Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Greg Slabaugh, Professor of Computer Vision and AI, Director of the Digital Environment Research Unit, Queen Mary University of London

“China is going to win the AI race,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has told an AI summit in London. The Taiwanese-born boss of the chipmaker, the world’s most valuable public company, believes the Chinese are already just “nanoseconds” behind the Americans and well placed to overtake them.

He pointed to China’s energy superiority and AI research talent, as well as the risk that the Trump administration’s ban on selling China the most advanced chips will just galvanise Beijing to close that technological gap.

Huang did soften his stance later to say American could still win the race, but he has raised potentially existential questions about the road ahead. We asked two experts whether China is likely to prevail.

Yes

Greg Slabaugh, Professor of Computer Vision and AI, Queen Mary University of London

Artificial intelligence has always been an international enterprise: papers, open-source models and datasets often move freely, and breakthroughs emerge from collaborations across borders. Yet in several domains, China’s research dominance is already clear.

Take computer vision, the field that enables machines to interpret and reason about visual data. It underpins everything from autonomous vehicles and robotics to medical imaging and surveillance.

Held in October in Hawaii, the 2025 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is one of the world’s most prestigious and competitive computer vision venues. Of the research papers presented, half of all authors were affiliated with Chinese institutions, far ahead of the second-placed US, which had 17% of papers. If Chinese nationals working abroad were included, the gap would be even wider.

Based on this admittedly simplistic metric, China has already won. It led the world in the volume and visibility of cutting-edge computer vision research at the conference, shaping the agenda in one of AI’s most dynamic areas.

This strength stems from long-term strategic planning. In 2017, Beijing launched its new generation artificial intelligence development plan, a national strategy to make China the world leader in AI by 2030. That ambition has been backed by enormous state-guided investment.

China’s recently launched National Venture Capital Guidance Fund, worth around US$138 billion (£105 billion), now channels capital into strategic “hard tech” sectors such as AI, semiconductors and quantum computing.

Provincial governments and state-owned enterprises operate numerous additional funds that co-invest with private firms. Together, they create a coordinated financial ecosystem that can scale technologies from lab to market at speed.

The United States still leads in key areas: private-sector investment (by about 12 times), foundational models and advanced semiconductor design, led by companies like Nvidia. But China is moving quickly to close the gap. Its approach, guided more by state-led industrial policy than purely by market competition, aligns research, infrastructure and industry in a way that the more fragmented western system can struggle to match.

Cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen now host vast AI computing hubs, also known as “AI factories”, which supply the computational power for both research and industry. Technology giants like Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu and more recently DeepSeek are building competitive large-scale models and high-performance hardware alternatives.

Even with export controls limiting access to the most advanced chips, Chinese researchers are optimising algorithms to perform efficiently on domestic hardware – a hallmark of innovation under constraint.

China’s advantage also lies in scale. With 1.4 billion people and massive digital platforms, it generates data at a volume unmatched in other locations. This fuels rapid progress in model training and deployment.

Meanwhile, China now produces more PhDs in the sciences than anywhere else, ensuring a deep pool of AI expertise to sustain momentum. More data, more talent and more coordinated investment create a self-accelerating loop that drives both research and industrial adoption.

If current trends continue, Huang’s words could prove prophetic. China’s combination of scale, strategy and coordination gives it a real prospect of emerging as the world’s leading force in AI development and deployment.

For the west, that could mean adapting to a landscape where standards, platforms and priorities are increasingly shaped by Chinese institutions and industrial ecosystems.

But the future of AI should not be viewed as a zero-sum contest. The most meaningful progress will come from open, responsible collaboration, balanced with sensible export controls and safeguards for dual-use technologies.

Seeing AI as a shared race for human progress might just help us advance further together.

No

Sean Kenji Starrs, Lecturer in International Development, King’s College London

We should first make clear how far ahead the US is. As of early November 2025, it boasts all of the world’s top ten AI firms by market value as well as 37 of the top 50. Nvidia is at number one, having become the first company to be valued at US$5 trillion a few days before Huang’s speech.

