This war began on October 7, 2023, with the massacre of 378 young people at the Nova music festival—artists and dreamers slaughtered for "the crime of being Jewish" and dancing under the desert sky. Now the cultural world has decided the victims were the problem.

The irony cuts like a rusty knife through silk. Right now, at The Edinburgh International Festival—the same festival founded in 1947 by Sir Rudolf Bing, an Austrian-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany—Jewish comedians are being cancelled for the revolutionary act of existing. Bing's first invited artists were German; he envisioned "healing the wounds of war through art"—a gesture of reconciliation. He couldn't have imagined a more perverted scenario than cancelling Jews at his festival.

The cancellation epidemic spreads like digital wildfirePhilip Simon and Rachel Creeger, British Jewish artists, had their Edinburgh Fringe shows axed—not for political content, mind you, but because venues deemed their mere Jewish presence "incompatible with our stance against the current Israeli government."

Because nothing says "principled political stance" like punishing people for existing, right?

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Friday launched the Jewish Policy Index (JPI), an interactive tool ranking all 50 US states on their policies addressing antisemitism.

The index evaluates state-level legislation, education, and public policy. According to the ADL, it was created in response to an increase in antisemitic incidents in recent years and after violent attacks on Jewish communities in Boulder, Colorado, and Washington, DC.

The first findings list nine states as “Leading States” with high alignment to ADL’s recommended policies: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

States were evaluated on 22 criteria grouped into three categories: prioritizing the fight against antisemitism, education about the Jewish experience, and protection of Jewish communities. The results classify 29 states as “Progressing States,” showing partial alignment, and 12 as “Limited Action States,” with minimal policy-based measures.

After nearly two years of war, Hamas's military capability is severely weakened and its political leadership under intense pressure. Yet, throughout the war Hamas has managed to continue to use a secret cash-based payment system to pay 30,000 civil servants' salaries totalling $7m (£5.3m). The BBC has spoken to three civil servants who have confirmed they have received nearly $300 each within the last week.

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Hamas has historically relied on funding from heavy import duties and taxes imposed on Gaza's population, as well as receiving millions of dollars of support from Qatar. The Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing which operates through a separate financial system, is financed mainly by Iran. A senior official from the banned Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most influential Islamist organisations in the world, has said that around 10% of their budget was also directed to Hamas.

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In order to generate revenue during the war, Hamas has also continued to levy taxes on traders and has sold large quantities of cigarettes at inflated prices up to 100 times their original cost. Before the war, a box of 20 cigarettes cost $5 - that has now risen to more than $170.In addition to cash payments, Hamas has distributed food parcels to its members and their families via local emergency committees whose leadership is frequently rotated due to repeated Israeli strikes.

That has fuelled public anger, with many residents in Gaza accusing Hamas of distributing aid only to its supporters and excluding the wider population.

The Lebanese Forces lauded Wednesday in a statement the government's decision a day earlier to disarm Hezbollah, describing the move as "historical". The decision was long overdue, the statement said, adding that it should have been taken 35 years ago.

The government asked the national army on Tuesday to prepare a plan in which only state institutions will have weapons in the small nation by the end of the year.

The announcement by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam after a nearly six-hour Cabinet meeting, came shortly after Hezbollah's leader said his group would not disarm and warned that the Iran-backed faction would resume missile attacks on Israel if military operations against them intensify.

The LF criticized an attack by Hezbollah on President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and said the group should rather apologize to the Lebanese people for the wrongdoings committed against them and against Lebanon over the past 35 years, including a war with Israel in 2006, the May 7 clashes, the group's intervention in the Syrian civil war, and the latest war with Israel in support of Gaza.

The highest daily total came on June 29, the day after the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan led mass chanting of “Death, Death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival, broadcast by the BBC.

More than half of all reported incidents (779) were linked to Israel, Gaza, or the conflict. By contrast, only 16% of incidents were conflict-related in the first half of 2023, before the Hamas assault on October 7, 2023, sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

There were 76 violent assaults, including three cases of extreme violence, during the six-month period.

The United Nations Security Council convened Tuesday evening to discuss the plight of the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, following the release of harrowing footage showing Evyatar David and Rom Breslevsky in captivity. Ilay David, whose brother Evyatar appeared emaciated and abused by Hamas terrorists, warned that, according to experts, his brother and the other hostages “have only days left to live.”

