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Women given free cycling shorts to prevent upskirting on Oktoberfest amusement ride

Women have been given free cycling shorts to prevent upskirting on a famous amusement ride at the Oktoberfest in Munich, after an investigation revealed tens of thousands of voyeuristic videos circulating online. The Teufelsrad, or Devil’s Wheel, which rapidly spins around while people try to sit on it for as long as they can, is one of the beer festival’s oldest rides. But many of the videos discovered by German journalists focus on women whose traditional dirndl dresses have ridden up, often showing their underwear. The findings have revived concerns about upskirting – secretly filming or taking photos under someone’s skirt without consent, which has been illegal in Germany since 2020. It is punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison. But some women’s rights advocates have said the law is not enough to stop the abuse. According to the research by the Munich daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, more than 32,000 videos linked to the Teufelsrad were found on Meta platforms alone, some of them with millions of views. The operator of the ride, Elisabeth Polaczy, told the BBC she has been handing out free cycling shorts to women and girls wearing dresses to protect them from people filming them. She has given out more than 100 pairs during this Oktoberfest, which finishes on Sunday. “I want to do everything I can to make people feel secure,” she said. There are signs and police posters in German and English around the tent where the Teufelsrad is located that warn against filming under people’s skirts. But Polaczy, 80, said it was difficult to control everyone filming with smartphones. A spokesperson for the Bavarian police told the BBC they have put up posters at the Oktoberfest warning against upskirting since 2025. Police arrested a 45-year-old Swiss man for filming under a German woman’s dirndl at this year’s festival. In 2025 there were 10 arrests for upskirting and seven in 2024.

Greece returns priceless relics – and suggests UK should follow suit with Parthenon marbles

In a ceremony replete with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for great events, Greece and Bulgaria have formally exchanged “a treasury” of relics and bones, sealing a cultural deal negotiated over decades. The handover involved priceless religious objects removed from Greece at the height of the first world war, as well as remains thought to belong to Tsar Samuel, Bulgaria’s revered medieval warrior ruler. Greece hailed the exchange as emblematic of the headway countries could make in similar repatriation disputes, with the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, saying he hoped the accord would bolster Athens’ campaign to retrieve the Parthenon sculptures and send a clear message to Britain. “The global community is essentially re-evaluating its longstanding stance on protecting cultural heritage,” he told a crowd gathered for the ceremony in Thessaloniki on Saturday. “This shift is embodied by today’s initiative, which rests on the obvious principle that monuments and historical heirlooms cannot be treated as spoils of war, nor as the result of circumstances subsequent to their creation.” The Greek-Bulgarian deal, reached after 50 years of intense cultural diplomacy between the two neighbours, was also an example of the “political will” needed to settle the west’s longest running cultural row, Mitsotakis said, referring to the fifth century BC Parthenon marbles. “It took time, and above all, political will and determination to overcome the obstacles of the past,” he added. Under the agreement, 48 relics, including icons, crosses and ornate ecclesiastical vessels, pillaged by Bulgarian troops from churches and monasteries in northern Greece during the first world war, will be returned to Athens. In the more than 100 intervening years, they had been safeguarded at the National History Museum in Bulgaria. Meanwhile, the remains of Tsar Samuel, regarded as a national hero for his role in battling to preserve his country’s independence from the Byzantine empire, were discovered by archaeologists more than 60 years ago in a border area of Greece. Authorities arranged a homecoming with full state honours, with the tsar’s bones flown to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, on a military aircraft accompanied by an escort of jet fighters and a 21-gun salute upon arrival. Free transport had been organised for pilgrims to pay their respects. In his own address at the handover, Bulgaria’s prime minister, Rumen Radev, a former air force officer, said: “These are items that belong to both our peoples; they constitute our memory and our bond, and our compatriots and future generations deserve, and must have, the opportunity to pay tribute to their ancestor. If in the past Tsar Samuel divided us, I can say that today he unites us. He strengthens our strategic cooperation and makes the historical relations between our states and peoples even stronger.” Mitsotakis emphasised that Greece’s campaign to win back the Parthenon marbles was neither “dictated by a vague national claim, nor does it call into question the mission of museums worldwide”. Athens remained committed to repatriating the sculptures, he said, because it would allow viewers to fully enjoy what has long been seen as the high point of classical art if the masterpieces were reunited. “It is precisely this same principle – the principle of the integrity of a monument – that underpins our continuous efforts to reunite the Parthenon sculptures. The Parthenon constitutes a unique and singular case,” he said of the building that is the predominant temple on the Acropolis of Athens. “[The campaign] is about the restoration of a universal monument that remains violently dismembered. My country will not accept arrangements that imply recognition of foreign sovereignty or the supposed borrowing of its own treasures. On the contrary, it now believes that the time has come for truth, for reason, for justice and morality.” The fifth century BC carvings were sawn from the Parthenon on the order of Lord Elgin, Britain’s then ambassador to the Sublime Porte, in what have since become highly contentious circumstances. They were acquired by the British Museum in 1816 after the bankrupt peer was forced to sell them and have been on display there ever since.

