S Sebag Montefiore
@simonmontefiore
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Historian. Jerusalem: a History of the MiddleEast.The World:a Family HIstory. StalinRedTsar. YgStalin. TheRomanovs. CatherinetheGreat. Novels:the Moscow Trilogy
london
Joined March 2012
My new book #TheWorldaFamilyHistory is out now. A small thing I wrote in Lockdown, it's the most challenging but also most satisfying book of my writing life. I hope you enjoy it.
Today we publish #TheWorld, @simonmontefiore's extraordinary history of humanity viewed through the lens of the families who have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis, Kennedys, Kims, Zulus, Incas, and many, many more.
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Amazing that on night of such important events in Russia / Ukraine, the @bbcnews is running 15 minutes of reports about covid. Inc exciting report on reactions of people in Eastbourne. Astonishingly insular.
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This - the greatest European speech on the Hamas murder raid, Israel war vs Hamas, rising antiJewish racism and toxic sham ‘history’ of Decolonisation - is deeply moving. Its decency and moral clarity is striking….
It's almost four weeks since the horrific terrorist attack on #Israel. A lot has happened, the public debate has become heated and confused. Find thoughts from Vice-Chancellor Robert #Habeck in the video, putting the events in context. 📣With English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles.
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Reading a couple of @theguardian articles in a last few days, I feel we may be seeing its final departure from the pluralistic liberal tradition that made it a great newspaper, thanks to its capture by – or its morally fuddled editorial cadre - surrender to, an activist,
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The Illegals. In a scene straight out of that classic drama The Americans, the children of these deepcover Russian spies only learn they are Russian as they fly in to Moscow to be greeted by the autocrat VV Putin in Spanish. Extraordinary.
The children of Anna and Artem Dultsev, the Russian deep cover spies returned home as part of the prisoner exchange, didn’t know they were Russian until their plane took off for Moscow for the swap, the Kremlin says. They don’t speak Russian, so Putin greeted them in Spanish.
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150k killed in Sudan war over last 9 months. 500k killed in Syria in recent years. Yet no protests; scant coverage. Surely every civilian killed in the regional wars - Syrian Israeli Palestinian Sudanese Lebanese - should count equally. Yet clearly for many they dont count.
Sudan is the world’s gravest humanitarian disaster – but almost nobody cares | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian
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The greatest speech on the Hamas terror attack, Israel’s war vs Hamas & antisemitism & decolonisation has come from the German vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck. Do watch.
It's almost four weeks since the horrific terrorist attack on #Israel. A lot has happened, the public debate has become heated and confused. Find thoughts from Vice-Chancellor Robert #Habeck in the video, putting the events in context. 📣With English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles.
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What to do when your irrepressible 92 year old mother starts writing to The Times about Death . @thetimes
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Damian Lewis’s brilliantly repellent narcissistic petty reptilian vain capricious murderous tyrant stole the show in .#WolfHallTheMirrorAndTheLight @BBCOne …. Its v hard to play a character everyone feels they know but he recreated H8 somehow closer to real thing. What an ogre
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Proud to be marching tomorrow against antisemitism.
📢Tomorrow, there will be a National Solidarity March Against Antisemitism in Central London. The march will start at 13:30 from the Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2A 2LL. The route will be policed. We encourage people to attend. #MarchAgainstAntisemitism
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Twitter is sometimes repulsive, sometimes inspiring and this is one of the latter: here we can watch the funeral of #Navalny is real time. & celebrate real courage not just in him but in all these brave people daring to attend his funeral under the jackboot of brutal tyranny.
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In this crisis @bbcnews has squandered its reputation for both neutrality and reliability.
We are absolutely appalled by @BBCNews footage which appears to show a newsreader misquoting a Reuters report. The Corporation must issue a public apology without delay for this egregious misreporting.
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How to commemorate the Holocaust. Without mentioning Jewish people at all.
Today, we honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. We pledge never to forget – nor let others forget the truth of what happened. And we recognize the horrific resonance this day of commemoration finds in our own times. #HolocaustRemembrance
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Just a word on Coates's book. It is entirely permissible to hate Israel and the book is pervaded with that hatred which is now very fashionable and Coates is nothing if not a dedicated follower of fashion. Equally the preposterous Pooterish pomposity and self-importance are.
Here is recap of 10 of Coates' lies, underpinning his entire thesis that Israel practices Jim Crow, apartheid, a caste society. There are many more lies & misrepresentations not listed in this thread, this is just a sample from 100 pages of falsehoods. Read CONCLUSION next. 23/
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I wrote @TheAtlantic: this sham ahistorical inhumane ideology based on Marxist dialectic Soviet progaganda & medieval antisemitism that is taught in our unis, justifies killing civilians,doesnt describe the foundation of Israel or the tragedy of Palestinians & rules out 2states.
