After the latest in a series of deadly attacks on the global Jewish community, Jews are angry. And we have good reason to be
Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust
Heaton Park, Boulder, Washington DC – and now Bondi beach. Add the murders of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE and Ziv Kipper, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, in Egypt, and Jews have been killed on five continents since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas upended the Middle East and unleashed a wave of antisemitism around the world. Anti-Jewish terrorism is now a global problem, as is the hateful extremism that drives it.
The death toll from the appalling atrocity in Sydney is shocking enough: at the time of writing, 15 people killed, including a child, and many more injured. Awful images circulate, as they always do. The mobile phone footage of two gunmen calmly taking aim at families enjoying a Hanukah party is utterly chilling. It takes a special kind of dehumanisation, an ideology of pure hatred and self-righteous conviction, to do that.
Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust and the author of Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism is Built into Our World – and How You Can Change it
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© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
Zelenskyy said that while Ukraine was prepared to drop its Nato aspirations, it would still require security guarantees from US and Europe
Separately, the commission’s deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill has just confirmed that commission president Ursula von der Leyen will attend the Berlin talks this evening.
Not a surprise at all, but good to have it formally confirmed.
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© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
Cristian Chivu’s side are yet to draw a game this season while Milan continue to drop points against the minnows
“The reality is different to the narrative,” declared Cristian Chivu in his press conference just before a 2-1 win away to Genoa sent Inter top of the table. Fresh off back-to-back Champions League defeats, albeit in controversial circumstances, and having lost four Serie A games in the first 14 rounds, his approach to criticism was bullish. “Despite what people say, in my view we are having a great season. We started under a magnifying glass, because people said we were failures and we were finished, but we are still up there.”
Looking at the standings, it is rather hard to disagree with him. Inter are the sole leaders, the first time all campaign they have been in this position. Even with those setbacks against Atlético Madrid and Liverpool, they remain in a strong position to secure a top-eight Champions League spot and will participate in the Supercoppa Italiana in Riyadh this week.
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© Photograph: Simone Arveda/Getty Images
© Photograph: Simone Arveda/Getty Images
© Photograph: Simone Arveda/Getty Images
The French fashion designer’s lavish Mediterranean villa was frequented by everyone from Dalí to Garbo to Stravinsky to Churchill. It has now been lovingly restored – with a thrillingly bolstered library
It is the place where Salvador Dalí painted The Enigma of Hitler, a haunting landscape featuring a giant telephone receiver that seems to be crying a tear over a cutout picture of the Fuhrer. Conceived in 1939, the work seems to anticipate war. It is also the place where Winston Churchill penned parts of his multi-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and painted its dappled-light view. Somerset Maugham would visit, too, as well as novelist Colette, composer Igor Stravinsky and playwright Jean Cocteau, partaking in lunches that lasted all day and night, with debates and discussions around artistic ideas.
This place is La Pausa: the Mediterranean villa in the hills of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, once owned by husband-and-wife writing duo Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson, followed by French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who had it rebuilt from scratch at the end of the 1920s. She later sold it to an American publishing couple, Emery and Wendy Reves.
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© Photograph: Roger Schall © Schall Collection
© Photograph: Roger Schall © Schall Collection
© Photograph: Roger Schall © Schall Collection
I understand the temptation to run away – I have felt it too. Try to stay in the room, and in the moment. You’ll be glad you did
This is my last column for you. I am shocked and delighted that I’ve been allowed to carry on for almost two years, saying such controversial and true things as: the oedipal complex is real and all of us have one; psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective and vital mental health treatment and we must fight for it in the NHS; and Midnight Run is the best film of all time. It has been a joy and an honour, and, now we are here, I’ve been thinking about the significance of endings.
Because they are significant. Sometimes, having no time left can make it possible to feel and say what was impossible before. They can invite an intimacy and truthfulness and grief that some find overwhelming. It’s not unusual for patients to talk of dropping out, or to skip the final session – to call it a waste of time, to want to leave the room before the end.