They embraced the Fiat 500, the Vespa, even tuk-tuks. But will Romans draw the line at the golf cart?

On the edge of Piazza Navona, one of the grandest squares in central Rome, Barry and Linda, visitors from Texas in the US, stepped out of a golf cart. They planned to cross the square on foot, perhaps stopping to admire Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century Fountain of the Four Rivers, before being picked up by their driver at the opposite end. The couple had already done a walking tour on day one of their trip, and had been so exasperated by a stifling three-hour shuffle along a corridor towards the Sistine Chapel on day two that by the third day they wanted to give their tired feet a rest. “When I first heard you could do golf cart tours in Rome, I thought to myself: that sounds a little weird,” said Barry. “But then we decided to try it out.” He said the most enjoyable thing about the experience was “feeling the breeze”. Rome is a difficult city to navigate, noted Linda, especially its ancient narrow streets in the centre. “There are no sidewalks,” she said. “Our feet were hurting and we needed a break.” For visitors, golf cart tours offer respite from the heat, crowds and cobbles. For residents, however, their proliferation in recent years has become another source of frustration in a city already wrestling with traffic and overtourism. Taxi drivers are especially incensed, accusing golf cart operators of stealing their business, while one local newspaper said the city had been “taken hostage” by the vehicles. Now Rome authorities are cracking down on the burgeoning trade. Police intensified checks this week after the news agency Adnkronos reported that 90% of the roughly 500 golf carts circulating in the city were operating without authorisation. In recent days, police stopped 131 carts around Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Circo Massimo and the Spanish Steps, issuing €38,000 of fines for offences ranging from unlicensed driving to illegal parking. Rome’s leaders are pushing for regionwide measures to properly regulate an activity that “risks spiralling out of control”, Eugenio Patanè, a councillor for mobility, told the news agency Adnkronos. Prices vary based on the type of tour and duration, but the cost per person can start at €100 and exceed €400 for a half-day trip. Barry and Linda paid €310 for their three-hour ride. “But it’s worth it,” said Barry. Rome’s traffic problem is hardly new. Julius Caesar tried to tackle the issue more than 2,000 years ago by banning private vehicles and commercial carts from the city’s streets during the day. Today, pedestrians, cars, scooters, delivery vans and the occasional rogue horse-drawn carriage all jostle for space. Tourists can also take tours in Fiat 500s, on Vespas with sidecars, and even in tuk-tuks. But the golf carts seem to have drawn a special kind of wrath. “There are too many of them,” said Nora Fahmi, who works at Trevimage, an art photography shop behind the Pantheon. “We’ve had this shop for 13 years and have seen all sorts of things, but the golf cart situation is kind of wild.” Nearby, two teenagers from Israel were taking a rest on a parked cart. “We just want a lift to the Colosseum but you have to book online,” said their mother, Miri. “Rome is too crowded and it’s difficult to walk.” Elisa Isacco, who lives in the Monti area, spares no sympathy for the weary tourists. “What do they actually see or learn about Rome when they are on one of these things?” she said. “I find myself having to dodge them all the time – Rome is chaotic, it’s like a jungle.” Amid the clampdown, several golf cart tour operators have banned staff from speaking to the press. But Leo Pavoncello, a driver for an operator in the Jewish Ghetto area, was happy to publicly defend the trade. “Golf carts are silent and eco-friendly,” he said. “Rome is not an easy city to visit but these vehicles allow people with disabilities and families with children to see the sites in a comfortable way. On top of that, they provide jobs for young people.” Pavoncello, who was subjected to the police checks and was found to be operating fully legitimately, argued that a few rotten apples were giving the business a bad name. “I don’t understand why they are targeting us,” he said, although he suspects “taxi lobbies” are piling on the pressure. “But Rome is a touristic city that has always been full of traffic, and the golf carts are simply another mode of transport.”