"Much of the justification for killing civilians is based on a fashionable ideology, 'decolonization,' which, taken at face value, rules out the negotiation of two states . and is as dangerous as it is false," @simonmontefiore writes:
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I hate writing letters about anti-Jewish racism in Britain.I thought that time was over. But @guardian's editorial in defence of Corbyn was too appalling to leave unchallenged. Heres my letter
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The malignant moral moronism of this interviewer takes the biscuit @skynews . Many of the Hamas prisoners in this swap are terrorist killers of civilians inc children. The Israeli hostages are civilians and children.
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Exploiting Anne Frank like this is truly despicable. And it is also basic anti-Jewish racism, anti-semitism, the appropriation theft and inversion then deployment of Jewish history against Jews. And for Hamas genocidal programme. It doesnt get sicker than this.
Anne Frank was a real person, who was murdered in the Holocaust, a genocide of Jews. Using her image to represent any movement is a disgrace, let alone one that harbors the same genocidal intentions as her murderers.
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Its not just @BBC looks an ass refusing to say ‘terrorist’, its sad to see @JohnSimpsonNews plead BBC rules & reliability when its reporting of Hamas atrocities wasn’t reliable,aiding deniers, & now Gaza hospital. If not for platforms X & whatsapp we wouldn’t hear the real news.
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Disgusting. Unforgivable. And the Israeli state must prosecute the perpetrators.
Rasheed Abdel Qader Sada, 23 years old, was brutally murdered by terrorist settlers during a pogrom targeting the village of Jit in Qalqilya, West Bank. The settlers shot Rashid while he was trying to stop them from setting his home on fire.
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I wrote an article @TheAtlantic on History of Israelis & Palestinians, the urgency of 2 states, the use of Decolonialization to back Hamas barbarity dehumanize civilians & stop 2-states of Israel & Palestine. Plse read it all. Its key to be able.to hold 2 thoughts at one time.
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Important to Listen to moderate Arab voices, not Western Hamas apologists who know nothing of the region or its history. Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad of Bahrain condemns Hamas: their October 7th massacre of Israelis was barbaric & demands release of the Israeli hostages.
Bahraini Prime Minister Condemns Hamas Actions at IISS Manama Dialogue. Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain, condemned Hamas’ actions on the 7th of October. His condemnation came during his speech at the 19th IISS Manama Dialogue. He described
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Here @BBCWorld explains they translate Hamas 'Kill JEWS' as 'Kill Israelis.' "We need to translate what the speaker means to say not the literal words". Absurd! Like accepting Hamas cadres as trustworthy BBC stringers. BBC protects Hamas fr itself. Translate what they say.
In a BBC 2019 documentary, a Gazan said "The revolutionary songs, they excite you, they encourage you to rip a Yehudi's (Arabic for Jew) head off.” The BBC translated 'Yehudi' to 'Israeli'. The BBC wrote to my MP who raised the matter with them at my request. This was the answer:
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Horrific sexual violence committed by Hamas against Israeli women on Oct 7th, and the lack of global outrage. “Why would the international community and @UNWomenWatch be silent about these crimes? They seem to be vocal about so much else?”.
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Nothing constructive is possible while the Netanyahu Catastrophe is in power.
BREAKING: Israeli ambassador @TzipiHotovely rejects the idea of a two-state solution. "The answer is absolutely no", she says. 📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
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When I was writing my history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, I was rung by a 'friend' who said 'I ve got a history of the Jews that you'll find v useful for your book'. When i opened the envelope, I found the Elders of Zion. At the time, I was relatively kind to this friend.
The Protocol of the Elders of Zion is a forgery, forerunner to contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theory.Its sole purpose is to demonize Jews & provoke anti-Jewish hatred. Are @Hodges_Figgis Dublin selling this document to profit from the explosion in antisemitism since Oct 7th?
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Those elderly civilian Hostages not ‘killed by Israeli bombardment’. As Hamas claimed. & like most Hamas claims as was repeated across the world. Hamas lied. As usual.Hamas shot them.
Bodies of hostages who were returned to Israel after being killed in captivity were found to have bullets inside the corpses.
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Just to say thank you and express admiration to the decent passengers on London public transport who stood up to this vile & violent racist yday. Its gives one hope.
‘ARE YOU A JEW?’ .This video was recorded yesterday by a friend of mine in London. Welcome to the new reality for British Jews.
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May I propose this a rule of discourse: the making of solemn parallels between minor, annoying measures, health or otherwise, by well-meaning democratic governments AND the liquidation of the entire Jewish people in Europe by the Nazis aka the Holocaust displays crass.
First they came for the Communists.And I did not speak out.Because I was not a communist.Then they came for the Jews.And I did not speak out.Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me.And there was no one left.To speak out for me. Pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban.
