Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
Labour’s anti-semitism crisis – what caused it and how well was it handled?
With anti-semitism cited by many as a factor in Labour’s defeat in the general election and left figures such as Michael Rosen and Ken Loach still being attacked over it, Ian Sinclair talks to academic and author JAMIE STERN-WEINER about the controversy
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
IN November 2019 Verso Books published the free e-book Antisemitism and the Labour Party, edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner, an Israeli-born, London-raised DPhil candidate in area studies at the University of Oxford.
Ian Sinclair (IS): What is your assessment of the anti-semitism controversy that has engulfed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party since 2015?
Jamie Stern-Weiner (JSW): Over the past two decades, whenever Israel’s grotesque human rights violations aroused popular indignation in the UK, Israel’s supporters depicted this reaction as a “new anti-semitism.”
The propaganda offensive against Labour that began in 2016 formed a novel variant of this strategy — a new “new anti-semitism.”
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