https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2228363/ann-widdecombe-labour-reform-uk-nigel-farage
Saturday, July 18, 2026
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Crash, Bang, Wallop?
mike atherton
In Test cricket v Bazball, Test cricket won — and we should be grateful.
It is a perfect endorsement of longest format’s beauty, with its thorough examinations of wit, skill and heart, that simplified approach fell apart — despite a few notable successses. Times.
An Utter Disgrace.
Catholic teacher says she was dismissed after sharing abortion views with students.
A teacher in Scotland has said she was summarily dismissed after telling students that she was personally against abortion.
Scapegoating the Jews.
Astonishingly, in America and Britain, the vilification and scapegoating of Israel through an agenda of malice and mendacity — and with undertones of something even darker — has become a key driver of political life.
US Vice President JD Vance has ramped up his attacks on Israel by channelling anti-Jewish tropes of covert manipulation and warmongering.
TIME magazine has revealed that Israel funded an influence campaign organised by US President Donald Trump’s former presidential campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan: “When I open up the pages of TIME magazine, and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and many of the people who were receiving that money were attacking me in completely dishonest ways, my response to that is, go to hell.”
Parscale denies this interpretation, saying that his campaign was intended to prevent young conservatives from drifting away from Israel but not to turn opinion against Trump’s objectives in the war with Iran.
An anonymous senior US intelligence official told TIME: “We’re talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the president’s view or the views of others around him.”
Not only is there no evidence in the article for this recycled Jewish conspiracy theory, but Vance himself is reportedly close to lobbyists for the Iranian regime. Two years ago, he addressed the Quincy Institute, which Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has described as a “hotbed of pro-Iran lobbying”.
In April, Lee Smith wrote in Tablet magazine that the group of officials, journalists and think-tank experts who formed the Obama administration’s notorious “echo chamber” to give a favorable spin to the 2015 nuclear deal, which would have allowed Iran to develop nuclear weapons with only a few years delay, were trying to pull the same stunt again — this time with “structurally aligned” Vance as America’s lead negotiator pushing things their way.
The more obvious reason for the criticism of Vance is that he’s responsible for a stupid, gullible and dangerous strategy that’s now gone belly-up. He tried to negotiate with a regime whose goal of destroying America and Israel is totally non-negotiable. Vance has chosen to mask his humiliation by the time-dishonored ploy of dumping on the Jews.
This disgusting tactic was also deployed last week by someone who is not only a Jew himself but who uses his father’s record as a Jewish resistance fighter in pre-Israel Palestine to assert his devotion to the State of Israel. He has a strange way of showing it.
In a speech at Tel Aviv University, Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, blamed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the fact that Israel had become an international “pariah”.
Netanyahu, said Emanuel, had “sparked a regional war,” denied food and medical relief to innocent Palestinians suffering in Gaza, and presided over a coalition that believed it could “burn Palestinian farmland in the West Bank and terrorise Palestinian families without consequence”.
These were monstrous distortions. Obviously, the war was sparked not by Netanyahu but by the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people in southern Israel and the kidnapping of 251 others on October 7, 2023, which launched a seven-front war against the Jewish state to wipe it off the map.
Israel has not denied food and medical relief to Gaza’s civilians but delivered vast amounts of aid, much of which was stolen by Hamas. As for terrorising Palestinian Arab families, this is a real problem that has been vastly exaggerated and distorted as yet another weapon to demonise and delegitimise Israel.
Such terrorism is being carried out by a few hundred mainly delinquent boys, out of the 500,000 or so overwhelmingly peaceful Israeli residents in these territories — attacks, moreover, that are vastly outnumbered by the thousands of murderous acts of violence by Arabs on these Israeli residents, which Emanuel doesn’t even mention.
That’s because he himself has a fanatical hatred of these Jewish “settlers”. In his speech, he equated “greater Israel” with the chant of “from the river to the sea”.
He thus obscenely equated Jewish residency in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, which Jews alone have the legal and historical right to settle, with the genocidal aim of writing Israel itself off the map.
Telling Dan Senor on his Call Me Back podcast that he only had Israel’s best interests at heart and that the status quo was not an option, Emanuel came up with the same old “two-state solution”.