Libyan unity talks upended as warlord’s son linked to drone attacks on fuel facilities

Allegations that the son of the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar oversaw a “terror cell” that launched drone attacks on fuel storage facilities and power stations in western Libya have upended plans for the Tripoli-based government of national unity (GNU) to continue cooperating with Haftar on a plan to unify the country. Saddam Haftar, the deputy commander of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), has increasingly been seen by the US as an important figure in its plans to unify Libyan security, judicial and political institutions. But a round of drone attacks in August worsened electricity blackouts in the west of the country, putting intense popular pressure on the GNU led by the prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. Libya has been split between the east, dominated by Haftar, and the west, governed by the GNU, since the fall of Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, leaving the oil-rich country at the mercy of corruption, militia, migrant traffickers and myriad external actors. Donald Trump’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, has hatched a plan to unify the two Libyan governments in which Haftar from the east would take on the role of president and a member of the Dbeibah family from the west would become prime minister. Boulos has insisted he is not trying a quick fix that entrenches family elites in Libya. “It’s not about families or names,” Boulos said when asked about the reported Haftar-Dbeibah deal, before adding: “At the end of the day, those are individuals that have to be in one position or the other.” But the drone strikes, it is claimed, were prompted by Haftar’s anger at Dbeibah apparently stalling on the Boulos merger plan and by Tripoli allegedly encouraging tribes in southern Libya to attack and kill his forces. Over more than five days in August, drones attacked the Zawiya oil station and fuel storage facilities in western Libya. The drone strikes hit the gasoline-storage tank at the Zawiya oil complex, west of Tripoli, causing a large fire and the tank’s collapse. The tank held approximately 4.5m litres of fuel when it was struck, according to Libya’s National Oil Corporation. On 5 September, three Libyans and one Spanish citizen were arrested in southern Tripoli by the GNU for their alleged role in a plot that was intended to include an attack on Tripoli airport. It was thought the whole group involved five Spaniards and four Libyans. The three arrested Libyans were allegedly affiliated with the Tareq ben Ziyad brigade, an LNA formation. Information that has emerged from interviews about the plot, and Saddam Haftar’s alleged role, not just in Libya, has been described as a goldmine, capable of weakening Khalifa Haftar. Sources in the GNU said the alleged plotters were working for Saddam Haftar. “No formal decision has been made, but in light of what has been discovered it is impossible to work with Saddam,” the sources said. The claims not only damage Saddam Haftar’s role in the Boulos plan but also the parallel UN sponsored 4+4 talks involving the main four political institutions in Libya that led to an August agreement to stage elections within two years. The deal endorsed by the UN security council overcomes previous obstacles to elections, and had been backed by the main actors capable of delivering the change. Walid Ellafi, minister for state for political affairs in the UN-backed Libyan GNU and an enthusiast for elections, said: “Our support for the 4+4 process is rooted in its role as a UN sponsored framework offering a new approach to achieving practical results that pave the way for elections and institutions whose political legitimacy derives from the will of the people – not as a political settlement that overlooks violations or sets aside the rights of those affected.” He opposes an elite east-west political deal that brushes aside longstanding grievances such as the displacement of 9,000 families in Benghazi during the 2014 war. The allegations about the sabotage operation may intensify a power struggle between the three sons of Khalifa Haftar in the east. Saddam Haftar is seen as his father’s most likely heir, possesses the most resources, enjoys the backing of the United Arab Emirates and has so far dominated the political tracks. But his brothers, Khaled and Belqasim – more allied with Egypt than the United Arab Emirates – have recently started to challenge his dominance.

