Kernow Damo

Right, so this is Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's main civilian airport. Open, technically. Except the Americans have parked so many airborne gas stations on the tarmac that airport officials are now warning that 50,000 booked journeys could be disrupted. That 50,000 is not a confirmed body count of stranded souls, just the number of bookings at risk if the military keeps treating Ben Gurion like a drive-thru. Each of those bookings belongs to someone desperate to leave, but nobody knows how many will actually end up staring at the departure board. Those are the planes meant to protect Israel aren’t they? Now they're doing a fine job turning the airport into a high-security waiting room for the world's most patient hostages. And yes, there is an asterisk on that 50,000. The figure refers to bookings, and we do not have a confirmed headcount of separate passengers, though it could be for all we know. It is still a lot of people, but we will return to that point. Every one of those bookings still belongs to somebody trying to get out. The airport doors are technically open. Whether your plane can actually depart, however, is another act in this three-ring circus.That is a civilian airport trying to function around America's flying petrol stations. Netanyahu wanted the machinery of war close at hand. Very close. Close enough to keep Israeli and American aircraft in the sky over Iran. Well, he got it. It is now close enough to start chewing through the summer flight schedule.They would love this to sound like a dull row over airport capacity. A bit busy, isn't it? A few parking problems. Someone from operations will sort it out after lunch. Except airport officials have been warning for months that military use has swallowed a huge share of Ben Gurion's working space. At one stage, it was reportedly operating at around one-third of normal capacity. You can call the airport open all day long. That does not help the passenger whose airline cannot get a stand, whose flight gets cut, or whose booking suddenly becomes an entry on a cancellation board. It’s like taking bookings for a hotel, filling every room with military kit, then telling the guests their reservation still exists in principle. Yes, you can leave. In theory. You just need the United States military to move first.

Right, so there’s Israel Katz, standing in the ruins of northern Gaza, being asked how all that destruction makes him feel.And he says he feels good.Good.Homes flattened. Whole neighbourhoods turned into rubble. Families were driven from whatever was left. And Katz stood there looking pleased with himself, as if somebody had finally just approved his second floor extension.He goes on to call the destruction a deliberate policy.Well, at least nobody has to spend six months waiting for a leaked memo I suppose.But then comes the next bit.Three proposed military-linked outposts in Gaza.Thirty-four newly recognised settlements in the West Bank.Settlement activists are walking into Lebanon and announcing they fancy staying there.All of which requires rather a lot of soldiers.Small snag.Army Radio is reporting that reserve formations are now so badly depleted, all on top of what I covered the other day in regards to IDF numbers and supplies, that one company came back from Lebanon with just one officer remaining.One officer.

Right, so Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have struck the runway at Sanaa International Airport because they wanted to stop an Iranian aircraft landing there.That was the official justification.The internationally recognised Yemeni government said the flight had entered Yemeni airspace without its permission, that Ansarallah, the Houthis were trying to establish direct Iranian flights into territory they control, and that this was a violation of Yemeni sovereignty.So they bombed the runway.Very decisive.Very muscular.Very “we are absolutely in charge here”, provided you ignore the awkward detail that Sanaa itself is not actually under their control and the aircraft had already crossed into Yemen before anybody started congratulating themselves.The plane was a Mahan Air aircraft coming from Iran, reportedly carrying an Ansarallah delegation back into Yemen. The Saudi-backed government wanted it stopped from landing at Sanaa. That was the point of the strike. Not to send a vague warning. Not to make the arrivals board look untidy. To stop that aircraft entering through a Houthi-controlled airport.And yes, they did stop it landing at Sanaa.For about five minutes, that probably looked rather clever.Then the pilot diverted roughly 150 kilometres down the coast and landed at Hodeidah instead.The plane arrived.The passengers got off.The delegation entered Yemen, back in Houthi controlled territory.So the grand operation to stop the Iranian flight had managed to change the airport code.That was it.

Right, so Donald Trump has declared himself guardian of the Strait of Hormuz.Guardian. Protector. Toll collector. Apparently the man saw one of the world’s most dangerous shipping lanes, made dangerous by him of course and thought, yes, what this needs is branding.And a fee, bearing mind Iran was told it couldn’t do that. The orange one has decided he can though. Small thing Donnie, you still don’t control the Strait, but let’s no stop him from hoisting himself by his own demented petard.A 20% fee, no less, because naturally, if there is one thing global trade has been crying out for, it is Donald Trump standing at the mouth of the Persian Gulf with a clipboard and a card reader.But there is one other, rather significant problem with this idea, aside from the idea Trump would have a scooby about how to operate a card reader, he’s more likely to chew it I fancy, and quite aside from the whole who is in control here angle.Hardly anybody is crossing the Strait.MarineTraffic tracked only two tankers completing passage during one twenty-four-hour period. Two. Trump says the strait is open, Trump says America controls it, Trump says America is protecting it, but the ships appear to have missed that memo.Then two UAE-linked tankers were struck, one sailor was killed, eight more were injured, Trump’s scheme has been called piracy and not by who you might expect, and America’s latest contribution to maritime safety involved sending exploding robot boats towards Bandar Abbas.So yes, Trump’s Hormuz protection racket has suffered two fairly substantial blows.The ships don’t trust it.And quite a lot of the world think Trump is doing his best impression of a bright orange Blackbeard.

Right, so Israel is once again rattling the sabre at Iran.Another operation. Another historic mission. Another promise that this time, somehow, the same people who have spent years chewing through soldiers, reservists, vehicles, ammunition, money and basic supplies are going to produce a fresh war out of the cupboard like there’s another fully staffed army hiding behind the beans.There isn’t.The IDF says it is thousands of personnel short. Active reservist numbers are being cut at the same time, which defies logic. The army is still chasing billions of shekels it says it still needs. There are reports of spare-parts shortages, repair backlogs and units struggling just to get basic supplies now on the war fronts they are already on, including water.And yet here comes another Iran plan, because of course it does.Because Netanyahu’s answer to an army worn down by war is apparently more war. The man has one button and he has absolutely battered it.Now, of course this does not mean every Israeli soldier has vanished, every water container is dry and every tank has been abandoned at the roadside with the bonnet up.It means something far more politically damaging than that.The army is still there. It is still dangerous. It is still capable of inflicting enormous destruction as it carries on doing every single day in Gaza, in Lebanon, in the West Bank and so on.But it is also telling its own government that the gap between what Netanyahu wants it to do and what it can keep doing, given all of this, is getting wider.It’s not that “Israel has no army”, it’s that Israel has a government that can’t get it through their heads that the army is finite.Yet when this became too obvious to ignore, Netanyahu and Smotrich appeared together in the most tin-eared way they could.

Right, so Donald Trump has rewarded the UAE for helping America’s war against Iran.Not with a medal. Not with a little certificate in a gold frame. Not even with one of those ghastly commemorative plates nobody wants but everybody pretends is tasteful.No, the UAE gets easier access to advanced AI chips now, servers, military equipment, satellites, drones, sensitive dual-use technology, a great big techy thank-you hamper.Help us with the war and we’ll chuck in the computing power.Lovely.But while Washington is busy handing over this shiny high-tech goodie bag, China has started blocking helium exports to protect its own chipmakers because the same war has already helped make the global shortage of helium worse. Helium is used in advanced semiconductor manufacturing to control heat during the incredibly precise process of etching microscopic circuits onto silicon. No helium, no easy substitute for it either, and suddenly Trump’s lovely AI reward starts looking like a brand-new kitchen with the gas supply cut off.Trump rewards the UAE with chips, while helping wreck the supply chain needed to actually make those chips.