Ilay David told the Security Council: “We know from medical reports that Evyatar, Guy, and the others are on the brink of death. They only have days left. Days! That’s how urgent this is. Each of them has lost half their body weight. My brother weighs about 40 kilograms. The world has heard about Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 and in the 20 months since, but what’s happening to Evyatar and Guy is an act of calculated, deliberate cruelty. We’ve heard the testimonies of returned hostages. When your brother, son or partner is being held in Gaza there is no good news. Even the hope that he’s alive is fading. We don’t know how much longer they’ll survive.

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Ilay added: “In the latest video, another chilling detail emerged: you can see the fat hand of a terrorist entering the frame — the hand of his captor. It’s visibly thicker than my brother’s leg. Hamas showed what we’ve known for months: the terrorists have plenty of food. The only ones starving are my brother and the 49 other hostages. “From testimonies, we know the terrorists are in the next room. They are choosing to starve them as part of a sick campaign, using hunger as a weapon of war. This is a humanitarian crisis — yet no one here, or in other UN bodies, is talking about it. Aid flows into Gaza, but the hostages are denied even the most basic food. They haven’t received a single crumb.”

Evyatar’s brother concluded: “Everyone bears responsibility — the world’s leaders, every member of this council, and the international community. Your silence is the face of this monstrous cruelty — it is complicity. I beg you: don’t let them die.”

Robert Ejnes has spent years carefully navigating the political winds of the Fifth Republic as executive director of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewry, . But now, as France prepares to recognize a Palestinian state in September—no matter the circumstances—he finds himself issuing a quiet alarm that feels, for once, dangerously easy to ignore.

“We're not surprised,” he said, referring to President Emmanuel Macron’s recent pledge. “Because he said it three months ago... we had the reaction three months ago. We called it... the political error, political danger, diplomatic error and moral error as well.”

That initial warning came when Macron first floated the idea—then, at least, with caveats: Hamas would be excluded from negotiations, hostages released and a Palestinian state demilitarized. But that language soon gave way to finality. “The second declaration is: whatever happens, I will declare the recognition of the state of Palestine,” Ejnes said. “And this is what we're mad at. Because it's not normal, and we cannot understand the reason he would... recognize the state of Palestine without conditions.”

For Ejnes, the shift in tone isn’t just political—it’s personal, and potentially dangerous. “We see it as a recognition of the terrorist value of the 7th of October,” he said. “And we're not the only ones to say it, because Hamas leaders say exactly the same thing three days ago.”
He rejects the notion that the decision came from nuanced diplomacy or careful moral balancing. “As to the reason he did it... is something we cannot understand and we do not understand.”

Hezbollah issued a sharp rebuke Wednesday afternoon in response to the Lebanese government's reported intention to disarm the group, following a dramatic cabinet session held on Tuesday. “We will act as if the decision does not exist,” the group declared, calling the move “a gift to Israel that leaves Lebanon exposed to the Israeli enemy with no deterrence.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, alongside Prime Minister Najib Mikati, is advancing a proposal to consolidate all weapons under the authority of the Lebanese state — a move that would effectively require Hezbollah to relinquish its arsenal. The initiative comes in the context of a proposed ceasefire agreement with Israel, under which the Lebanese Armed Forces would be deployed to enforce a ban on Hezbollah's presence south of the Litani River. The current debate now centers on what will happen to the group’s arsenal north of the river, where Hezbollah maintains significant military infrastructure.

Lebanon’s cabinet meeting, which lasted several hours on Monday, ended without a final decision — with Prime Minister Najib Mikati announcing that the session would resume on Thursday. Mikati stated that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) had been tasked with drafting an implementation plan to address the issue of weapons monopoly in the country, to be submitted to the cabinet no later than the 31st of the month.

The announcement triggered an immediate and furious response from Hezbollah. “Prime Minister Najib Mikati has committed a grave sin by agreeing to strip Lebanon of its weapons against the Israeli enemy,” the group declared Tuesday afternoon. “This will weaken Lebanon’s strength and standing in the face of continued Israeli-American aggression.”