‘The enemy is tearing our city apart’: terror in Kyiv as Russia ramps up attacks

Valeriya Tkachenko was dropping her son off at school in central Kyiv when the air raid alert sounded. Staff hurried the children and parents into the shelter, where the frightened lawyer spent the next two hours with her son. “I’m scared to death all day about what could happen to my son,” she said as she emerged from the shelter, already late for work. A day earlier, a Russian jet-powered drone had struck a school nearby. “And I can’t plan anything any more,” she said. “It’s not sustainable like this.” Across the city on Friday morning, Artem Marchenko, an IT worker, was forced to abandon his car and walk for 20 minutes across the Pivdennyi, or Southern, Bridge on his way to work after repeated Russian strikes damaged the crossing. He feared Russia would soon target Kyiv’s other bridges, paralysing movement across a city of about 3 million people, the two halves of which are divided by the Dnipro. On Saturday morning, Russia targeted a second major bridge connecting Kyiv, damaging the road surface on the Northern Bridge and temporarily halting traffic. Kyiv is entering its most difficult period since the early days of the invasion, as intensifying Russian attacks reshape everyday life in a capital that Moscow is seeking to plunge into darkness. For weeks, the main worry in the capital had been the coming winter, when Russia is expected once again to try to plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold. But a sharp escalation in Russian attacks has left many residents feeling that some of the hardship they had been bracing for is already here. “The capital is in a very dramatic situation. And it’s no longer possible to pretend that we can live now as we do in peacetime,” the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Friday. “The enemy is tearing Kyiv apart.” This week alone, Russian missiles and drones have struck offices, datacentres, a school and hospital and one of Kyiv’s main bridges. Moscow has also started its attacks on Ukraine’s energy, targeting a thermal power plant and other energy facilities, leaving several neighbourhoods without power and water by morning. Volodymyr Zelenskyy underlined the apparent shift in Russian tactics in an interview with the Financial Times this week, saying Vladimir Putin had recently ordered his commanders to abandon the rules of war. “They want Ukrainians to leave the capital … and show that if you don’t have the capital you don’t have the country,” Zelenskyy said in separate comments to reporters. Until recently, Kyiv had retained a deceptively normal rhythm, while cities closer to the front, including Kharkiv and Dnipro, absorbed the brunt of daily missile and drone attacks. Now, residents joke grimly that the balance is beginning to shift, with those cities at times feeling safer than the capital. The city is confronting a particularly dangerous combination of an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors for ballistic missiles and a new generation of faster, jet-powered Russian drones that are harder to shoot down. Kyiv is racing to fast-track a new generation of interceptor drones capable of taking down the jet-powered models. Several are already in use, according to three defence industry sources, though they said it could still take weeks or months to deploy them at a scale sufficient to provide meaningful protection for the capital. At the same time, Russia’s advances on the battlefield remain relatively slow and are coming at enormous cost. Moscow captured about 361 sq km in September, according to the military analyst Konrad Muzyka, an increase on recent months but still far short of the pace needed to seize the rest of the Donbas before winter, when offensive operations typically become more difficult. Ukraine, meanwhile, has clawed back about 126 sq km in a series of counteroffensives in the east, being conducted under the codename Vivaldi. That slower-moving battle on the ground is increasingly at odds with what is happening far behind the front. The contrast reflects a broader shift in the war, as Ukraine’s major cities come under growing pressure. “You can be quite successful in the land domain, but if you are vulnerable in the air, especially in the rear, that is the vulnerability your opponent is going to exploit,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies. Ukrainian officials have been warning their European counterparts about the scale of the looming threat. According to the New York Times, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, recently briefed European counterparts on an intercepted Russian plan to use as many as 1,000 missiles, drones and bombs against the country’s energy system. The targets included electrical substations, hydroelectric and thermal power plants and boiler houses, in what appeared to be an effort to plunge Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold and create a humanitarian crisis. “Russia plans to freeze Kyiv out, to throw it back into the stone age,” said one senior western diplomat in Kyiv, speaking on condition of anonymity. Western diplomats say publicly that they intend to remain in Kyiv, mindful that leaving would hand Moscow a propaganda victory and risk creating the impression that Ukraine was being abandoned. However, privately two senior diplomats said contingency plans were being drawn up to relocate embassies to Lviv or eastern Poland if Russia began deliberately targeting foreign missions. “The situation is obviously deteriorating fast,” the diplomat said.