Right, so Volkswagen had a problem.Its Osnabrück plant was running out of road, car production was winding down, thousands of jobs were hanging in the balance, and somebody somewhere clearly thought: well, if we can’t sell enough cars, perhaps we can start building bits for Israel’s missile systems instead.Enter Rafael.Israeli government-owned. Iron Dome manufacturer. Very keen on a German factory, German machinery and a ready-made workforce.Cars out. Launchers, transporters and power equipment in.A wonderfully neat little arrangement, provided you don’t look at it for more than six seconds.Germany gets another chunk of industry pushed towards weapons for an Israeli state owned arms manufacturer. Volkswagen gets to call it a rescue plan. Rafael gets a foothold inside one of Europe’s biggest manufacturing names.But then Qatar enters the story. Gulf state, Iran facing, not exactly on the best of terms with Israel right now all things considered.You see Qatar Holding, the state-backed investment arm, is one of Volkswagen’s largest shareholder blocs. It owns roughly 10.4% of the company’s shares, but because of Volkswagen’s voting structure, that translates into about 17% of the shareholder voting rights.Seventeen percent of the votes inside Volkswagen.So Qatar has real corporate weight. Boardroom weight. Enough influence, according to the reporting, to obstruct the Rafael arrangement and later have its intervention described as a veto.And we should also remember that Qatar, unusually among the Gulf states seemingly edging ever closer to Israel, has never formally normalised relations with it.So it appears to have looked at Volkswagen’s proposed partnership with an Israeli state-owned arms company and said: absolutely not.Actual shareholder power.

Right, so ABC Australia’s flagship current-affairs programme, 7.30, invited Professor Mohammad Marandi on to discuss Iran, apparently under the impression he had never done a television interview before.Because this was either a spectacular insult to his intelligence or to ours. Possibly both.The woman interviewing him was Sarah Ferguson, the long-serving host of 7.30, with a reputation for combative interviews. She has built a career on pressing difficult guests, so this was not some nervous junior presenter accidentally getting out of their depth.And yet Ferguson opened as though Marandi would simply accept every Western premise placed in front of him, nod politely, and begin answering from inside their framing. Oh dear!Now, Marandi is hardly famous for sitting there quietly while presenters load the questions against him. ABC knew exactly who they had booked. They knew he challenges wording, rejects premises and turns questions back on the people asking them, especially if they are dishonest in their framing.So when Ferguson did what establishment media figures always do, he did exactly what anybody who had watched him before should have expected.Only this time he did it and then some.

Right, so Donald Trump has turned up in Ankara, Turkey and casually reopened a question Israel desperately wanted kept shut: Turkey getting back into the F-35 programme.At the same time, Turkey has helped Syria install a new radar at Damascus airport, which means the skies Israel has spent years treating like its own private bypass might not be quite so empty anymore, so perhaps those settlers who have been getting comfy on the wrong side of Israel’s undefined border might like to get back on the right side of it.And then Mark Rutte the apparent Secretary General of NATO, but better known right now as an echo for whatever dross seems to fall out of Little Donnie’s puckered punim ends up getting asked the fairly obvious question. If this growing clash between Israel and Turkey turns into an actual confrontation, what does NATO actually do?Now, you’d think that would be the easy bit. Turkey is in NATO. Article 5 is the famous one. Attack one, attack all. It’s practically printed on the mugs.Except Rutte doesn’t go there.

Right, so Trump says America hit Iran “very hard”. NATO’s Mark Rutte, a man who sold out his last ounce of dignity along with his spine for a seat right next to Little Donnie says it was “absolutely necessary,” because of course of he did. US Central Command, CENTCOM, says it was all about protecting commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners.And then because they tempted fate too much, the inevitable balls up happened.A fishing pier on fire. Fishermen reported dead. A railway bridge hit miles inland. American bases coming under fire in return, because Iran was never going to let that go. And then Iran releasing footage of one of now precious few American Reaper drones dropping out of the sky in bits.Safe. Controlled. Necessary.You can pick whichever US backed claim you like. The pictures don’t seem especially interested in playing ball.Now, before anybody tries to turn this into “Iran attacked shipping, so America had to respond”, let’s put the order of events back where it belongs.Washington started this war. The disruption in the Strait followed from that. Iran has struck vessels that deviated from the routes and instructions it had laid down – the Strait is their sovereign waters, they control the traffic - but that is not some clean, standalone justification America can point to while pretending everything began there. Every road leads back to the same place: the United States opened the conflict, widened it, all for Israel lest we forget, and is now using the consequences of its own escalation as permission for even more escalation.They started the confrontation, created the conditions, and now want credit for responding to them. That is not defence. It is an alibi written after the fact.

Right, so Donald Trump has managed to restart his Iran war using a photograph from the last one. He’s posted this to Truth SocialThat fire allegedly showing the latest attacks on the Iran’s coastal city of Chabahar? It’s from June of last year.Not this attack. Not this week. Not even this year.And while Trump was busy passing off last year’s flames as proof of this year’s brilliance, these were the actual images coming out of Chabahar. Fresh attacks. Fresh damage. Fresh consequences, because Iran have no more taken it on the chin this time around as they did the times before.Because then the tankers started turning around.Then Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar were dragged into the response.So, in the space of a few hours, Trump’s claims were caught out, shipping started going the wrong way, and his great display of restored control began spreading across the Gulf like somebody had kicked over a petrol can.The picture wasn’t fake, but the pitch was.And it only got worse from there.

Right, so Ireland has pushed a total ban on goods from Israel’s illegal settlements through the Dáil and on into the Seanad.And the amount of trade involved is about €200,000 a year.Two hundred grand.Now, to most normal people, that is still a lot of money. You’d notice if somebody removed €200,000 from your bank account. I certainly would if I had it to begin with. But in terms of international trade, this is loose change. It’s a couple of crates, some produce, a few bits and pieces from settlements in the occupied West Bank.And yet getting even this tiny measure through has taken eight years, multiple governments, legal warnings, American pressure and enough political shuffling to wear a groove in the floor of Leinster House.Which rather gives the game away.Because Israel’s problem here is not the €200,000.It is the fact that Ireland has built a barrier at all.Now, before anybody runs off with the wrong version of this, Ireland has not banned every Israeli product.This is not Irish customs charging through Tesco with a clipboard, hurling Israeli hummus into evidence bags and demanding to know where the avocados were on the night in question.There is therefore still work to do for those of us of a BDS persuasion, but bear in mind it has taken 8 years to get this far, at least they are moving in the right direction.This is a ban aimed at goods made in designated Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.It is not operating at customs yet. The bill still has to finish its legislative journey through that upper house now and be formally brought into force, so a bit of awareness being raised about this still seems appropriate and yet it’s worth bearing in mind that this bill passed in the Dáil without ever needing a vote. Think about that.

