Rachel Shabi

Manchester attack, antisemitism and the far-right outrage machine The attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur was bad enough - and then came the far-right's noxious political appropriation of it

A quick post to my Substack last week, about the Manchester synagogue attack and the way the far-right uses Jewish communities to push its own noxious ideology rachelshabi.substack.com/p/manchester...

Thanks so much for reading Paul

YouTube video by Al Jazeera English Smear. Kill. Repeat. Israel’s playbook for journalists in Gaza | The Listening Post

I took part in this devastating episode on how Israel has targeted and killed journalists in Gaza - the most courageous professionals who carried on working in the most impossible conditions www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUSx...

Shanice Octavia McBean and @rachelshabi.bsky.social join us for our final episode of Lifting the Curtain On Antisemitism. Listen in as we explore how progressives can build alliances, challenge false framings around antisemitism, and deepen their understanding of the issue: ow.ly/k56950WZ1m1.

Off-White Why can't we talk about antisemitism? 'I cannot wait for Off-White to be read, debated and put into practice.' Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger ...

The paperback is out today!
www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Off-Wh...

I’ve lost my mum. Now I’m fighting to keep hold of her Iraqi-Jewish identity My parents told the story of how Jews were treated in the Middle East, before and after the creation of the state of Israel

How do I preserve the spirit of my Iraqi-Jewish mum’s life and the land that produced her, in a political climate determined to vanquish not just the reality of her world, but the idea that it could ever have existed in the first place?

inews.co.uk/opinion/ive-...

Off White: The Truth about Antisemitism - a Jewish Council Conversation with Rachel Shabi As authoritarian ‘antisemitism’ plans and envoys continue to distort our politics at home and abroad, it has become difficult to […]

Will be in Sydney tonight and Melbourne on Tuesday in conversation with the Jewish Council of Australia, looking at the country’s authoritarian moves to crush free speech on Gaza and conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and much more:
www.jewishcouncil.com.au/2025/07/off-...

Thanks Hannah x

On losing a mum and keeping a culture Now they are gone, how do I hang on to the erased identity of my Iraqi-Jewish parents?

This is a moving and important read by @rachelshabi.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/rachelsh...

UK media coverage of Gaza is a disgrace

Outrage, horror after Israeli attack kills nine children of Gaza doctor The young victims, two of whom remain under the rubble, range in age from seven months to 12 years old. .

Outrage after an Israeli attack kills nine of a Gaza doctor’s children while she was at work, aged seven months to 12 years, with two still under the rubble aje.io/i7m1nb

If only there were someone in a senior position of power in this relationship

Doctors and whistleblowers in delayed Gaza film threaten to pull out Exclusive: Contributors to Gaza: Medics Under Fire may withdraw consent due to BBC’s delays to broadcast it

Shameful behaviour: the BBC won't air the documentary, Gaza: Medics Under Fire - but refuses to release the rights so another broadcaster or platform can air it
www.theguardian.com/media/2025/m...

Finally, Labour noticed the agony in Gaza What the hell took them so long?

The failure of western politicians to act, to stop a genocidal war, to halt the catastrophic damage this has caused – to Palestinians in Gaza, primarily, but also to the region, to international law and to our humanity itself – will follow them forever.
rachelshabi.substack.com/p/finally-la...

Finally, Labour noticed the agony in Gaza What the hell took them so long?

New post: what prompted the UK’s change over Gaza? It’s not that the British government has suddenly found a conscience
rachelshabi.substack.com/p/finally-la...

People looking back on this period will never understand, because there is no way to understand, how Israel deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza, how food aid piled up at every border of the Gaza strip and the entire world could not compel Israel to let it through

Gaza and the 'FAFO' factor On the callous responses to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza

'FAFO' is the Israel right-or-wrong crew saying that the slaughter in Gaza is the ‘finding out’ bit of Hamas ‘fucking around’ on October 7. And it is jaw-dropping in its humanity-stripping callousness
rachelshabi.substack.com/p/gaza-and-t...

Hotovely "Every school, every mosque, every second house has an access to tunnels"

Iain Dale "Thats an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza"

Hotovely "Do you have another solution?"

People can't pretend they didn't know what was going to happen. This clip is from Jan 2024

Gaza and the 'FAFO' factor
Write about starvation in Gaza and you get: "Tell them to release the hostages." Write that Palestinian children were incinerated by an Israeli airstrike and it’s: "Who cares? Hamas started this"
substack.com/home/post/p-...

Gaza and the 'FAFO' factor On the callous responses to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza

New post: Gaza and the 'FAFO' factor
rachelshabi.substack.com/p/gaza-and-t...

'Let the IDF mow them down!": In Israel, violence saturates everyday life | Opinion ***

'What does it say about a society that sells eclairs inciting destruction while... children in Gaza wait in lines at community kitchens, holding out empty pots and plastic tubs for their allocation of one meal for the day... unable to enjoy even one cookie?' www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...

End Point Israel’s reckoning for Gaza is here and it has been clear all along

Netanyahu’s plan to seize Gaza has been the logical endpoint for a while and western leaders can’t pretend they didn’t know
open.substack.com/pub/rachelsh...

Thanks so much Natalie!

‘Far from being an unrepresentative fringe, the letter-writers echo a sizable constituency of British Jews.
And that constituency is not served, or even acknowledged, by the body that claims to speak for it.’
Great piece by @rachelshabi.bsky.social and comment by @naamoduk.bsky.social

The BBC is utterly beholden to the right. Why else would it fear a podcast about heat pumps? | George Monbiot The broadcaster behaves like Starmer’s government: suppress the left, cave to your critics, and undermine your own survival, writes Guardian columnist George Monbiot

'The BBC behaves much like Starmer’s government: appeasing critics on the right and far right, while suppressing the left'
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A Public Letter Criticizing Israel Reveals a Schism Among Britain’s Jews The statement in the Financial Times has opened a rift in the UK diaspora’s oldest communal organization over the war in Gaza, and poses questions about the body’s fundamental purpose

An open letter from 36 members of Britain’s oldest Jewish representative body expressed deep criticism of Israel's war in Gaza, which led to a very unusual, public, internecine fight that raises the question: Who represents UK Jews anyway? By @rachelshabi.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/spotlight/a-...

Louis Theroux's The Settlers shows what all too often meets a wall of denialism both within and outside Israel: that the violent, extremist settler movement is not fringe. Rather, it is in Israel's driving seat and informing state policy. Has been for decades

Israel’s battering of Gaza is medieval in its savagery and barbaric violence but with the most modern and advanced weaponry in the world

Opinion | An Oscar for ‘No Other Land’ Didn’t Protect Hamdan Ballal Hamdan Ballal won an Oscar for co-directing “No Other Land,” then went home to the West Bank and was attacked and arrested.

'There is no law to turn to here and no government that will protect us, no international law and no international bodies that are pushing to stop this violence.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/o...