China has just four AI firms in the top 50 – the same as Israel. This list excludes major unlisted Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek (valuation US$15 billion), but also much bigger private US players: OpenAI (US$500 billion), Anthropic (US$183 billion) and Databricks (US$100 billion).

Where the US really blows China out of the water is in AI compute power, driven by its access to the world’s most advanced chips. The US has total AI compute of 39.7 million petaflops – half of the world’s total (by summer 2025 numbers).

China’s compute is the world’s seventh largest with 400,000 petaflops, far below even India’s 1.2 million petaflops. This is the result of the US export ban on Nvidia and AMD’s most advanced chips, and is despite the fact that China has 46% (230) of the world’s AI data clusters.

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Read more:
DeepSeek: how China’s embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake

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With the launch of its low-cost high-performance large language model in January 2025, DeepSeek showed that Chinese firms can innovate around US export constraints and develop comparable AI models using far less resources. But DeepSeek could draw upon Nvidia chips stockpiled before the ban in 2023-24.

An insider has also claimed that DeepSeek secretly had access to 50,000 Nvidia H100s, very advanced chips which were never cleared for export to China (though a review by Nvidia claimed this wasn’t accurate). Meanwhile in September 2025, DeepSeek admitted that its model “unintentionally” distilled OpenAI’s ChatGPT (along with Anthropic’s Claude), underlining its reliance on US technology.

The massive headstart that US rivals have will likely only grow as they continually having unrestricted access to the world’s most advanced chips, as well as capital spending of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a marathon for the long-term, not a dash, and China is running with much weaker legs.

Huang made his prediction about the AI race despite surely knowing better. It’s true that China has cheaper electricity, but they need a lot more of it because their AI chips are not only much slower but require more energy than Nvidia’s most advanced chips.

Daily energy costs for US AI firms are a rounding error compared to their hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure. US firms also have access to data centres in allied countries, including in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These two nations have a combined 30.3 million petaflops of AI compute, which was built by US firms on condition they both severed ties with Chinese competitors.

What Huang really wants is for the Trump administration to ditch US export controls of his topline AI chips to China. But this isn’t going to happen. We live in a new era of “techno-nationalist globalisation” where major powers see national ownership of advanced technology as core to their security and geopolitical rivalry. The era of “free trade” is over.

Huang should take solace in the fact that he helms the most valuable company in history, and not peddle in self-interested alarmism.

Greg Slabaugh’s work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant number EP/Y009800/1), through Keystone project funding from Responsible Ai UK (KP0016). He is also a former employee of Huawei Technologies.

Sean Kenji Starrs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Will China win the AI race? – https://theconversation.com/will-china-win-the-ai-race-269415

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steven David Pickering, Honorary Professor, International Relations, Brunel University of London

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and Deborah Turness, its news CEO, have resigned over accusations of political bias in the corporation. Most notably, these relate to the editing of an episode of Panorama about the January 6 insurrection, which US president Donald Trump says misrepresented him.

Their departure is the latest – and most dramatic – chapter in story that dates back years. At first glance, the move may look like accountability at the top.

“There have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility,” said Davie in his resignation message. But Davie’s departure also speaks to the problems that have beset the BBC for years as it has tried to deal with a decline in trust.

The data tells a clear and worrying story: the problem is not only what the BBC does, but how it is seen across divided audiences.

Trust in the BBC is heavily conditioned by political identity. A survey I conducted with colleagues of 11,170 people in the UK, carried out between December 2022 and June 2024, showed striking differences between how people with left and right-wing party affiliations felt about the broadcaster.

Liberal Democrat voters averaged 4.54 on a one-to-seven trust scale. Those who vote Labour averaged 3.88. Trust among Conservative voters was lower at an average of 3.17. And notably, the average was just 2.16 for Brexit party voters. The findings date back to a time before the Brexit party became Reform UK – and before that party came to dominate in the polls.

In other words, those segments of the electorate that already felt most alienated from the BBC are now among the most politically ascendant.