Right, so Israel said full operational control of Bint Jbeil district in southern Lebanon was only days away.Days.That was back in April.Well now we’re in July aren’t we and an Israeli reservist has just been seriously wounded inside the town, nothing unusual perhaps there, but it came in the wake of some stellar level of incompetence. You see the building he was shot from had been already been hit with tank fire, it’s a wonder the building was frankly still standing therefore. The man inside? Well, the army thought the man inside was dead, must be dead surely? Except he wasn’t. Instead they then had to send troops back because apparently “we think we got him” isn’t quite the same thing as actually having done so.He was still alive.And while Israel was busy revisiting buildings it thought it had dealt with and completely undermining any semblance of actually having control of the place, a little flag appeared on a ridge above the town of Ali al-Taher, fluttering away on the hillside like it had personally conquered southern Lebanon before lunch. Except there were no IDF soldiers there at all, so how did it get there then?Well stick around and find out.

Right, so that was that then. Donald Trump’s latest triumph in world peace. Twenty-one days old, the deal that wasn’t quite a deal, just a Memorandum of Understanding and it’s already lying face-down in the gutter.Three weeks ago, this was a win. A breakthrough. Proof of the great dealmaker at work again. Sixty days of negotiations, an end to military operations, shipping through Hormuz, Iranian oil moving again. Trump had done it. Of course he had. Everybody clap.Then it all went to bits last night, it seems Trump couldn’t let the opportunity of Iranians in mourning over the funeral arrangements of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pass him by. The Treasury pulled the oil authorisation for Iran. Then CENTCOM hit more than 80 targets across Iran, but if he thought Iran wasn’t ready for him he was soon proven sorely wrong. Iran launched missiles and drones towards American facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, and Trump turned up at NATO saying the whole thing was over and dealing with Iran was a waste of time.His deal.His government.His military.His waste of time.And Iran, rather inconveniently for the victory parade, was still capable of answering back, as if that was ever in doubt. You’re already running out of missiles Donnie, it’s already going to take years to replace what you’ve already spent for the sake of Israel, what are you doing you deranged orange madman?So no, this is not a peace process that quietly ran out of road. It did not reach the end of its 60 days. It did not naturally expire. Nobody forgot to renew the subscription here.Trump got to day 21 got bored apparently, or needed a distraction from the hole he’s in with Israel over Gaza and Turkiye right now and drove it into a wall.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu may finally have managed to drive this one right to the edge.Trump’s Board of Peace was already floundering. Israel was still blocking aid, Gaza was still being starved and bombed, and this grand new institution with its flags, crest and very important-looking blue backdrop was producing about as much peace as a parking enforcement notice.Then the civilian government Israel had spent years blaming for everything when it comes to Gaza went and dissolved itself.The guns might not have vanished. But the government did. And with it went that broad Israeli claim that Hamas still controls every part of Gaza’s civilian administration and that no replacement exists.Netanyahu can still argue about disarmament. What he cannot keep doing is using Hamas’s civilian government as the reason the civilian transition cannot begin, because that government has stepped aside and Israel is still blocking the body meant to replace it. So what is your reasoning going to be now then?The replacement built into Trump’s own framework is still outside Gaza. Israel is still stopping the next move. And while Netanyahu treats Trump’s Gaza plan like junk mail, he’s demanding Washington step in and protect Israel’s military advantage over Türkiye at the same time.So yes, he may be out of road, but what Trump does next, with both his Board of Peace and with regards to this F-35 deal with Türkiye might finally prove whether the boss lives in Washington or Tel Aviv.

Right, so. Britain has apparently found the threat.She’s 84 years old, she’s a retired Anglican priest, she walks with a stick, wears a clerical collar and a crucifix, and for this the state has decided terrorism law is the appropriate tool.Meanwhile Elbit Systems gets more contracts.Its executives get conference seats.Its technology gets plugged into British military systems.And another Israeli state arms company with a presence in Britain ends up operating through a supposedly Dutch corporate structure but doesn’t have any Dutch employees. The actual people and business activity seem to be over here.But yes. Obviously. The elderly with their placards are the danger, that sign could give you a nasty paper cut, the fiends.Grannies in the street travelling in groups armed with walking sticks and wheelchairs and a bag of Werther’s original are who you need to watch out for, not the targeting systems. Not the arms executives. Not the companies being welcomed into Britain’s military establishment. As much as we can poke a lot of fun at the framing here, because we all know how ridiculous this looks, this is more than one odd arrest. Not one copper having a funny five minutes. Britain has built a system which treats opposition to Israeli arms companies as a security threat, while treating those companies themselves as respectable partners and it’s all going on at the same time.

Right, so Nigel Farage has resigned as MP for Clacton.Except, of course, he’s standing again.Well nice try sunshine, but you’re kidding nobody.What he’s doing here, at the expense of all of us, because by-elections cost a mint in and of themselves, is trying to replace one question with another. Instead of "Did you break the rules?" he wants the conversation to become "Can he still win Clacton?" They're not the same thing, it’s just the latest grift.Farage is trying to turn an investigation into victimisation and thinks he can sell that from the soapbox. He’s not leaving politics. He’s not stepping away. He’s not saying, “Right, let the process run, let the watchdog do its job, let’s get to the bottom of this.”No, no. He’s saying: let’s have a by-election.Why?Because if he wins Clacton again, he gets to say, “the people have cleared me.”But they haven’t.A by-election doesn’t clear you of failing to declare gifts. It doesn’t clear you of questions over homes, money, donors, crypto cash, or alleged undeclared support your sidekick and chief cigarette break organiser Posh George AKA George Cottrell, a literal convicted fraudster. It just means enough people voted for you.That’s not a standards investigation. That’s a popularity contest, though just how popular you are in Clacton when you’re never bloody there remains to be seen.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has been on Fox News claiming that Christian villages in Lebanon want to be annexed by Israel.Yes. Annexed.Not just “Israel protects them.” Not just “they’re worried about Hezbollah.” Not just the usual security porridge ladled out in front of an American TV audience. He went further than that. He claimed some Christian villages in Lebanon had actually asked to be annexed by Israel because Israel protects them.Protection becomes annexation. Fear becomes consent. A village under pressure becomes, somehow, a willing participant in Netanyahu’s border-redrawing routine now. And all of it delivered with the breezy confidence of a man who apparently left the names, the documents and the actual villages in his other suit.Which is handy, isn’t it? Very convenient. A prime minister currently sitting on occupied Lebanese territory suddenly discovers that, actually, bits of Lebanon would quite like to be Israel. Except of course it was bo**ocks.

Right, so this is what a “withdrawal framework” looks like now, apparently. Not a convoy leaving. Not a border post being handed back. Smoke.Lebanon gets told there is a deal. A framework. A peace step. A route back to sovereignty. You can almost smell the conference-room coffee.And then the ground blows up, because Israel’s idea of withdrawal, by the look of it, comes with a detonator in the welcome pack.Yet that’s a problem for Netanyahu here. He needed this to look like withdrawal with a tie on. Careful language, official backdrops, everyone lined up for the cameras. Then the smoke rolls in from southern Lebanon again, and the whole thing starts looking less like diplomacy and more like a demolition job with a press pass.But then there’s this footage.And once you’ve seen the smoke, the sales pitch starts looking a bit less like diplomacy and a bit more like somebody missed - well, something rather important out of it and it stems from this recent event, which you might recall.That was of course in the aftermath of Lebanon’s sell out of a deal to IsraelLovely room. Lots of flags. Important people looking very official, though you can’t escape the feeling somebody’s back might have a knife pressed to it can you?The violence is going on elsewhere. All the death a destruction goes on somewhere else. You put all the conditions you feel like you can get away with imposing here into the appendices at the back. Then you stand back and admire your machinations.A framework. A step forward. A path to peace.Wonderful.And then, once the cameras move from the podium back to southern Lebanon, the whole thing starts coughing up smoke like a clapped-out old van trying to pass its MOT.