Brazil’s neck-and-neck election offers test for growing pro-Trump Latin American bloc

Shortly after his controversial speech to the United Nations general assembly in September, Donald Trump gathered a dozen like-minded Latin American leaders and boasted that rightwing candidates had won all seven presidential elections held in the region since he began his second term. “Everybody I’ve endorsed has won,” the US president said in New York to most of the leaders of the Shield of the Americas, an anti-drug cartel coalition of 15 countries governed by the right or far right. Those electoral victories – and the US takeover of Venezuela after capturing Nicolás Maduro – have left just six Latin American countries under leftwing governments: regional heavyweights Brazil and Mexico, small Uruguay and Guatemala, and the isolated regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua. On Sunday, Brazilians go to the polls in a presidential election that many believe will determine more than Latin America’s largest country’s fate for the next four years. Given Mexico’s geographic proximity and unique economic relationship with the US, analysts see Brazil as perhaps the last country in the region still capable of saying “no” to Trump’s whims – something that could change dramatically depending on the election result. Polls indicate a neck-and-neck race between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old leftist incumbent who is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, and Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the far-right senator son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. “Trump really does take seriously the idea that the Americas should be his back yard,” said Pedro Telles, a professor at the School of International Relations at Brazil’s FGV university. “Mexico will remain relevant, and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is one of the most popular leftwing leaders. But if Flávio wins, it would be a real blow to the left and a major boost to the far-right agenda globally,” added Telles. “There is a lot at stake,” said Sandra Borda Guzmán, an associate professor of political science at Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes. “Instead of taking the opportunity to expand our region’s autonomy, a far-right victory would align the region unconditionally with the dictates of the US,” she added. Lula and Bolsonaro differ sharply on the US, including over what has become Trump’s main foreign policy for the region: the so-called “war on drugs” used to justify dozens of airstrikes on boats that have killed more than 230 people and joint operations involving US military personnel on land. While Bolsonaro has pledged to join the Shield of the Americas and to follow an “iron fist” approach to crime, Lula has raised concerns about sovereignty and said it is “sad to see the inferiority complex of Latin American presidents” who are part of the Trump-created coalition. Lula and Trump’s relationship has swung between not speaking and public displays of warmth, but it is currently at a low point, with the Brazilian president and Democratic members of the US Congress accusing Washington of trying to interfere in Bolsonaro’s favour. “Brazil is a big prize,” said Michael Shifter, adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, adding that amid endless conflicts in Iran, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, “US foreign policy is going very badly in the rest of the world.” A victory for Bolsonaro in Brazil, he said, would