Refusing to acknowledge that, after October 7, the vast majority of Israelis have rightly concluded that a Palestinian state can never be tolerated because endemic Palestinian Arab hatred of Jews would ensure even more deadly attacks, Emanuel blithely asserted that the solution lay in telling all 21 Arab states to deliver a state of Palestine that posed no threat.
The most charitable thing to say about this is that it’s utterly deluded.
Both Vance and Emanuel have now crossed a number of red lines. They have both suggested that the Israelis only ever want to kill people.
Ignoring Israel’s multiple peace deals with Arab states and its many offers to the Palestinian Arabs of a state of their own, Vance observed about Israel to The New York Times that you “can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national-security problem that you have”.
Instead of acknowledging the obsessional and insane nature of the lies being told about Israel, Vance and Emanuel have actually regurgitated them.
The ugly reality of a Democratic Party that’s now dancing to an anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist tune was on display this week with another visitor to Israel, the possible 2028 presidential candidate Rep. Ro Khanna of California.
In an outrageous PR stunt cooked up with radical Israeli anti-government activists, Khanna made an unauthorised visit to a sensitive area of the “West Bank,” where he claimed to have been detained, harassed and even threatened by Israeli security forces who sided with violent settlers.
As video footage subsequently revealed, there was no violence and no harassment. It was a stunt designed to further the agenda of turning Israel into a pariah state — a situation that Emanuel blames on Netanyahu, but which has actually been created by a poisonous narrative of lies to which both Emanuel and Vance have contributed.
This unconscionable onslaught is now the driver of politics on the Western left and in parts of the American right.
In Britain, Andy Burnham, who next week will become prime minister after a bloodless coup in the governing Labour Party, made a point of threatening further punishment of Israel over Gaza as his first statement on foreign affairs.
This week, he went one stage further. Having refused to spell out to the British public his intentions for government, Burnham gave an interview to podcaster and former sports broadcaster Gary Lineker, who left the BBC after sharing a post about Zionism that depicted a rat—a Nazi image for Jews. When Lineker referred to the “genocide” in Gaza, Burnham conspicuously failed to challenge him.
For Britain’s incoming prime minister to use such an anti-Jewish dog-whistle— and as a priority — is an ominous signal indeed.
The surreal prominence of the Israel issue in domestic politics is due to a poisonous cocktail of factors, including Islamist influence, the dominance of the intersectional left and the West’s loss of its own cultural bearings, including the notion of objective truth.
What’s becoming ever more apparent, however, is that political leaders are scapegoating Israel because things are going wrong for them, both at home and abroad, and they cannot understand why. Refusing to acknowledge what they’re up against, they blame the Jews.
Israel, America’s indispensable ally, is now making plans to develop its own independent weapons supplies and nurture other alliances against the danger of a possibly hostile future US administration.
Emanuel came to Israel to lecture it that it was in danger of losing America. In fact, with the iron having entered the soul of the Jewish state as a result of October 7, America is in danger of losing Israel.
How Does The CofE Get So Many Things Wrong? - Well. They Are Heavily 'Left-Leaning' - There's The Reason!
Christians launch declaration challenging pro-Palestinian document after Church of England vote.
(Photo: Getty/iStock)A coalition of Christian pastors, theologians and lay leaders has launched a public declaration rejecting a controversial Palestinian Christian document that the Church of England's General Synod voted to “hear” and engage with despite strong opposition from Jews.
The “Declaration Against Kairos II" calls on Christians worldwide to reject what it describes as theological distortions that are damaging Jewish-Christian relations. It invites Christians to add their names in support.
It has been published in response to a document called “A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide”, also known as Kairos II, which was produced by the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine. The document characterises Israel's military campaign in Gaza as genocide and Israel as a colonial, apartheid state.
The coalition opposing Kairos II accused it of "inaccurate, one-sided, and dangerous rhetoric".
"Upon reading and consideration, we simply cannot receive Kairos II or endorse any hearing of it in a Christian context, and we explicitly reject it and denounce the same.
"God commands 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour' (Exodus 20.16). It is our conviction that Kairos II is not in the interests of Palestinian Christians and only serves to hinder the cause of peace, failing to acknowledge or recognise the root causes of pain in Gaza and the region of Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to as the West Bank.