That creates a profound legitimacy challenge. The broadcaster is losing the trust of the very audiences who, through the ballot box, are increasingly shaping the political environment in which it operates.

This helps explain why the crisis has erupted now. The political currents that distrusted the BBC for years are no longer fringe, but central to national politics.

When we asked respondents to place themselves on a political spectrum of left to right, we saw a similar patterns. Trust peaked around the centre-left, dropped at the centre, and stayed low on the right. The pattern clearly indicates that trust in the BBC is not uniform, nor does it develop in a vacuum.

We found in our research that these partisan fault lines were not in evidence for Japan’s public broadcaster – suggesting something specific is happening in the UK. In Japan, attitudes toward NHK (the equivalent of the BBC) cut across political lines, with conservatives and progressives reporting broadly similar levels of trust.

That contrast points to distinct political cultures. In Japan, public broadcasting still carries an aura of neutrality tied to institutional continuity, whereas in Britain, the BBC has become a symbolic battlefield in wider culture wars. The British media landscape is more openly adversarial, and perceptions of bias are now interpreted through partisan identity rather than journalistic performance.

Conservative-voting or Brexit-aligned respondents appear to see the BBC as metropolitan and institutionally liberal. On the left and centre-left, the BBC still retains a credibility cushion, but those holdouts will shrink. This is not simply about “bias” or “impartiality” in a narrow sense – it is about legitimacy in different political worldviews.

The fact that two senior figures have resigned should not lull us into thinking the problem has been fixed. On the contrary, what this moment reveals is that the BBC’s challenge is not only managerial – it is political and cultural.

The data from the TrustTracker project shows that trust in the BBC is already deeply polarised. Leadership change alone is unlikely to rebuild it. Instead, the BBC must engage with how it is perceived, by whom, and why. Otherwise, it risks losing the one thing that has set it apart: its role as a genuinely shared public broadcaster in a deeply divided society.

Steven David Pickering received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, reference ES/W011913/1) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS, reference JPJSJRP 20211704).

– ref. Trust in the BBC is heavily tied to political identity – https://theconversation.com/trust-in-the-bbc-is-heavily-tied-to-political-identity-269434

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Delman, Heritage Partnerships Coordinator, University of Oxford

A new statue of Dervorguilla of Galloway was installed in the Master’s Court of the University of Oxford’s Balliol College in September. She was the 13th-century cofounder of Balliol and its first benefactor.

Carved from a single block of limestone by artist Alex Wenham, it was described by the college as “a valuable contribution to Oxford’s public art, where statues of women – particularly those outside royal or religious contexts – remain sadly rare”.

Wenham’s Dervorguilla has the feeling of a time traveller, at once both medieval and modern. The smooth contours of her recognisably 13th-century form emerge, polished, crisp and authoritative, from the unworked stone around her.

The statue’s commission speaks to a strong drive to populate urban spaces with more monuments to women. Since the Lloyd’s Register Foundation reported in 2018 that fewer than 3% of statues in the UK were of real, non-royal women, several campaigns aimed at documenting and achieving greater gender representation in public art have gained a foothold.

But medieval women themselves shaped the built heritage of our towns and cities. Too often, their efforts have been hidden or ignored, and their legacies neglected.

The women who shaped our cities

My research considers how women used architectural patronage to fashion their identities and curate their legacies in the public realm. In Dervorguilla’s case, her statue complements a living, breathing foundation she brought into being. Even if the buildings of the college today are not ones her 13th-century eye would recognise.

Dervorguilla’s significance as Balliol’s co-founder, however, has been minimised throughout much of the establishment’s history. The college was named after her husband, John Balliol, but Dame Helen Ghosh, master of the college, recently commented it might just as appropriately have been called “Dervorguilla College”.

Ghosh explained that it was Dervorguilla who “did the practical work to set us up, writing our foundational Statutes and financing our first buildings on Broad Street”.

Balliol was not Dervorguilla’s only foundation – she also founded the Cistercian abbey of Dulce Cor in Scotland. It’s known as Sweetheart Abbey, because Dervorguilla was laid to rest there, clutching her husband’s heart – which she had kept in an ivory casket – to her bosom.

