Rebecca Abrams

There’s a whole chapter about the Passover potsherd in my book The Jewish Journey: 4000 years in 22 objects. All 22 objects are in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Shout out to new press Conduit Books. You can find them here: conduitbooks.co.uk

@questingvole Great piece, Sam. I feel very sorry for Peston. I’m increasingly wary about using AI. It’s like one of those friends who’s really sweet to your face but secretly hates you. I saw the light after it plagiarised something I’d written and fed it back to me.

I wrote about AI in the book world, and heard Alex Preston's account of the NYT thing. Why LLMs Ruin Everything open.substack.com/pub/samleith/p…

Well done for persisting @MsPollyClark and great to see a SAR doing its job so well. Unlike the editors at Gutter who caved to this noxious bigotry and bullying. @Freedom_in_Arts

Terrible, tragic news. She was the best. Treated really badly by the BBC after she dared to speak out about you know what. She was absolutely disgusted with the powers that be. Maybe it will all come out now. Jenni was a true journalist, no one quite like her.

@realzoestrimpel @bindelj Horrendous in all ways. I’m so sorry.

In Margate. My cheeks are red. I am shaking. I popped into an exhibition that turned out to be the insane fever dream of an artist called Matthew Collins: ‘Drawings Against Genocide.’ The exhibition is described as ‘drawings… raising consciousness about hell…. Israel is the pure encapsulation of it. Zionism is this terror state’s ruling ideology.’ Shocked by the use of Nazi imagery - the room is full of the Star of David pasted around figures meant to be Israelis and the Jewish ‘lobby’ spewing blood, to say nothing of blonde yummy mummies wearing ‘globalise the intifada’ shirts, I spoke to the artist to share my reaction as a Jewish person. He was instantly aggressive. As soon as I started to say I was shocked and threatened by what I was seeing because it was Nazi imagery, the artist started yelling at me that I didn’t mean anything I was saying. Anytime I tried to speak (calmly) he said: ‘you don’t mean any of what you said, you’re just repeating ‘hasbarah talking points’ because ‘you’re defending a genocide’. On and on he yelled, in my face. I said: ‘if I was a Black person…’ but couldn’t finish the sentence because: ‘you’re not are you?’ On the Nazi ideology point he said: ‘yeah. Why do you think it’s there. Israel are the Nazis’. His breath was disgusting. The crowd began booing and closing in around me, making to shoe me out. I said: ‘fine, get the Jew out’ and he yelled more across the room at me, ‘repeatedly jeering ‘call the police, go ahead, call the police’. I said I would, and the community security trust, which features as a devil in his exhibition. This was met with even more jeering. ‘Yeah, call the CST’ was the last I heard before leaving. Someone snapped pictures of me while I was being shouted at. Short video shows the artist. The longer video, of our final almost surreally disgusting exchange, didn’t record.

Today I am proud that the second edition of my 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report is being published. It's on 7Octparliamentarycommission.co.uk We cannot allow history to be distorted and 7 Oct denial to win @AppgIsrael #7October #Israel

This article by @jonathanliew in yesterday's Guardian about the proximity of a branch of Gail's (founded by a Jew) to a Palestinian cafe in North London is full of antisemitic tropes about Jewish money, power and elitism. It's deeply offensive. @KathViner theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Howard Jacobson’s new novel Howl is his darkest and most important book to date. Here’s my review for the @ftweekend as.ft.com/r/17d0a87f-4dc…

Turns out the name of this Arabic song is “my blood is Palestinian”. This is a dance of suicide

Extraordinary admissions from the ex-CEO of Oxfam GB, Helima Begum. She tells @Channel4News that Oxfam: -Had a disproportionate focus on Gaza compared to other world crises; -Were pushing to use the term 'genocide' re: Gaza without checks -Struggled to be impartial & neutral Many had suspected this of course, but it's shocking to hear it said out loud. channel4.com/news/former-ox…

Iranian women stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the streets facing massacre to end the Islamic Republic. I call on all women across the globe, find the courage to stand with them. Do not normalize Islamic terrorism. #IranRevolution2026 #DigitalBlackoutIran #IranMassacre

A reminder of the kind of evil regime the Iranian people are fighting against.

Not only is the U.N. Human Rights Council refusing to convene an emergency session on Iran. It's much worse than that. Just three months ago, on October 8th—despite our many appeals not to do it—they actually elected the Islamic Regime's representative to their committee:

Based on credible field reports, the Islamic regime demands that mourning Iranian families pay the equivalent of $1,700 for each gunshot—or $4,800 in other cases—in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones. If they cannot afford to pay, the alternative is anonymous burial in mass graves. Forcing grieving families to pay “bullet money” has been a practice of the Islamic regime since its inception in 1979.

Developing Storylines An original workshop with Sally Bayley and Suzie Hanna, in a beautiful Norfolk setting. 18th March 2026. Book now. eventbrite.co.uk/e/developing-s…?

An artwork by Italian artist Constantino Ciervo depicting Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh has sparked outrage for desecrating Holocaust memory. Both the artist and the museum dismissed accusations of antisemitism, claiming: “This work is about Israeli actions, not Judaism.” If that’s the case, why use a young European Jewish girl who was murdered in the Holocaust for being Jewish? Anne Frank was not Israeli. She had no position on Gaza. Given how her story ended, it’s far more likely she would have dreamed of a safe place like Israel, when the world shut its doors to Jews and left them to die in Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz. The Free Palestine movement insists it’s not about Jews, yet repeatedly protests outside synagogues, vandalizes kosher restaurants, and weaponizes Jewish symbols. Anne Frank was a real person. Using her memory to protest a conflict that did not even exist during her lifetime is despicable — and yes, antisemitic. Leave her alone.

Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police: ‘I think it's some very important point to reflect upon that Jewish children are the only children in our country who, day to day, go to school behind large fences guarded by people with busy jackets, and where there are routine police patrols in and around those areas. Our Jewish communities put up with a way of life in our country today that nobody else has to put up with. I do think that there is something very significant in that, something very significant in the realisation of it, and we all, I think need to question ourselves afresh as the dynamic continues to change as to whether what we are doing continues to be adequate.’ 👇🏼

“This is about Jews. It was Australian Jews shot at on Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah, not Israelis. Just like it was British Jews stabbed and run over in the Manchester synagogue attack.” Beautiful, powerful writing from ⁦@RMCunliffe⁩ newstatesman.com/world/2025/12/…