Author: Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, has just been published by Wicked Son. Her previous book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, was published in 2025. Access her work at: melaniephillips.substack.com.
By Melanie Phillips. As the clock ticks away toward U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest “negotiate or I unleash hell” deadline, the Iranian regime thinks that it’s winning. In the West, the serried ranks of “experts” also think that America and Israel are heading either for a deepening quagmire or a humiliating retreat. It’s not possible to predict how the war against Iran will end—or even what the next day will bring. But on the face of it, Tehran’s claim that it has the upper hand—echoed by Western commentators who said before the war even started that it would be a…
Jewish victimization should not be dismissed as unbeatable. It must be fought harder and better. A lively debate is underway in the Jewish world about whether Jews are wise to present themselves as victims. In the Jewish Journal, Rabbi Amitai Fraiman has written that Jewish victimization is now an outdated paradigm. Jews are no longer seen as vulnerable and marginal, but ever since Israel’s iconic victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, they’ve been associated with force, power and agency. The Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, may have slaughtered innocent people, says Fraiman, but this was met by a “ferocious…