Nor was Dervorguilla the only medieval woman to leave a lasting mark on the built environment through her patronage. Many others commissioned foundations during their lifetimes and many of them continue to exist in tangible form, right under our noses. Like Dervorguilla, their actions have often been hidden behind those of male relatives, or overlooked entirely.

As creators and benefactors of educational, religious and charitable institutions – from university colleges and schools to churches, hospitals and almshouses – women of means found ways to circumvent the patriarchal power structures of medieval society.

They made themselves visible through acts of charity, piety and self-memorialisation. These women created more than just monuments. They left behind significant cultural and artistic legacies as dynamic testaments to their identities and ambitions.

Today, however, many of those foundations are little-known or awkward outliers in fast-paced and ever-evolving urban environments.

Trinity Apse in Edinburgh is a case in point. Once part of a grand collegiate foundation commissioned by Mary of Guelders, Queen of Scots in 1460, the church was dismantled in the 19th century to make room for platform two of Waverley train station.

After several years, numerous stones were salvaged and a partial rendering of the original church was reconstructed. It’s just behind the Royal Mile in a high-end IKEA flatpack-style reconfiguration now known as Trinity Apse. Though Grade A listed (the highest category of listing in Scotland), the Apse’s future as a publicly accessible heritage site hangs in the balance.

Just round the corner from the Apse on Cowgate – an area of Edinburgh famed for its lively nightlife – stands a pre-Reformation chapel. It contains the tomb of Jonet Rhynd. Rhynd was a local businesswoman responsible for overseeing the construction of the chapel and its associated almshouse, following the death of her husband in 1537.

Take a trip south to the Midlands and in Coventry you’ll find St John the Baptist Church. It was originally founded in 1344 by Queen Isabella of France as a chapel in memory of her family, but is now on the Heritage at Risk register.

Closer to Balliol, in Oxford, are the picturesque ruins of Godstow Abbey, founded by Edith of Winchester in 1115. Overlooked for many years, only in the last decade has the addition of an interpretation board put the abbey, and the story of its female founder, back on the map.

Many of these buildings and structures face a complex web of challenges. Not only are they expensive and complicated to maintain, their origins as religious foundations also adds to their precarity in a climate where the relevance of church buildings is hotly debated.

For the women who founded them, however, patronage was the language through which they made their voices heard. If we are seeking to reassert women’s presence in our public spaces, where better to look than to the very legacies they themselves constructed.

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Rachel Delman received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2013-2016) and the Leverhulme Trust (2019-2022)

– ref. Medieval women’s legacies live on in Britain’s towns and cities – https://theconversation.com/medieval-womens-legacies-live-on-in-britains-towns-and-cities-267906

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yolanda Lok Yiu Lau, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Queen Mary University of London

A ten-week online brain training programme helped older adults’ brains act as though they were a decade younger, a recent study has found.

Much like exercise for the body, regular mental workouts can help keep the brain in shape. As we age, brain processes that support memory, attention and decision-making can become less efficient. Keeping the mind active is thought to build a reserve that helps people cope better with these age-related changes.

Studies suggest that people who stay mentally, physically and socially active have a lower risk of developing dementia. For example, in a study involving 120 older adults, those who engaged in regular aerobic exercise had larger brain volumes and better cognitive performance than those who were less active, reversing age-related loss in brain volume over a couple of years.

Studies have also found that brain training can improve older adults’ cognitive performance.

The latest study adds to what we know by testing whether brain training programmes – BrainHQ, in this instance – can change the brain’s chemistry, offering biological clues about how brain training might work.

BrainHQ is a brain training app that offers short, game-like exercises that train cognitive skills such as attention, memory and brain speed. As users improve, the challenges get harder, pushing the brain to adapt – much like increasing the weights during a workout.

Ninety-two healthy adults from Canada, 65 and older, took part. Half of them completed brain training exercises using BrainHQ for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, over ten weeks. The other half, a comparison group, spent the same amount of time playing games designed just for entertainment, such as solitaire.