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Recent months of the Hamas kill-&-rape attack against Israeli civilians & Israel's war against Hamas have been marked by so much tragic killing and suffering of civilians, Palestinian & Israeli and the suffering of both populations must be told, all crimes exposed . but.
I asked colleagues about starvation in Gaza. They said there is no precedent for what is happening | Devi Sridhar
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Real courage. True astounding courage. We shld bow before these amazing women in Iran. V different from our self-congratulatory Western ‘activists’.
In Iran, a student harassed by her university’s morality police over her “improper” hijab didn’t back down. She turned her body into a protest, stripping to her underwear and marching through campus—defying a regime that constantly controls women’s bodies. Her act is a powerful
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If true, a disgrace. And if these r the stringers for major Western news organizations, it explains the appalling reporting.
🚨🚨🚨🚨.Important expose by @honestreporting: Photographers working for AP, CNN, NYT, and Reuters were EMBEDDED with Hamas on 10/7 and accompanied the terrorist group into Israel. They knew the attack was coming, and participated in it.
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Proud to be in HydePark now remembering the dead & hostages of the October7 killraid by Hamas remembering grieving for many innocents suffering & killed in Gaza Lebanon Israel w a big crowd @chiefrabbi @simon_schama @BoDpres @TracyAnnO ably presiding. Shalom & shana tova to all
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Columbia revolutionary students push limits of satire in demand for humanitarian fooddrops of sushi, acai,electrolyte water & glutefree croissants fr uni. ‘This is crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus but this is, like, basic humanitarian aid we’re asking for’.
Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:. "It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'."
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Just show some character & apologize. Even in a maelstrom of indecent malign and smug ignorance, unreliable reporting & brazen prejudice, your performance stood out. Even in a storm of hypocrisy & bias yr haughty and oblivious justification stands out.
Morning everyone,. We often put one side of an argument to a guest so they can offer a counterclaim. Yesterday, I raised a controversial view from an earlier guest to allow another to respond. Each morning we’re dedicated to presenting fairly the news of this war. #IsraelHamasWar.
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Here is a classic, somewhat absurd case of progressive presentist inversion and distortion of history in the captioning @britishmuseum: 'by the beginning of the first century millennium the Israelites occupied most of Palestine'. Canaan is probably the right word here. Or.
This is apparently from a new @britishmuseum exhibition but it appears factually wrong - dangerously so (not sure if historians are able to intervene here). At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC the Israelites didn’t ’occupy Palestine’. They were the natives who were
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Just the last disgraceful and totally unacceptable outrage from this appalling Israeli government that seems hellbent on damaging inflaming and menacing not just Palestinians but also Israel itself.
The masks keep coming off. Israeli Communications Minister from the ruling Likud party admits tonight that his plan for “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip will actually be coerced migration or in other words ethnic cleansing.
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Surely this is a spoof, @guardian?. A malignant, ahistorical and amoral one but a spoof nonetheless.
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These female hostages walk fearlessly as they r paraded thru this baying crowd. The definition of courage.
BREAKING: the 10 Israeli hostages, girls and women, released from Hamas captivity now, being paraded across an angry crowd of Gazans shouting Allahu Akbar as they cross into the Red Cross car with armed terrorists surrounding them. Vile.
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Proud of the civility of British politics wherein after the sovereign Charles III read Labour’s #KingsSpeech, the new PrimeMinister & DeputyPM banter with exPM in the Mother of Parliaments. Despite extremist thuggery in the election, much to contrast w US, much to celebrate here
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So glad I went #MarchagainstAntisemitism moving inspiring huge around 100k:Jews nonJews BritsArabsPalestinians IraniansKurdsItalians utd by celebration of Brit tolerance&democracy, rejection of antiJewish racism,Hamas terrorism but also empathy to Israeli & Palestinian civilians
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Still amazed to see this level of antiJewish racism in London….
At today’s London protest, a sign calling for a “Final Solution” to Israel and the Jews. 📸 @__jacker__
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"How could we have guessed that our attack where we slaughtered civilians and subsequent admissions that we planned to repeat this attack again and again until Israel has been destroyed would lead to a war to remove us from power?????".
Senior Hamas Official Mousa Abu Marzouk: Nobody Could Have Anticipated the Consequences of October 7; We Did Not Expect a Barbaric World War against Us, in Violation of International Law #Hamas #Palestinians #October7massacre
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The definition of moral weasel-ism! "Lost and found"? Was she playing hide & seek? Or was this Israeli child, 9, abducted by Hamas terrorists in the Kill Raid when 1200 civilians slaughtered, girls raped, babies beheaded."Our prayers answered"? Were yr prayers this dishonest?.
This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.
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