Right, so Ben-Gvir was apparently meant to be heading to New York.For of all things, a police summit.Yes, Ben-Gvir at a police summit, because apparently irony died and was buried, complete with a judicial badge pinned to the coffin.But then something funny happened. Not so much funny ha-ha, more funny “oh look, there’s lawyers at the airport.” The Hind Rajab Foundation and the Center for Constitutional Rights were ready for him. New York authorities were being asked to look at who was preparing to touchdown on their soil. The prison scandal very much attached to his ministry that he cannot shake off, because the rest of the world isn’t as gone in the head as he is was very much going to be travelling with him.. And suddenly the trip is now reportedly not happening. Bottled it again by any chance Itamar?Well, his office hasn’t confirmed the reason. We can enjoy a mental image of him quivering under his desk clutching a picture of Zohran Mamdani and cursing in his throatiest Hebrew, but we don’t actually know for certain. So no, as much fun as it would be to write a piece where we imagine him sprinting through Ben Gurion Airport with a suitcase full of panic and his tiny hat on sideways. We can’t.However, the sequence is enough. A Police summit. Legal pressure. A prison scandal on the minister for prisons in Israel. And then cancellation.Ben-Gvir is horrible, that’s stating the obvious. The fact that this story is now becoming more and more awkward outside Israel though appears to making the world a much smaller place for him and not without good reason.

Right, so Keir Starmer’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, a woman who has just now decided to take herself and her department off of Twitter due because despite it being her brief, legislating its behaviour appears to be beyond her has gone to Parliament with a plan for “trusted news” online, because apparently Independent media outlets are a much safer target.What counts as trusted news though? Public service media. The mainstream outlets, legacy news. It must be highly visible. Easy to discover. The sort of news the government likes given a boost over those that actually hold them to account.But the moment a government starts saying certain news outlets should be made more visible on YouTube amongst other platforms, you have to ask who gets picked. You have to ask who gets pushed aside. You have to ask who decides which outlets count as trusted and which ones are apparently just grubby little peasants shouting into the digital ether.People did not wander away from mainstream outlets like the BBC because they couldn’t find it. The BBC is hardly hidden. ITV is not buried in a cave. Sky News has not been living under a tarp behind the bins.People went elsewhere because, on issue after issue, legacy media gave them reasons to go elsewhere.And now the government’s answer appears to be: well, perhaps the old outlets need better placement.Not better trust. Not better accountability. Better placement.

Right, so Israel’s grand security zone in southern Lebanon has apparently reached the “put a shop-window soldier in the firing line and hope for the best” phase.Despite talks of some miracle new defence system in the offing, this is not a fancy laser, it is not a brand new air defence system to be deployed in Lebanon called the iron scrotum or some such other daft name, not one of those glossy start-up gadgets being presented by a salesman with a glossy pamphlet who says “battlefield ecosystem” far too much. It’s dummies. Fake soldiers. I suppose it goes well with all the fake news that comes out of Israel. Shop mannequins dressed up in military gear, reportedly placed in Lebanon as decoys against drones.And yes, obviously, it’s funny. Look at it. It’s ridiculous.But don’t let the joke distract from the bit underneath it, because the dummy is not just a gag. It’s what happens when the Hezbollah drone problem quite obviously still hasn’t gone away, and the attempts at answering them, from fishing nets as have been used in recent weeks to this now, clearly haven’t been enough, and seemingly such is the desperation now in trying to find a solution to this, that the next line of defence is now apparently Action Man with a death wish.So when Israel’s leaders talk about control, and security zones, and staying until the threat is gone, keep that image in your head, because the answer now is apparently a helmet, a vest, but no pulse.

Right, so this is the bit of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran War victory lap that he’s been running for months now, no it wasn’t all about running away from his corruption trial apparently, that he doesn’t want anywhere near, because you can say “contained” as many times as you like. You can say “localised”, “manageable”, “operational”, all those lovely little words officials use when something is on fire but they don’t want anyone making a fuss.But then there’s the footage.There’s the fire. There’s the smoke. There’s the great big orange clue in the sky – flames and heat haze for those of you thinking Donald Trump’s raided the Red Bull and its given him wings.But now there’s been a leak consisting of a damage report and a repair schedule and it very much doesn’t care about the speech, doesn’t care about Netanyahu’s claims, the boasting of total victory, doesn’t care how heroic the evening news package on Channel 14 was supposed to sound.So what we need to look at here, the question that needs asking is not just what Iran hit.The question is what Israel has also tried to minimise, and why Netanyahu is still selling more war while the last one is apparently still sending him invoices and apparently will be for a very long time yet.

Right, so Bezalel Smotrich has looked back at the Hamas hostage story, the families, the people who never came home, the deals he fought, the war his government kept selling as “total victory,” and somehow arrived at the conclusion that what this whole thing really needed was a round of applause for Bezalel Smotrich.Because of course it did.Why have grief, negotiations, pressure, families camping outside government buildings, months of rage and fear, when you could have one far-right minister sitting in a studio going: actually, this was basically me.A hostage story turned into a medal ceremony. For him.But the problem with trying to wear a national trauma as jewellery is that sometimes the people most closely attached to that trauma, the families of those killed, are still around. Still angry. Still bereaved and aggrieved. And suddenly this little victory lap routine starts to look a lot less like leadership and more like a man jogging round a cemetery in his party shoes.So let’s start with the boasting, because, really, you need to see the nerve of it.Well that wasn’t exactly subtle was it? Modesty not exactly his middle name. Placing himself right at the centre of it.Thanks to me.I mean, the sheer neck of it. You could power a small coastal town off that level of ego. The man Israeli reporting says opposed hostage deals at various stages is now presenting himself as the reason the hostages came home at all. Is there an election coming up? Oh just 3 months away now isn’t it?

Right, so Palantir, the giant US surveillance-tech firm that keeps turning up wherever public systems, police data, health data and state power are being bundled into something shiny and expensive, has just hit a rather awkward patch of road, you’ll be broken hearted to hear I’m sure.Its boss has been boasting about Israel. Europe is starting to back away. France is moving off. Spain has reportedly told state-backed firms to avoid new contracts with them. Even permanently on the wrong side of history Germany has had its own sovereignty alarms go off over them. But here in Britain, because apparently our government sees a warning sign and mistakes it for a sales invitation, Palantir’s UK boss is on television over a blocked £50m Met Police deal, while Westminster still finds room for the corporate hospitality. Any excuse for a buffet.So this story is about the moment Palantir’s politics, its public-sector ambitions and Europe’s growing rejection of US tech dependency all collide, and Britain somehow ends up standing there having still rolled out a red carpet.