To see whether the programme made a difference to the brain, all participants had specialised scans before and after the ten weeks of training. These scans can detect tiny chemical changes in brain activity.

The researchers focused on a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, which plays an important role in attention, learning and memory. Those who completed the speed-based exercises showed stronger activity in this area compared to those in the comparison group. The change in brain chemicals seen is described by the researchers as equivalent to shaving ten years off their biological age.

Ageing and cognitive decline (including Alzheimer’s disease) are often linked to reduced activity in this part of the brain. Strengthening it may therefore help delay or reduce cognitive decline and lower the risk of developing dementia later in life.

Although the results look promising, we should be careful about how we interpret them. The study measured many different outcomes. Although the brain training group showed increased activity compared with their own baseline, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant.

Because the study looked at so many outcomes and involved only a small number of people, some of these changes may simply be due to chance rather than real effects of the training.

The bigger picture

This was a small study involving healthy, mostly white older adults, and it looked at one specific brain training app. The findings may not apply to people with memory problems or to other types of brain-training programmes, or to longer-term outcomes.

This intervention is relatively short. Research found that most interventions aiming to improve cognitive performance that are successful typically last at least four to six months. Longer-term participation is almost certainly key to achieving lasting improvement in brain health.

Studies like this rely on brain scans as early indicators of benefit, but it remains to be seen whether these biological changes translate into lasting improvements in functioning. Researchers are testing whether similar brain-training programmes can help people who show early signs of dementia. These studies will reveal whether boosting brain activity this way can slow cognitive decline in those already showing symptoms.

High-intensity interventions – such as the one tested that required two and a half hours of training per week – may not suit everyone.

For example, people with existing cognitive concerns who want to improve their cognitive wellbeing may struggle to access digital programmes. They may need more community-based, supportive and lower-intensity interventions. To be an effective dementia programme, recruitment needs to be inclusive, especially reaching people from underserved groups who are at the highest risk.

Cognitive ageing is shaped by many factors – including physical activity, social connection, healthy diet and mental wellbeing – so brain training is likely to be just one part of a broader approach to supporting brain health and dementia prevention. Keeping the mind active may not stop ageing, but it could help the brain stay younger for longer.

Yolanda Lok Yiu Lau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can brain training really shave ten years off brain ageing, as a recent study suggests? – https://theconversation.com/can-brain-training-really-shave-ten-years-off-brain-ageing-as-a-recent-study-suggests-268904

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alix Dietzel, Senior Lecturer in Climate Justice, University of Bristol

The world’s most important climate summit – known this year as Cop30 – has begun in the Amazonian port city of Belém, Brazil. It promises to be contentious: key countries haven’t submitted new climate plans, and negotiations are held up by disputes over who should pay for climate action.

We attended a preliminary round of negotiations in June, which ended with very few concrete agreements. Many outcome documents were instead heavily caveated as “not agreed”, “open to revision”, or “without formal status”.

Those fractious pre-summit talks followed a disappointing Cop29 in Azerbaijan last year. This year, here are five key issues to watch – and why they matter.

Are countries keeping their Paris pledges?

Ten years after the Paris agreement, countries are due to submit their third round of national climate plans, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in the jargon. These are refreshed every five years and are supposed to present “best efforts” to scale up climate action.

Yet as of November 2025, only 79 countries – covering 64% of global emissions – have submitted their NDCs. Countries not submitting include some of the highest emitters, such as India, while the US has (once again) left the Paris agreement and will not have high-level representatives at Cop30.

This is a big deal because these plans give us a snapshot of how countries’ planning matches up to global goals, including keeping temperature changes to below 1.5°C, which is looking increasingly unlikely (even if every country fulfilled its pledges, we’re still on course for nearly 3°C).

Who pays for this?

At Cop29 last year, countries agreed to pledge US$300 billion (£227 billion) a year by 2035 to help developing countries. While this was three times higher than the previous goal, it is barely a dent in the US$1.3 trillion developing countries requested – an amount now sidelined as “aspirational”.