be used “triumphantly” by Trump for producing an “almost completely aligned region”. At the latest Shield of the Americas meeting, Trump made clear that it was not all about security. The US president also referred to the “tremendous natural wealth” of Latin American countries, which he said could not “be taken over by hostile outside powers” – widely understood as a reference to China. Privileged access to Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals was one of the conditions Washington imposed in exchange for not applying tariffs, which Lula rejected. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has offered those natural resources as the “solution” to help the US “break its dependence on China”. “Democracy is also kind of on the line here,” added Shifter, noting that Bolsonaro was only running because his father cannot – Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup to overturn his defeat by Lula in the 2022 election. “So it’s not just a question of one more country moving to the right, but of a right that has a very problematic relationship with democracy,” he said. As in recent elections across Latin America, the race includes other candidates but is polarised between two leading candidates. Lula and Bolsonaro have alternated as frontrunners in the final stretch, making the outcome unpredictable; if neither wins 50% plus one of the votes, there will be a runoff on 25 October. Bolsonaro’s only previous bid for an executive role in government ended ignominiously when he took fourth place in Rio’s 2016 mayoral race. But analysts say there are several reasons why a congressman best known for his family name and corruption allegations – some shelved, others still under investigation – has emerged as a serious challenger to a three-time president. Unemployment, poverty and inflation have fallen, and average incomes have risen, but so has household debt – something many attribute to online betting, which the older Bolsonaro left unregulated and Lula banned days before the vote. The incumbent’s campaign has also been hit by corruption allegations – still under investigation – involving his son and a former aide, while a scandal involving supreme court justices with no connection to Lula may have rubbed off on the president. Many therefore see Bolsonaro’s support as coming both from a simple transfer of his father’s voter base and from an anti-Lula vote. “I’m going to vote for Flávio, but not because I think he’s the best option,” said Bruna Arguello, 34, a businesswoman from Santana de Parnaíba, whose first choice would be Ronaldo Caiado, a far-right former governor of Goiás, polling at 4%. “Unfortunately, he has no chance of winning, so I’m going with Flávio so we can get Lula out,” she said. Actor Docy Moreira, 59, will vote for Lula. In 2018, she was so dismayed by Jair Bolsonaro’s election that she decided to leave her home town of Belo Horizonte, where two-thirds of voters backed the far-right leader. “I couldn’t understand how people, including the vast majority of my family, were choosing so much violence and authoritarianism,” she said. She Googled which cities had given Bolsonaro the lowest share of the vote, chose one about 1,550 miles away and moved north to Luís Correia, in Piauí. She eventually returned home, and most of her family will now vote for Bolsonaro’s son. Still, Moreira remains confident Lula will win. “If not, it will be devastating, but I’m not going to move again. I’m stronger now. I’ve learned that I can find refuge within myself,” said Moreira.

