insult — he or she would receive the same reply: “Dear Sir (or Madam), You may be right. Yours HL Menken”.

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Chanucah v Xmas: no contest

Slade were wrong. Yes: “Here it is, Merry Christmas”. But not everybody is having fun.

Every year at Christmas time, I have the same discussions with my colleagues. How can I be doing nothing — nothing — to celebrate the great day? They find it hard to believe that I do not mark the birth of Christ at all. Not even by putting a little pine tree in my lounge.

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I say silence the Shabbat siren

I had to read the story twice to be sure I had understood it correctly.

In Stamford Hill, a "Shabbat siren" has been announcing the arrival of the Sabbath. Actually, I'd better be precise. It is not, strictly speaking, a siren. It is "a selection of music and songs being played over a number of loudspeakers". Apparently, those who established it want to make the area "more like Jerusalem".

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How we’ll beat natural hostility

We all knew it would happen, didn't we? The question of whether it would didn't come up. We just instantly knew. So I want to ask a different question, the question "why?" And then I want to put this to you - are we all that much better?

The moment Lehmans went belly-up we knew there would be people who would blame it on the Jews. And when Congress rejected the President's bailout plan, we all just waited for the newsreaders to point out that a new plan couldn't be agreed because of Rosh Hashanah, and for the conspiracy nutters to get to work with that.

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Don’t be so hard on evangelicals

We are too dismissive of Sarah Palin's religious convictions

The President leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at the ceiling. He stared so long that the silence became embarrassing for his speechwriters. Then, finally, he leaned forward and, using his trademark phrase for dictating to his secretary, he said: "Dorothy, take a law."

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Obama could be bad for Israel

I'm tired. It's been seven long, long years and I'm tired. It's so tempting just to lay my head down and rest. Got a pillow, anyone?

It is difficult to understand fully the aims of the 9/11 conspirators, what they were hoping to achieve by blowing up the twin towers. But if one of their objectives was to undermine the unity of the West, then they have succeeded, and succeeded dramatically.

For those of us in Europe determined to argue for solidarity with America and the need for a robust liberal internationalism, it has been a hard, long, rough ride.

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Our media strategy is wrong

You can’t batter anti-Israel bias out of journalists. But psychology offers a neater solution

In August 1961, on the A6 in the woods near Mauden in Bedfordshire, a terrible crime was committed. A man was shot and killed in his car and his girlfriend, having been raped, was also shot. She spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

I need to tell you all about it in order to help you the next time you complain to the media about bias against Israel.

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The atheists can’t have Einstein

Even if he was conflicted about religion, Albert Einstein did not dismiss God

The crowds were enormous. They lined the streets even in the depths of night; they filled the theatres; they cheered and cheered. His US tour was an extraordinary success. A sell-out. A smash.

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The BNP victory is a calamity

The election of the BNP to the London Assembly threatens clear thinking across the political board

‘Blimey.”

I sent this one-word text message to a member of the Tory high command as the results from the local elections came in and it became apparent that what had seemed almost impossible a few months ago had come to pass — Boris Johnson would be the next mayor of London.

“I think you mean cripes!” came the reply.

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Religion and politics do not mix

The Catholic Church’s victory over the Embryo Bill is a blow for freedom.

At my age, Martin Luther King Junior was dead. Before the age of 38, he had led the boycott against apartheid on the buses of Alabama, become leader of the civil-rights movement, marched on Washington and told his audience that he had a dream, spent many nights in jail and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And then, exactly 40 years ago today, he was assassinated.

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