"Its language is acerbic and even seems to rationalise and justify the heinous atrocities of Palestinian terror factions on October 7 2023 which have had devastating consequences.
"The document falsely and without substantiation accuses Israel of genocide in relation to its war on Hamas and terror factions in Gaza to rescue hostages and destroy Hamas' capabilities."
The General Synod, meeting in York, voted by a wide margin on Monday morning to "hear" the document, rather than “receive” it as the original motion stated. Following strong opposition from Jewish leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, told Synod that hearing documents like Kairos II "does not mean we agree with everything in them".
Regan King, a London pastor who helped initiate the Declaration Against Kairos II, said in a statement that Synod's decision to give it “any hearing” was "astounding". He argued that the Church of England had moved away from a historical tradition of support for Jewish people associated with figures like William Wilberforce.
The Declaration Against Kairos II affirms that biblical covenant promises to the Jewish people are enduring, and states that Israel has a right to self-defence against terrorism.
It rejects any theology it sees as excusing attacks on Israel or denying Jewish people's historical ties to the land.
"The Church has a responsibility to speak truthfully, biblically and with humility. We grieve the immense suffering that is ongoing in the Holy Land," said King.
"We believe Christians must reject all narratives that undermine the legitimacy of Israel and the God ordained and sovereignly orchestrated existence of the same.
"At a time of increased and rampant antisemitism, it is astounding that the Church of England's General Synod has agreed to give a thoroughly dishonest and acerbic document any hearing, a document that undermines the rights of the Jewish people and demonises Israel, even seeking to rationalise the horrendous atrocity of October 7 2023."
Ahead of the vote, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis had urged Synod members to reject engagement with Kairos II, calling the document "little more than political activism dressed up as theology" and warning that an endorsement would harm Christian-Jewish relations.
He said it was "shameful" that the General Synod had recommended engagement with Kairos II.
"This is a document full of falsehood, which openly rejects dialogue, uses extreme rhetoric to challenge the very existence of Israel and objects to existing peace agreements in the region," he said.
"Though it poses as a route to understanding, Kairos II in fact functions as an egregious barrier to it, reducing one of the world's most complex conflicts to a single, warped narrative, which can only harm the cause of peace."
Signatories of the Declaration Against Kairos II include Anglican theologian Ian Paul, who spoke out against the document during the Synod debate.
"This motion raises some awkward and challenging questions for us," he said.
"How can we claim to speak for ‘a just and lasting peace’, when we are listening to the pain of one side only in this complex, contested conflict, which we must — but we refuse to hear from the other—the bereaved and the maimed of 7th October and the second intifada? Why was the other voice not invited? If it is good enough for our archbishop, why not us?
"How do we avoid the charge of hypocrisy, when we meet Palestinian Christian leaders as our brothers and sisters in Christ, as we should, yet stay silent while some of those same communities celebrate terrorist violence, and their children post that celebration online?"
Other signatories include Rev Hayley Ace, spokesperson for Christian Action Against Antisemitism, and Dr Juergen Buehler, President of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. CT
Please Pray For Lebanese Christians.
Fri 17 Jul at 17:02
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Friday, July 17, 2026
Terrific!
Pakistan urged to protect religious minority girls from forced conversion/marriage
15 Jul, 2026 12:21 EDTMembers of the European Parliament (MEPs) and rights advocates on Tuesday (July 14) urged Pakistan to strengthen protections underage Christian and Hindu girls and other religious minorities, frequently subject to forcible conversion to Islam and marriage to those who kidnap them.
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Fabrications.
Majority of blasphemy cases in Pakistan ‘fabricated,’ officials say
Officials in Pakistan last week reported to a parliamentary committee that a majority of 333 blasphemy cases registered in the past five years in four provinces were fabricated, according to media reports.
Excellent.
South Korean church leaders ramp up preparations for 2027 national evangelization assembly
11 Jul, 2026 09:38 EDT
Leaders from across South Korea's Protestant churches convened a strategy meeting to advance preparations for a major evangelization gathering planned for 2027, with organizers describing the event as a potential turning point for the Korean church.
IDOP 2026.
Thu 16 Jul at 17:04
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Franklin Graham preached in Glasgow, launches new fund to defend religious freedom in the UK. Staff writer Franklin Graham preaching at ...
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