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© Composite: Guardian Design; Posed by model; sdominick/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Posed by model; sdominick/Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Posed by model; sdominick/Getty Images
San San F Young’s passionate documentary records a vibrant creative scene that continues to resist Beijing’s repression
Dotted with towering corporate skyscrapers, the skyline of Hong Kong attests to its global reputation as a financial hub; this image is profoundly challenged by San San F Young’s passionate documentary. Turning her camera to the streets and taking us into artists’ studios, the film-maker captures the vibrant creative scene of the city. The turmoil of the protests against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill, along with the draconian laws that followed, hangs heavy over every frame. In the midst of political turbulence, art emerges as a powerful, transformative tool of collective resistance.
In an engaging and personable voiceover, Young weaves in stories from her own life growing up in Hong Kong as a rebellious teenager. Surrounded by bankers and financiers, she yearned to follow the footsteps of her film-making idols, such as Spike Lee, in the west. Her youthful disenchantment only makes Hong Kong Mixtape more moving as a hybrid of autobiography and documentary. We are introduced to a multitalented group of artists, but Young herself is also rediscovering what makes Hong Kong unique and culturally diverse, where activism and creativity go hand in hand. Alongside skilfully graffitied slogans, public electronic displays offer protest songs, raps and skits. Elsewhere, dance troupes create choreography out of banned gestures.
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© Photograph: True Story
© Photograph: True Story
© Photograph: True Story
The decision means TikTok now operates under the threat that it could be forced offline with a stroke of Trump’s pen
Judicial opinions allowing the government to suppress speech in the name of national security rarely stand the test of time. But time has been unusually unkind to the US supreme court decision that upheld the law banning TikTok, the short-form video platform. The court issued its ruling less than a year ago, but it is already obvious that the deference the court gave to the government’s national security arguments was spectacularly misplaced. The principal effect of the court’s ruling has been to give our own government enormous power over the policies of a speech platform used by tens of millions of Americans every day – a result that is an affront to the first amendment and a national security risk in its own right.
Congress passed the TikTok ban in 2023 citing concerns that the Chinese government might be able to access information about TikTok’s American users or covertly manipulate content on the platform in ways that threatened US interests. The ban was designed to prevent Americans from using TikTok starting in January 2025 unless TikTok’s China-based corporate owner, ByteDance Inc, sold its US subsidiary before then.
Evelyn Douek is an assistant professor at Stanford Law School
Jameel Jaffer is inaugural director of the Knight first amendment institute at Columbia University
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© Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Yes, we love our roasties – but have we really explored the spud’s potential as a gift, an aesthetic, a mood?
All I want for Christmas is … the Nairn Museum potato flask. Showcased as part of the Highland museum’s virtual Advent calendar on Instagram last week, it’s a late-18th-century Staffordshire pottery flask – to be filled with strong drink and used to toast a safe journey for a traveller – shaped like a very realistic, knobbly spud, complete with green bits. The benefactor who donated the flask apparently explained it was so ugly that no one in his family wanted to inherit it.
More than 15,000 Instagram likers beg to differ, including me: I desperately covet this beauteous and useful tuber, surely the ideal emotional support accessory for the season’s more trying social engagements. As the museum’s representative explains, the potato was “seen as a very fashionable vegetable” back then, and I think we need to think hard about that: why isn’t it now? It might be the most valuable player on the Christmas dining table (don’t even think about arguing), but it’s cruelly taken for granted. Have we ever considered the potato as a gift, an aesthetic, a mood?
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© Photograph: Nairn Museum
© Photograph: Nairn Museum
© Photograph: Nairn Museum
Congress must work to stop the president from leading us further into a South American quagmire
Donald Trump seems determined to have a military confrontation with Venezuela. He has deployed a massive military arsenal in and around the Caribbean Sea and taken a series of provocative actions off the Venezuelan coast, justifying it as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.
The Council on Foreign Relations says that deployment includes an “aircraft carrier, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious assault ships, and a special forces support ship. A variety of aircraft have also been active in the region, including bombers, fighters, drones, patrol planes, and support aircraft.” This is the largest display of American military might in the western hemisphere since we invaded Panama in 1989.
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
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© Photograph: US Navy/Reuters
© Photograph: US Navy/Reuters
© Photograph: US Navy/Reuters
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