Several countries, including India and Nigeria accused the Cop29 host Azerbaijan of forcing through a deal without consensus. Disappointment still lingers, and the fallout delayed agreement on an agenda for Cop30.

The question of who pays for climate change remains unresolved. Without agreement talks risk further breakdown, potentially stalling both adaptation and mitigation efforts worldwide.

What does a ‘just transition’ actually mean?

If the switch from a high to low-emissions world is to be successful it must be fair and inclusive, with no one left behind. This is known as the “just transition”.

Just transition talks have been fraught since Cop28, where richer countries insisted that it focus narrowly on finding new jobs for workers in fossil fuel industries. Various developing and middle-income countries, including China and some of the most climate-vulnerable nations, were more radical and ambitious. In their view, a just transition involves systemic change, arguing that “business as usual” perpetuates inequality.

This would have meant an overhaul of how we approach climate change. However, the wealthier countries eventually got their way in the final agreement, as the text was watered down to focus on the energy and labour sector. The broader ambition was effectively erased. This short-term win for the wealthier countries led to long-term fallout: negotiations collapsed at last year’s Cop29.

At this year’s preliminary meeting in Bonn, Germany, committee chairs enforced strict timekeeping and repeatedly urged delegates to focus on moving forward the text, at one point openly saying, “we already know everyone’s positions, let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s stop with general statements”. This approach seemed to work, as the working group did end up submitting an informal note (rather than a fully-fledged agreement), heavily caveated as not being final.

Unfortunately, as a result, the UN process still lacks agreement on what “just transition” really means or how to achieve it. Without clarity, the term risks becoming empty rhetoric rather than a roadmap for fair and inclusive climate action.

Saving tropical rainforests

The summit’s Amazonian setting has turned attention to tropical forests. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has proposed a bold initiative – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – that aims to raise US$125 billion to reward countries for preservation efforts. Yet the UK, for instance, has already opted out of contributing to the forest facility, despite reports detailing its alarming global deforestation footprint.

The Amazon stores up to 20 years of global CO₂ emissions, holds 10% of terrestrial biodiversity, and supports billions of dollars
in ecosystem services. Its destruction endangers Indigenous sovereignty and the planet’s climate stability. If Cop30 can meet its aim to protect rainforests, it stands a real chance of making a difference.

Inequity at the negotiations

Cop30 may be turn out to be one of the least equitable climate talks in recent memory. Belém’s astronomical accommodation costs mean many low-income countries and marginalised communities will struggle to attend, exacerbating longstanding UN issues.

Around 3,000 Indigenous representatives are expected, but so are thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists – a record number attended last year. However, as reports continually show, people linked to fossil fuels continue to participate – even in the main formal negotiations – without needing to disclose their affiliation.

If Cop30 could centre Indigenous rights, ensure equitable discussion, and limit lobbyist influence, it could restore some legitimacy to the process. Otherwise, it risks deepening the divide between rhetoric and reality in global climate governance.

The summit is set to be anything but technocratic and boring. We expect to see a tumultuous and controversial set of negotiations that will likely have repercussions well into the future.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Five key issues at the UN climate summit in Brazil – and why they matter to you and the planet – https://theconversation.com/five-key-issues-at-the-un-climate-summit-in-brazil-and-why-they-matter-to-you-and-the-planet-269216

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Colleen Murrell, Full Professor in Journalism, Dublin City University

Just when the BBC should have been basking in its success at the record 12 million viewers who watched the Celebrity Traitors finale, the corporation has been brought to its knees. Tim Davie, BBC director general, and Deborah Turness, the CEO of news, resigned following a leaked memo concerning alleged bias in BBC programming.

The memo, written last May by Michael Prescott, then independent advisor to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, raised a number of concerns about alleged bias in the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues, and alleged anti-Israel bias in the BBC Arabic service.

But the key issue appears to have been in the editing of a 2024 Panorama documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance? In the documentary, two different sections from President Donald Trump’s speech on the day of the January 6 2021 riots had been spliced together into one clip, which could have led viewers to conclude that Trump was calling on protesters to carry out the riot. Trump is now threatening to sue the corporation.

