Menachem Rosensaft lives with ghosts. That’s perhaps not so surprising as one of them is his brother Benjamin. The latter was five and a half when the Nazis sent him to the gas chambers in Birkenau, along with his father and other family members. ...
Continue readingWhen the Dutch journalist Judit Neurink and her friends heard of the takeover of northern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from her base in Irbil (or Erbil), the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, they were surprised. Neurink, a Middle ...
Continue readingOn 24 April 2021, the American President Joe Biden formally recognised the Armenian Genocide. It had only taken 106 years to the day. April really is the cruellest month, as TS Eliot wrote in The Waste Land. The Armenian Genocide is crucial in und...
Continue readingImagine being 27-years-old, having never stepped inside a courtroom and being appointed lead prosecutor in the largest murder trial in history. If this were a riddle, it would be easy for either human rights lawyers or World War Two experts to gue...
Continue readingThe world is panicking about Afghanistan. While we don’t know how the Taliban will rule, it’s difficult to believe it will be significantly less brutal than last time, despite the laptops and polished PR. They do want to portray themselves as more...
Continue readingWe are impotently watching Afghanistan sink into dark times, unable to save so many desperate people who are afraid for their lives. This week I witnessed heartbreaking scenes playing out in a Feltham community centre on the outskirts of London. T...
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It’s good to talk, and it’s good that we are talking more about mental health, especially when loss is all around us. People have lost jobs, friends, freedom, experiences, and loved ones. Loss is inescapable but magnified by the prism of Covid-19....
Continue readingThe catastrophe that we are now witnessing in Afghanistan was inevitable, appalling and horrific as it is. Sadly, the writing has been on the wall for a very long time. Despite that, the astonishing speed with which the Taliban has taken over the ...
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I was inspired, of course, by Madame Upanova, the long-legged, pointe-shoe wearing, gloriously elegant Ostrich danseuse of Walt Disney Fantasia fame. When better to train as a prima ballerina awaiting my Bolshoi debut than during lockdown? So, up ...
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We know pigs are smart. But they may be even more intelligent than we think. Researchers in the US have discovered that pigs can move computer joysticks with their snouts while watching a screen. Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory showed “behaviour...
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Dispatches from the Kabul Café 
Genocide – Personal Stories, Big Questions 