Right, so Lloyds, one of the biggest banks in Britain, has cut off The Canary from its own cash.This isn’t demonetising a YouTube video. Not suspending a social media account. Not sending one of those cheery little “we’re updating our terms” emails that everyone deletes while making tea. A bank account. The thing a media outlet needs to pay staff, pay contractors, take donations, pay bills, and keep the lights on.The Canary says Lloyds cut off access to its funds. It says it was given no warning. It says it was given no explanation. And it says the damage was immediate.We do not know Lloyds’ reason. It seems no matter how often they are asked, they don’t want to answer. So it’s no good pretending we can read Lloyds’ mind through the vault door, but we will debate the matter and the longer they take to justify their action, the worse it still looks for them, social media full of comments in regards to boycotting them and their subsidiaries.A bank holds the money, a news outlet says it has been cut off from it – their own money - and Lloyds has still not publicly explained why, so functionally it looks like theft doesn’t it? They’ve got your cash, won’t give you access to it, won’t tell you why.But it isn’t just Lloyd’s we should be critical of here, because the only mainstream televised broadcaster to cover this story, actually treating this as a debanking story, is GB News.Yes. GBeebies. Covering The Canary. On debanking and why it should concern us.

Right, so Israel invaded Syria and lost the phone.Not a metaphor. Not a joke. Well, it is a joke, unfortunately for the IDF, tiny violin time again, but it’s also the news.Israeli forces went into Abdin, in southern Syria’s Daraa province and the locals said to themselves we’re not having this. Residents blocked roads. Stones were thrown. Young men and boys were apparently among those throwing them and the IDF ran away. The soldiers had to pull back amid the confrontation, and then one classified military communications device somehow ended up exactly where a classified military communications device is not generally meant to end up: with Syrian civilians.So yes, they lost something. Boy did they lose something.Not a lunchbox. Not a water bottle. Not one of those little morale patches soldiers collect so they can look tactical on Instagram, the IDF equivalent of the boy scouts, if the scouts did a most amoral army badge. A classified military communications device, which basically amounts to a Samsung phone by the look of it. But it’s all encrypted, so I’m sure all the classified intelligence on it will be safe right? Right?A heavily armed force entered a Syrian village, hits local resistance, had to pull back amid the confrontation, and then Israeli sources themselves had to explain why a rather important bit of their kit had gone missing.So much for elite security doctrine. Mum I’ve lost my phone! Complete with state secrets on it perhaps? I wonder if the scouts do a most incompetent army badge instead?

Right, so Israel has got itself a shiny new Lebanon deal.A ceasefire deal. A de-escalation deal. A Washington-backed framework, which means they don’t need to cease firing at all. Very serious people have apparently been very seriously working on this, which is always comforting, isn't it? Nothing says peace quite like a conference table full of people who won't be anywhere near the blast radius.But then of course this is what south Lebanon actually gets out of this isn’t it?Diplomatic breakthrough? Don't make me laugh. That is what a peace framework looks like when it hits the ground face-first.So before anyone starts wafting the word "calm" around like air freshener in a burning kitchen, let's be clear what this story actually is. Israel has a deal it wants to sell as security. Washington has a framework it wants to sell as diplomacy. Lebanon has smoke in the sky and explosions on the ground and too much of people’s everyday lives are in flames, a Parliament Speaker doing his best Ian McKellen impression and saying to this deal “you shall not pass!” And an annex full of terms and conditions and exceptions in the background.But the first thing that really matters after the explosions isn't another Israeli spokesman telling us how responsible they are and how moral their ceasefire busting army is. That particular circus horse has been doing that lap for years, it’s spent.What matters is what happens when this deal hits Lebanese politics, or more specifically when it comes to be debated, because it’s all well and good Joseph Aoun’s government signing southern Lebanon away in effect, Lebanon is a democracy, and that still has to get through their parliament.

Right, so this is one of those stories where the danger isn't wearing a helmet, waving a flag, or kicking someone's door in at six in the morning. It's sitting in a Bill. Nice and quiet. Grey paper, serious title, national security sprayed all over it, but not in a nice way, more like a skunk.Starmer seems to be thinking just how much authoritarian borderline fascist policy can I ram through before handing over to Andy Burnham, and so his government is pushing a State Threats Bill, and the sales pitch is exactly what you'd expect: Russia, China, Iran, hostile powers, urgent threats, but don't worry your little heads about the wording. Yeah you, let me decide what I’ll worry about thank you very much Keith.And it’s in the House of Lords that the nasty bit of this has been pointed out.Information.Not money. Not weapons. Not formal support. Information. The thing journalists ask for, the thing aid workers need, the thing war reporting is actually built out of.And then it gets even more awkward, because the government says this whole proscription-style state-threats machine comes from Jonathan Hall's recommendation, Jonathan Hall KC and for those of us familiar with Johnathan Hall KC, the alarm bells are very much ringing. His public record on Israel, protest and terrorism law is not exactly what I’d call neutral.

Right, so The Canary has just been debanked and this is something that should raise immediate alarm bells with all of us.An independent media outlet has just had its banking services withdrawn. A fundraiser is now being launched to help keep it going, and I’m covering this because when an independent media organisation is financially cut off like this, we are looking at something much bigger than one outlet having a bad week with a bank, because we’ve seen too much of this going on, certainly at individual levels, but this is a whole other ball game and as independent media as well, this could literally happen to any of us, hence the importance of those who support us and as such we support each other too.Obviously, facts matter here. The appeal process depends on them being known, but the democratic issue, much easier to talk about at this early stage ought to be obvious already.Debanking means a bank or payment provider withdraws financial services from you. That can mean an account closed. It can mean payments blocked. It can mean access disrupted. It can mean donation routes interrupted. It can mean the basic financial plumbing of an organisation suddenly stops working properly. Think what it would mean to you to find yourself in a position where you had no access to money. What would you do?And for a media outlet, that is the same only amplified. That is survival.

Right, so Israel's war machine has run into a problem.Not more Hamas or Hezbollah tunnels. Not a wave of drones they didn’t see coming. Not the Iranian bogeyman wheeled out for the cameras because Netanyahu needs another week of political oxygen as his actions leave Israel gasping for breath.It’s an invoice.The little bit of paper that turns up after the speeches are over, after the flags are packed away, after the generals have finished pointing at maps, and it says: lovely, very dramatic, but who's actually paying for all of this now?Because this is not a story about Israel suddenly having no army tomorrow morning. It is not "the IDF has gone to the cupboard and found three buttons and a lonely biscuit where the interceptor shells for the Iron Dome used to be." That would be a lovely image, admittedly, but that's not the bill we're talking about.Calcalist is reporting that Israel's budget deadlock could hit new shell production orders from Elbit, and could also disrupt procurement of air-defence interceptors from Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries.The firms that make the things, the factories, the orders, the payments. The bit of the war machine that doesn't run on speeches and photo ops and Netanyahu in a flak jacket looking like he's wandered out of a cosplay convention for deranged and dangerous men.It runs on money.And apparently, funny thing, when you spend years expanding war like he’s been doing, the money eventually becomes a bit of an issue.