What is Zionism and why do some critics describe it as racist?

Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party, has said he is an anti-Zionist. As his party conference prepares to debate a motion that “Zionism is racism”, what precisely is Zionism and what is the history of the claim that it is racist? What is Zionism? Modern Zionism developed in the late 1800s out of several strands of thinking on the future of Jewish collective and cultural identity, emerging from a millennia-old religious yearning to return to Zion, which runs through Jewish holy texts. The term came, however, to be most associated with Theodor Herzl’s brand of political Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination and statehood in the context of rising European antisemitism. Although Zionism tends to be seen by critics as a monolithic political idea, its history has encompassed multiple, often contradictory, intellectual strands including the notion – proposed by the philosopher Martin Buber before the foundation of Israel – of a binational Arab-Jewish state in Palestine. Since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, the debate over Zionism inside the country has largely centred on liberal and rightwing, or “revisionist”, camps – the latter represented by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Issues such as settlement, occupation and whether Israel should be defined as an ethno-nationalist Jewish state moved to the core of political contest. However, as Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of California, wrote in the Conversation last month, the issue is further complicated by the fact that, despite contested definitions, the idea of Zionism for many Jews represents something more amorphous: “Jewish liberation and sovereignty, a safe haven from persecution, a revival of the Hebrew language, and a renewed sense of collective pride, especially after the Holocaust.” What is the criticism of Zionism? One critique of Zionism – used as a shorthand for the state of Israel – is that it is a “colonial” project. Those critics, in parts of the left, in the wider Arab world and among some anti-Zionist Jews such as Polanski, would point to three pieces of evidence. First, the violent displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” for Palestinians, that accompanied the founding of the Jewish state. Second, they argue Israel has created an apartheid system of unequal rights in the occupied territories that denies Palestinian ambitions to statehood and their own self-determination and, third, that within Israel those of Palestinian origin are discriminated against. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, Palestinians had a vibrant society across British Mandatory Palestine, but their connection to historical Palestine has often been dismissed or diminished by significant strands of Zionist thinking. At the heart of academic debate is how widespread the use by some early Zionists was of the notion of a “land without people” for a “people without land”, which critics have used as evidence that Zionism was a colonial enterprise at its very beginning. In contrast, Zionists point to the evidence of a historical presence of Jews in the Holy Land, as well as for many a promised biblical patrimony in a homeland from which Jews were displaced and that many hold up as a refuge in a hostile world. What is the history of the claim that ‘Zionism is racism’? The argument that Zionism is racism, while controversial, is not new. The phrase came to particular prominence during the cold war, when the UN passed resolution 3379 in 1975. The so-called “Zionism as racism” resolution compared “the racist regime in occupied Palestine” to apartheid South Africa. Sponsored’ by the Arab League and promoted by the Soviet Union, it passed with support from countries in the developing world but was later revoked in 1991 under pressure from the then US president, George HW Bush. Proponents of the argument say Zionism privileges the rights of Jews in Israel over non-Jews via a discriminatory system. Opponents of the framing describe it as antisemitic as it singles out Jews as a group to deny them alone the right to self-determination. They argue that, by delegitimising the basis for Israel’s founding as a Jewish homeland, it acts as a cover for antisemitism. The war in Gaza has intensified arguments about the nature of Zionism, in part driven by the overtly racist framing of senior Israeli political figures towards Palestinian society after the 7 October deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel in 2023. What does British law say about the argument that Zionism is racist? An employment tribunal two years ago found that the views of David Miller, a former professor of political sociology who was sacked by the University of Bristol in 2021, that “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing” amounted to a protected philosophical belief under the 2010 Equality Act, a case upheld on appeal. A highly controversial figure, Miller has also argued in social media posts that Zionists have worked as “infiltrators and subversives”, gained access to not just all UK political parties but also “the media, entertainment industries, the law, financial institutions, sports and all sorts of apparently obscure parts of the UK”. Miller is a key figure in the anti-Zionist Movement and has links to Greens for Palestine, which is proposing the Green party motion on Zionism is racism.

Half of UK wants to rejoin EU and backing it could drive up Labour vote, megapoll finds

