Convenience Big Store: Why won’t progressives believe Israeli women?

7 December, 2023

In the headlines

Rishi Sunak has defended his Rwanda bill as "the right approach", following Robert Jenrick's resignation as immigration minister last night. The PM has not included powers to ignore the European Convention on Human Rights in the bill, provoking anger among Tory right-wingers. Vladimir Putin met the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates yesterday, in his first visit to the Gulf since the Ukraine invasion. The one-day jaunt was designed to show that Moscow "has not been isolated from the world because of the war", says the FT, with Putin welcomed in Abu Dhabi by UAE jets trailing smoke in the colours of the Russian flag. The Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall could live on. Cuttings from the arboreal icon, which was chopped down overnight in late September, have shown signs of life; if they're viable, the National Trust plans to plant them around Northumberland.

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Pictures of the missing and dead from the October 7 attack at Tel Aviv University. Leon Neal/Getty

Why won't progressives believe Israeli women?

When stories of Islamic State fighters raping and enslaving Yazidi women in Iraq surfaced in 2014, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, "I don't remember too many sceptics demanding to see video proof". Likewise when women in Russian-occupied Ukraine started sharing their "horrific" experiences last year. But for some reason, Israel is different. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack – and stop reading if you don't want to hear about extreme sexual violence – survivors told harrowing stories of women being "gang raped, mutilated and shot" by Hamas militants. Witnesses say they found dead girls "with their pants pulled down, and telltale evidence of bleeding, bruises and scratches". They saw smashed pelvises. Other details are too disturbing to recount here.

Yet the response among some "normally proud progressives" has ranged from "casual whataboutery to a gruesome variant of the 'pics or it didn't happen' school of online scepticism". The head of the UN has only just got round to calling for an investigation. There are even those that question why there is no video footage of the rapes. What on earth is wrong with these people? Why would they happily condemn an allegedly predatory actor or MP based on hearsay, yet "struggle to entertain doubts about the sexual conduct of a terrorist"? They clearly think it would be a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. But this isn't some "ghoulish competition", where "any empathy shown to dead Israelis somehow leaves less available for Palestinians". A war crime is a war crime. "And rape is rape, even when perpetrated against someone you secretly don't want to think of as a victim."

Life

Taylor Swift has been named Time magazine's person of the year. The award, which since 1927 has gone to the figure deemed to have had the most influence on global events over the past 12 months, has previously been bestowed on notables as diverse as Hitler, Gandhi, Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Obama. Swift, 33, who this year became the first ever billionaire to make a nine-figure fortune entirely through music, beat a shortlist that included the King, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Barbie.

Nice work if you can get it

When companies want to get listed on the stock exchange in the US, they have to produce a massive "prospectus" laying out all the information a potential investor might need. It's "the most boring book in the world", says The Wall Street Journal, and read by practically no one in full – but publishing these 200-page tomes is extremely lucrative work. Donnelley Financial Solutions, which says it has worked on prospectuses for 70% of all major listings in the past six years, charges as much as $900,000 per job. One client, the grocery delivery company Instacart, didn't even have any copies printed out – and still paid $161,000.

Food and drink

TikTok/@pretty.little.london

Bakers around the world are whipping up colossal croissants bigger than a loaf of bread, says The Times. The supersized snacks became a TikTok sensation this summer, when London pastry chef Philippe Conticini posted a video of his £25 "Croissant XXL". Since then, bakers from Brussels to Montreal have followed suit. Edinburgh pâtissier Lewis Gill uses 300g of butter and enough dough for 27 standard pastries in his over-sized offerings – the one drawback being he can only fit two in his oven at once.

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Solar farms across China. Getty

The "arms race" that's saving the planet

Whether the world cuts emissions fast enough to keep global warming below 1.5C has nothing to do with what's being prattled about at COP28, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. In fact, the annual gathering may even be a "net negative" for progress. A veritable army of fossil fuel lobbyists has descended on Dubai for this year's jamboree. And the conference pushes an "anachronistic showdown" between the West and a "victim category" of developing nations that includes some of the "richest and most brazen polluters" on the planet. The reality is that fixing global warming is all down to the "arms race for clean-tech dominance" between the US and China.

Beijing is rolling out 210 gigawatts of new solar power this year – almost as much as the entire installed capacity worldwide last year – and is on track to boost its battery capacity sixfold by 2025. Largely thanks to its enormous investments in solar, wind and battery tech, a combination of the three is now cheaper than coal in most of the world. The Chinese aren't doing this to save the planet. They want a cheap and secure source of home-grown power, and they're desperate to dominate the industries of the future. The US is responding in kind, with $2trn of "manufacturing rearmament". COP may have kick-started the conversation on some of this, but it has "outlived its original purpose". Technology, markets, and hard power competition are solving the problem of global warming. "That is what we should be proclaiming from the rooftops."

🇩🇪🙈 COP1, held in Berlin in 1995, was presided over by Germany's newly appointed climate minister, says Frank McDonald in The Irish Times: a young Angela Merkel. A successful outcome at the conference required all 177 countries represented to agree to adopt the so-called "Berlin Mandate" – a single objection would be "fatal". Just as Merkel was putting the motion to the floor at the final session, the Saudi delegate stood up to raise an objection. Looking out across the hall, Merkel (pictured) "deigned not to see him", saying "I think that's all agreed" and bringing down the gavel. The official record showed that the outcome was "adopted by acclamation".

Staying young

Wasabi, the spicy green paste traditionally dabbed on sushi, could improve your memory, says CBS. Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University found that participants in a study who took a small amount of the condiment every night for three months showed "significant" boosts in both short-term memory and long-lasting episodic memory. Wasabi is a member of the mustard family of plants, and is known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. It also has antimicrobial powers, making it capable of killing off food-borne pathogens like E. coli.

From the archives

Chairman Mao was so surprised at the height difference between Nancy and Henry Kissinger that he was momentarily lost for words. The encounter (above) took place when Nancy, who at 6ft was three inches taller than her husband, accompanied the then US secretary of state to China in 1975, four years before the countries established diplomatic ties.

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's Chester, which has just pipped Venice to be named the prettiest city in the world – mathematically speaking, at least. A team of maths boffins assessed cities using Google Street View and ranked them based on the percentage of their buildings that adhere to the so-called "golden ratio" of 1:1.618. For some reason, says The Independent, humans have always perceived objects with these dimensions as inherently beautiful. According to the study, 83.7% of buildings in Chester fit the bill, narrowly surpassing Venice (83.3%) and London (82%).

Quoted

"A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all."