Right, so before we even get to this war-crimes complaint heading Itamar Ben-Gvir’s way, let’s just remind ourselves for a moment at what this soulless psychopath apparently thought made him look strong.The minister, the flag, the detainees on the ground with their hands bound with zip ties, the little stroll-through like he's inspecting a prize-winning marrow at a village fair, except the marrow is human humiliation and the fairground is Israeli state violence.Nobody leaked that. Nobody hid it. He wasn't desperate to bury it. It's the image he wanted out there. He looked at it and thought, yes, that's me, that's my brand.But here's his problem now. When you turn abject cruelty into content sooner or later someone, somewhere, is filing it. And they have.The Hind Rajab Foundation says it has now filed a request for prosecution with the US Department of Justice against Itamar Ben-Gvir, ahead of his expected presence in New York on the 7th and 8th of July. They allege war crimes, genocide-related offences and incitement, including in relation to US nationals.To be clear, this is not the DOJ charging him. This is HRF filing a request for prosecution. But Ben-Gvir's US visit is not just running into bad press, or protest, or a few angry people outside a hotel with placards. It is running into a record that even the US cannot ignore here, especially after his recent Visa problems forcing him to cancel a trip to Florida recently, because the US Embassy wanted his fingerprints. Well, he does have a criminal record for terror offences that no amount of crying and antisemitism accusation will make go away.Now some of this case file remains confidential, but a lot of it doesn't and that’s because he performed it, he filmed it, he posted it on social media and Israeli media as a trophy.

Right, so Donald Trump’s great Iran MoU has reached the stage every American peace deal in West Asia seems to reach sooner or later: somebody starts bombing the peace partner.Beautiful stuff. Tremendous diplomacy. The sort of peace framework where the ink is still drying, the Gulf is already lighting up, Israel is measuring curtains in southern Lebanon, and Nabih Berri, the Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker has to send in a camel because apparently nobody can explain sedition without help from livestock.And no, this is not just "regional tensions rising". I hate that phrase. It is wallpaper for arson. It makes war sound like rising damp.Tensions did not wander in off the street and knock over a table by accident. Somebody did this. Washington did this. Israel is doing this. Trump's sham of a deal did this.Because the trick was never complicated. Iran keeps Hormuz open. Trump gets his oil route back and the markets bounce which is a win for him. Israel gets the right to stay in southern Lebanon. The spineless Aoun government gets used as the stamp on the envelope for that process. And then everyone claps because this shambles gets called peace.But Lebanon was always a red line.That is the bit they have either missed, ignored, or filed away under "awkward things to deal with once the cameras have gone". Iran was never going to watch Israel bedding into southern Lebanon and shrug, and say, well, Aoun signed this thing, so that settles it.You don’t rub out a red line by handing the pen to somebody else.

Right, so Britain's doctors have just done something the Israel lobby will absolutely hate.They have taken IHRA, one of Israel's favourite institutional weapons, the one that gets waved around every time someone criticises what Israel is doing to Palestinians, and they've put it straight in the NHS bin.And no, before the usual bad-faith sock puppets start limbering up, this is not doctors saying antisemitism does not matter. Of course antisemitism matters. Racism matters. Patients and staff should not be abused, intimidated or treated like dirt at work.But that’s not the argument is ot?The argument is what happens when a definition that is supposed to tackle racism gets wired into workplace discipline, regulator complaints and professional fear, because then it stops looking like protection.It starts looking like a weapon.Palestine speech became a career risk, and the process itself became the punishment.The process itself is the tool of silencing.Not the verdict. Not the final finding. Not even the suspension in some cases. The process.That letter landing in your inbox. That meeting with management. That referral to the GMC. That little professional stink that starts following you around before anything has actually been proven. A smear. A career threat.And that is how these things work, isn't it?You don't always need to win the case if the complaint has already done enough damage. You just need to make the example visible. You just need every other doctor watching to think, "Right, say too much about Gaza and that could be me next."

Right, so this is what peace looks like now, apparently.Burning tyres in Beirut. Lebanese anger in the streets. The army going in. Warning flyers over the south. And in Washington, a signing table dressed up like the birth of sovereignty while Israel is still talking about a security zone it very much gets to keep.They want you watching the handshake. They want you watching the pens. They want "framework" and "peace" and "first step" floating down over south Lebanon as though the words themselves could turn occupation into liberation.But the footage says something else. It says people are being warned away. It says the streets are furious. It says this deal did not land as peace. It landed as a sellout by the Vichy administration passing itself off as the Lebanese government.And Netanyahu, who reckons keeping the south is some grand achievement, has been warned from inside Israel's own establishment that Lebanon has buried Israeli prime ministers before and it may yet bury him too.So the question is not whether he got a win. It is whether he just walked into something that actually could still finish him.The reality is that Lebanon's government has put its name to a deal sold as sovereignty while Israel stays in the south under its own security-zone logic. They preferred that option to Iran’s deal which forced Israel out completely. Little wonder the country is up in arms. The people watching this from Lebanon are not looking at a liberation here, a win here. They are looking at the south of their own country being run by somebody else now

Right, so Donald Trump's Iran ceasefire has now reached the completely normal and peaceful stage where the United States bombs Iran again.Not metaphorically. Not in sanctions language. Not with one of those anaemic State Department statements where everyone pretends "deep concern" is a policy. Actually bombs it.A target screen. A blast. Smoke. And "Unclassified" stamped across the top of it.This is the deal, apparently. This is the peace framework. Paperwork in one hand, airstrikes in the other, and the rest of us meant to sit here nodding along as though a ceasefire with bombing footage attached is a diplomatic breakthrough.So let’s not let them walk us into their nonsense version of events here. This is not "tensions in the region." That phrase does so much washing-up for empire, doesn't it? Tensions. As if missiles turn tense all by themselves. As if Hormuz woke up in a mood. As if nobody put a target on a screen and pressed the button.What we are actually watching is Trump's Iran deal meeting its inevitable conclusion given the state of Lebanon and Iran’s red lines over it, and Trump’s insistence that the Strait of Hormuz is international waters.So the US says it is responding. It says Iran went after commercial shipping. It says the targets were Iranian military infrastructure, coastal radar, missile and drone sites, with Hormuz sitting underneath the whole thing as the pressure point.

Right, so Israel’s latest Lebanon withdrawal apparently lasted about ten minutes. Ten minutes. You can boil pasta longer than that. You can sit through a Keir Starmer speech longer than that, although frankly nobody should have to, by minute seven consciousness will be touch and go.But for about ten minutes, Lebanon was told Israel had begun pulling back. President Joseph Aoun was reportedly informed that Israel had started withdrawing from part of the buffer area as a goodwill gesture and jumped the shark a bit in celebrating that news. Cue everyone pretending that Israel, after months of bombing, occupation, security belts and freedom-of-action demands, had suddenly discovered the concept of leaving somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be.But then everything fell apart, because Israeli sources denied it. Lebanese sources then denied it. The story started wobbling almost as soon as it was reported. It was less a withdrawal and more of a diplomatic party trick. A vanishing act. Now you see it, now you don’t. A pullback with the structural integrity of wet cardboard. A goodwill gesture that apparently needed a witness protection programme before anyone could verify it had happened.Israel and Lebanon are supposedly in talks, but clearly anything but on the same page, or even having the same conversation. Washington is trying to manage a ceasefire that Israel abuses with impunity, talking up arrangements like “pilot zones,” “security arrangements,” “phased redeployment” and “freedom of action.”But strip away all of that inane jargon and what are we actually looking at?Israel saying withdrawal while staying. Israel saying security while holding Lebanese land. Israel saying ceasefire while seemingly having no grasp of the concept.