Andy Burnham’s personal preference to rejoin the European Union after the next election is supported by almost half of all voters, a new megapoll has found, although cabinet ministers concerned about reopening Brexit divides are privately urging him to proceed with caution. The poll by the Messina Group (TMG) found that renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU could boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points, if the prime minister offered a fresh referendum in which he campaigned to re-enter the bloc. Almost a third of voters said an in-out referendum would be needed first, while more than one in six felt that a general election mandate would be sufficient, and the same proportion thought parliament could make the decision. The overall findings will bolster the case of those inside Downing Street who want to promise at the next election that Labour would at least negotiate over re-entry, which the prime minister has said he wants to see “in his lifetime”. Burnham used his first Labour conference speech as leader on Tuesday to announce a review of the options for Britain’s future relationship with Europe, and subsequently added that these should include rejoining entirely. However, there are nerves among some Labour MPs, especially those with constituencies that voted for Brexit, that even testing out public support for the move would be fraught with political risk and a potential boost to Reform. Two-thirds of cabinet ministers, including Burnham himself, his first secretary, Louise Haigh, chancellor, John Healey, and foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, represent seats that backed Brexit, and previously said they would respect the 2016 vote. However, public opinion has shifted. Before Burnham’s speech, several ministers had publicly cautioned against the move. Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, said while the defence and security relationship could be better, going beyond EU reset plans inherited from Keir Starmer was “not possible nor desirable”. The trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said “constitutional questions” around Britain’s EU relationship were causing uncertainty for business. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said rejoining was “not a simple, straightforward thing” and the costs might be unacceptable. Downing Street’s strategy appears to be to put the focus on those who made big promises on Brexit but then failed to deliver, rather than accusing those who voted to leave the EU of making the wrong decision. But the government’s shift in position has caused some anxiety among Burnham’s team. One cabinet minister told the Guardian: “Brexit clearly hasn’t worked and the promises made haven’t been kept so Andy is right to open up the question of what the future relationship looks like. But he definitely needs to proceed with caution because we don’t want to restoke division”. A second said: “Andy is right to say we need some clarity around our long-term relationship. Security and trade cooperation are higher up the agenda than they were 10 years ago. But whether that adds up to a real desire for big change in the population I don’t know. My constituents will be cautious.” A third added: “There are obviously different views across cabinet about it, but the Made in Europe agenda means we do need to talk to the EU about what relationship they want with us long term, as what they are currently proposing is very challenging.” Another cabinet source said: “There’s an awareness among a number of cabinet ministers with leave voting seats that opinions are going to differ and the arguments about the future will have to be carefully made about the national interest.” A fifth said there were genuine questions about the best option on the table. “I’m sceptical if we go back in, about the terms we’d be going back in on, and whether that can really resolve the problems in people’s lives. But if you look at the global context you cannot start to solve things for people without having a closer relationship with the EU.” TMG polled 11,461 people, weighted by referendum result, from 12-24 September on seven different options for relationships with the EU. The most popular was rejoin, with 49% in favour and 28.5% against. The second was to keep the existing relationship but cut as many trade barriers as possible – as the government is attempting to do with its reset – and which was supported by 48.2%, with 20.9% against. A customs union came next, on 47.1% versus 20.7%. Joining the single market and associate membership were virtually neck and neck – 45.1% and 45.5% of respondents respectively support them – while sticking with the existing relationship was backed by 42%. The seventh option – the UK moving further away from the EU – was supported by only 27.9%, with 41.2% against. A plurality of voters – 25.9% – said they wanted the UK to rejoin the EU immediately, while a slightly lower proportion – 22.9% – said it should happen in the next three years, and 8.4% over the next decade, while 23% said they did not want a closer relationship at all. TMG also tested political messaging for each of the options to see how they could affect Labour’s vote share in an election, and found that it went up – by between 4.3 and 7.4 percentage points – for all the scenarios that resulted in closer ties, with most votes coming from the Greens and Lib Dems. The polling showed that more than two-thirds of voters thought that trading with the EU was more important than the US or China, in the event the UK had to choose; four in five people want to keep the pound; and a majority want to stay in the ECHR – 53.4% versus 24.2% against. However, it also found that Brexit arguments over immigration control and sovereignty still resonated. Senior Downing Street officials have been in contact with thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU. The TMG research is expected to be shared with the current operation. Some inside No 10 are nervous, however, that promising to renegotiate entry into the bloc could revive the flagging political fortunes of Nigel Farage, who said on Thursday Burnham had given him “the biggest boost in my career” by reviving the Brexit debate. The TMG research found that 29.7% people thought the UK had been right to leave the EU, while 52.4% said it had been wrong, and 17.9% didn’t know. On whether it had been a success or failure, 12.2% said a success, 54.9% a failure, 23.2% said neither and 9.7% did not know. Ben Judah, a visiting fellow at Chatham House who was an adviser to David Lammy as foreign secretary, told the Guardian: “These polls are a massive validation of Andy Burnham’s boldness on Europe. There is close to a national consensus that Brexit was not a success. “Against this background these results show that Europe as an issue has a unique ability to unite the left and grow the Labour vote share among swing voters. The bolder the stance towards rejoin, the bigger Labour’s reward.”