Right, so let’s start here.Start with a school because when Israeli forces are inside a girls’ school, and then a UN-mandated inquiry turns round and says Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted, it all takes a decided turn for the sinister.Israel would very much like this story filed in a dusty old drawer marked “UN bias”, because of course they would.UN says something about Gaza? Bias. UN says something about Palestinian children? Bias. UN says something about hospitals, maternity wards, detention, starvation, schools, aid blockades, children killed and children injured? Still bias, apparently.A magic word. Like diplomatic Febreze. Just spray “bias” over the room and hope nobody notices the smell of pi** still filtering through.But the problem this time is that the report is landing with footage. It lands on the ceasefire story Israel wants everyone to accept – their version of it of course - as if a ceasefire announcement is a moral washing machine and all the blood goes in one side and comes out clean on the other.That is the frame they want, but the frame here is different.This is a report about Palestinian children specifically, so the first thing you need to understand is that children are not just the casualties in this story. They are literally the case itself.

Right, so Andy Burnham’s great Labour reset has barely got its shoes under the table and it’s already imploding on him, but then how many Labour leaders – it looks like he’s going to get the gig unchallenged at this point, so we mighty as well get used to referring to him as such – are going to repeat the word change without meaning to actually deliver any?New face, new tone, new start, new path, final chance to change Britain, all the lovely campaign-board vocabulary they roll out only for a Starmer clone with an up north accent and less brylcreem to come out from behind the curtain.But this is the useful thing about a reset: you do not test it by the speech. You test it by the people brought into the room afterwards and of course a lot of the talk right now is the inane speculation as to who would be in his cabinet – does it really matter? They had to create a seat for Burnham to walk into because apparently there isn’t enough talent amongst the 411 Labour MPs to find another leader amongst, the consequences of Starmer’s candidacy stitch ups.And neither do we need another Burnham biography either. Nobody needs “King of the North: the origin story” with soft lighting and a tram stop. All we need to know about Burnham is that he is being relentlessly sold as the alternative to Starmer. The grown-up reboot. The man who can make Labour sound human again after years of managerial cruelty with flags stuck up it a*se.Fine. Then let’s test this reset...

Right, so Netanyahu says Israel still has a free hand in Lebanon. Full freedom. No restrictions. No limits. The IDF can move as it likes, strike as it likes, stay as long as it likes, because apparently southern Lebanon is now just an patio extension north of the Israeli border with a few extra craters. Lovely.And that was the line he wanted to sell. Strong leader. Clear directive. Security zone. Residents of the north. All the usual soundbites dragged back onto the stage and arranged to make occupation look like just a little bit of housekeeping.But then one of his own rivals comes along and points to the bit Netanyahu didn’t not want discussed: the bit that shows his hands being tied as he declares full freedom.Because this is the thing about boasting. It only works while nobody checks your homework. Netanyahu says no restrictions. That gets contradicted by one particular rival and then southern Lebanon gives you the truth via the only translation that really matters: smoke, strikes, damage, fear, people living under the thing Netanyahu wants to call freedom.That is not the picture being sold to the Israeli public. But then one of Netanyahu’s own rivals comes along and says, hold on a minute.So let’s start with that.

Right, so that is not a resistance spokesman. That is not an Iranian negotiator. That’s a big orange wombat – waste of money, breath and time. However, if you can claw through some the digression there, an actual salient point was being made, in that Trump has looked at Israel’s ongoing military aggression in Lebanon, all in defiance of his Iran deal of course and said in effect: you keep flattening buildings and yet you still cannot finish the job.And of course we know that, we know Netanyahu want’s Lebanon separate from the deal, or at the very least so that it doesn’t apply to him, but it’s not happening when Trump is literally telling him you didn’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut, which is itself a confession given he’s the one arming Israel, because even he is now openly admitting in effect that the targets are not military.Netanyahu wanted Lebanon as a loophole.But the problem with loopholes is that somebody eventually finds them.And Iran were never going to let this one remain open, when Israel leaving Lebanon is one of their red lines.Leaving will expose weakness, will expose Netanyahu to being tugged by the Washington leash. Will see Mr Security have to acquiesce to what Iran wants after 30 years of wanting to force regime change there and the resistance from within his utterly bats**t administration was always going to be obvious. As Iran gets its way, his own ministers go rogue:

Right, so Keir Starmer has finally got the message then.Good. Only about six years too late.And I know you are not supposed to say that too loudly on the day they finally show some emotion and choke at the lectern. Well, I’m not the mainstream media, I’m not going to go about eulogising this guy. Even his resignation speech wasn’t that original, it was like Theresa May’s all over again in some parts word for word. But we’re supposed to do the whole solemn respectful ness aren’t we? Public service. Difficult decisions. A life of duty. Thank you, Sir Keir, for your managerial machinations and your tireless commitment to making everyone’s life slightly worse than it even was before, and that was bad enough.So no, I’m not doing that, especially when he decided to make his leaving speech just like so many of his others – a pack of lies.Before he even opened his mouth, the country gave him the review.We heard applause. I daresay many more people were clapping too, especially after the bit he said he was finally going.A prime minister comes out to resign and people clap. How detested must you be? You can imagine those assembled, although some were of course clapping in admiration were also doing so with relief.That is Britain now. Not grateful. Not moved. Not devastated by the fall of a great statesman, because he was anything but. Clapping because the man is finally going. Clapping because after two years of cruelty with a tie on, of cowardice with a flag behind it, of Zionist boot-polishing dressed up as “global leadership,” people have had enough of him.

Right, so get a load of this guy. If you aren’t aware of who this little sausage is, this is a chap by the name of Danny Danon, he pops up on TV interviews from time to time as a sometime go to motormouth of the Israeli regime – an excuse maker who is more than happy to raise his voice and shout down other people as so many Zionists seem to treat as their standard media tactic when someone dares breathe in the wrong direction with regards to their states genocidal tendencies. He is point of fact though, the Israeli envoy to the United Nations and in one of his most recent outings, he decided the best way to respond to a report on conflict-related sexual violence was to demonstrate all of the emotional restraint of a toddler that has just been denied a biscuit.That was a formal UN meeting. A serious subject. Officials across the room. The report there on the table. Allegations that require seriousness, evidence, scrutiny, careAnd what did Israel’s man at the UN bring?He brought volume, because he has an ego inflated to 500PSI and it needed an outlet. He brought the finger-wagging. He brought the full “how dare you mention this awful thing that you’ve gathered evidence against us over” routine.And of course he had to make it personal too against the Special Rapporteur who had compiled it, in this case that being the Special Rapporteur for Children and Armed Conflict, the Maltese diplomat Vanessa Frazier, because once he made it personal, that instigated the pushback.At the end of the day though, as a professional, as a representative of your country, if you are confronted with a damaging report, you have choices. You can challenge it. You can answer it. You can present counter-evidence. You can dispute the process. You can say the report is wrong and then show people why.What you cannot do, if you want to look like the serious party with a serious point to make, is turn on the official trying to raise a point of order and tell her to be quiet.

Right, so Netanyahu’s Lebanon front has just done the one thing it absolutely was not supposed to do.It left some proof.Actual footage. Actual losses. Actual pressure. All being applied to Israel and not the other way around, The sort of thing that stops being a line in an IDF military update about being all moral and specific when they’ve just levelled an entire block – the sort of thing that ends up becoming evidence in somebody else’s argument.And that was the risk Netanyahu was trying to dodge. Keep Lebanon active, keep the troops in, keep the pressure on, keep the genocidally loopy ministers holding the reins of power over him howling for more, but still let the tangerine toddler passing himself off as President of the US sell an Iran deal as if the region had been neatly folded, ironed and put away in a drawer. The front was supposed to stay useful to Netanyahu without becoming inconvenient for him. Loud enough to serve Israel’s purposes, quiet enough not to wreck Trump’s sales pitch.As if he was ever going to pull such a stunt off.Hezbollah had the cameras rolling courtesy of their drone warfare, the casualty ledger has shifted alarmingly against Israel, Iran as a consequence has brought ships into the picture, and after it was apparently cancelled, JD Vance is on his way to Switzerland looking like the man sent to explain why the “stable deal” is now arriving with smoke damage and too much charring around the edges to have been just a little accident.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently won again.Amazing, isn’t it?Every few days, Israel wins so hard that another town in Lebanon starts smoking, another ceasefire needs hosing down, another American official has to pretend this is all part of the plan, and another poll appears showing that even Israelis are looking at Netanyahu’s victory parade and asking why the wheels have come off his float.This time though, the win Israel is claiming to have is over Iran.Israel won. Netanyahu stood tall. Trump got his deal. The region was being stabilised, allegedly.And then Lebanon walked into the room covered in dust, smoke and bits of somebody’s roof. The poll isn’t much of a win actually.Eleven percent. Just 11% of Israelis believe Netanyahu beat Iran, along with 71% of them believing Trump is going to sell them out to Iran.That is how they want to spin this, that is how it has been packaged. It takes airstrikes, rubble, shattered homes and a ceasefire Netanyahu and Co are desperate to wriggle out of - the latest example lasting for a grand total of – and I’m not joking – 5 minutes, and squeezes the whole thing into a narrative so soft you could use it to wrap crockery. This is the latest Israel victory claim getting dragged back to the scene of the crime and being found wanting, because it is spinning a win out of getting their arses handed to them and all for Netanyahu’s benefit.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu thought he had found himself a loophole.A nice little Lebanon-shaped loophole.Trump’s deal, his Memorandum of Understanding with the Iranians could say what it liked. Trump could puff himself up at the podium like big orange balloon until he exploded. The diplomats could put on their grave and serious faces, shuffle some paperwork around like a BBC newsreader feigning interest in whatever drivel they’ve just spouted and pretend the region was being folded into Israel’s preferred order like some complex piece of genocidal origami.Netanyahu had other ideas, because of course he did.Lebanon was going to be the exception, the bit where he could carry on warmongering his weaselly black guts out. Nobody was going to stop him, or so he thought.And then the incident Kfar Tebnit this happened.Southern Lebanon. The front Netanyahu wanted to keep outside of the rules, outside of the deal, he needs war somewhere to keep himself in post. This was the security zone, the bit nobody else could have and it just blew up in his face and then some.Four Israeli soldiers killed. A battalion commander lost.Troops eliminated because a government decided this strip of Lebanon had to stay under Israel's boot.

Right, so Andy Burnham has won a landslide in Makerfield, completely contrary to a typical Starmer Labour by election result because usually Starmer has all the appeal to voters of a wasp at a picnic on a summers day, so the fact Burnham has a majority now north of 9,000 votes still comes with a big caveat attached to it: Makerfield did not fall in love with Andy Burnham. Makerfield rejected Keir Starmer. Burnham won because he promised a leadership challenge, he really didn’t have much else to offer. This is definitely not a Labour resurgence bedtime story here.This is not Brave Andy riding back from Greater Manchester. Reform beaten. Hope restored. The grown-ups are back in charge. The band plays Things Can Only Get Better and everyone pretends the last few years were just a very expensive misunderstanding.No. This was not a love letter to Burnham.This was a warning shot through Starmer’s front window.Burnham won the seat. Reform were beaten. Starmer took the damage. But Labour’s great act of renewal, as this is being touted, is now a man who has spent years orbiting the same old party machine, walking back into Westminster and saying the word “change” with a bit more warmth than the bloke currently sucking all the oxygen out of Downing Street.

Right, so the Iran deal has landed as it is being broadcast, such as it is, a Memorandum of Understanding is just a diplomatic nod with nothing yet formally agreed to at all, but for all the pomp and ceremony going on ad nauseum, all gleefully and unquestioningly broadcast by the mainstream media, for once the story is not that Donald Trump has wandered up to a microphone, powdered himself in bronzer, declared himself the saviour of civilisation and is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Nobel committee on horseback. They’re sure to come this time aren’t they?Trump is in the story, obviously. That is the obvious bit. It is his deal. His signature. His announcement. His great big diplomatic peacock routine.So he is not the problem in this story.The problem is Benjamin Netanyahu.Because this deal does everything Netanyahu didn’t want and backs him into a corner he can’t get out of either. It takes Lebanon - the bit Israel wanted to treat like an open-ended military playground - and drags him out of it while at the same time he has the likes of Itamar ben Gvir screaming that Israel will not withdraw. Trump is desperate for this deal and it’s put him at loggerheads with Israel over it all while Netanyahu’s administration starts to eat itself over it. And the conflict here is clear to see. Lebanon is an Iranian red line, Trump has been forced to concede the point, such is his desperation and yet all of us can still point and say: hang on, if this war is winding down, why are Israeli troops still sitting in southern Lebanon?

Right, so Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister for making every situation somehow more grotesque than it already was, had a big brave message for the United States.Israel is not subject to America, apparently.Trump’s deal does not bind us, apparently.Israel is sovereign, independent, answerable to nobody, all very stirring stuff if you like your diplomacy delivered in the tone of a man shouting at a traffic warden.Lovely.Except there is one tiny little bit of American power Ben-Gvir does still appear to be subject to.Not the President. Not the State Department. Not Congress.No appropriate sanction regime he’s well overdue for inflicted by people who appear to have suddenly discovered the concept of principles.No, no.It was a visa desk.It was a form.It was a request to put his fingerprints on file. Now what could possibly be so scary about that?

Right, so that did not take long, did it?Starmer’s government gets the Palestine Action ban kept in place, the Home Office gets the legal result it wanted, and almost immediately one of its own ministers decides the best use of anti-terror law is apparently to turn Twitter into a Home Office loyalty checkpoint.This is more than a normal “minister said something stupid on X” story. The story is that Starmer’s government fought to keep the Palestine Action ban, won the legal result it wanted, and then one of its own Home Office ministers, Mike Tapp, publicly used that ban like a political trap against Zack Polanski. All very Joseph McCarthy. And when amongst a large number of people on X called this out, including journalist Owen Jones, calling out the danger of Tapp’s tapped tweet, Tapp did not back down; he dug deeper. He answered with innuendo, and then like a good little Labour Friend of Israel, reached for the antisemitism card.Trying to get another politician to say something that would incriminate them, resorting to slurs when called out over that and weaponising antisemitism as the cherry on top, Tapp went for the triple. But this guy is weaponizing the Minister for Migration and Citizenship, sitting inside the Home Office, publicly treating terror law like a toy for winning arguments online.