In the past week, the Telegraph has repeatedly accused the BBC of institutional bias. The broadcasters’s lack of public response, other than to declare that it did not comment on leaked information, was totally inadequate in the face of such an onslaught.

But while BBC supporters looked on aghast, internally, BBC news staff were attempting to respond. According to Today presenter Nick Robinson, BBC news executives had “agreed the wording of a press release” explaining that the programme should have made clear an edit had been made, but that at no point was there any “intention to mislead the audience”.

The BBC board refused to sign off on this statement, and the BBC was left looking like it was keeping schtum for possibly nefarious purposes.

The BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, has now finally delivered a statement apologising for an “error of judgement”. He said that the BBC had discussed the corporation’s US election coverage and: “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

Meanwhile, BBC journalists in Washington had to front up at the White House where Trump has declared that BBC journalists “are very dishonest people”.

Trump has now threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion if they do not retract the documentary. As Shah has noted, Trump is “a litigious fellow”.

In July, Paramount settled a prospective lawsuit for US$16 million (£12.1 million) after Trump made a “false editing” accusation against 60 Minutes over an edit on a Kamala Harris interview headline during the last election campaign. Last year he also secured a US$15 million payment from ABC News as part-settlement in a defamation case against that network.

It is hard to imagine a scenario where the BBC would settle a dispute with the US government for cash. But with Trump, one never knows if his posturing might lead a media company to fold. For the BBC, this is a decisive own goal.

Internal politics

Arriving at the BBC this morning, Turness acknowledged the mistake in the Trump edit, but was clear that the BBC was not institutionally biased.

Some critics, however, have pointed the finger at the BBC’s own internal political challenges. Among them is David Yelland, a former editor of the Sun who now presents a BBC podcast. He called Turness and Davie’s resignations a “coup”, attributing it to alleged political bias on the BBC board.

Alongside this drama, BBC journalists such as Nick Robinson, David Sillito and Katie Razzall are carrying out a thorough job of examining the chaos. But a less-reported fact is that it is yet again an outsourced independent production programme that has led to the BBC’s current problems.

October Films Ltd made the film for BBC Panorama, just as it was HOYO Films that made the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. That film was narrated by the 13-year-old son of a Hamas deputy minister of agriculture, something that wasn’t explained to viewers, leading to an Ofcom sanction last October.

However, outsourcing production to an independent company doesn’t outsource the editorial checking, which should have been exhaustive in the case of this Panorama programme.

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Read more:
BBC Gaza documentary: how an editorial blame game overshadowed an important film and destroyed trust

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What’s next?

The BBC must now recruit two high-level executives, just as it should be readying for its 2027 royal charter renewal (major talks over the broadcaster’s future and funding). According to the Today programme, the top contenders are three women: Apple’s Jay Hunt, former Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon and former BBC chief content officer Charlotte Moore. But these are early days.

Some commentators will no doubt call for a “BBC cleanskin” so as to not be tainted by present controversies. But is this wise when the person will be called on to lead such a vastly complex and sprawling media organisation? Tim Davie had no background in journalism before becoming director general, and Deborah Turness had never worked for the BBC before.

The new broom may have to handle similar disputes to those over Gary Lineker’s social media posts or Bob Vylan’s anti-Israel Defense Forces chants at Glastonbury. Perhaps this should be the role of a deputy director, a post that used to exist at the BBC until recently.

It is worth remembering that the most important commodity in journalism is trust. To that end, the BBC continues to top the charts in the UK, according to the annual Reuters Digital News Report. The BBC houses some of the best journalists and news programming available today. The poor handling of this crisis puts all of their reputations at stake.

Colleen Murrell receives has received funding in the past from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán for the Reuters Digital News Report Ireland. She is chair of The Conversation’s UK editorial board.

– ref. Why has the BBC’s director general resigned and what could happen next? – https://theconversation.com/why-has-the-bbcs-director-general-resigned-and-what-could-happen-next-269408

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kirsten Roberts Lyer, Chair, Human Rights Program, Associate Professor, Central European University

Recent accusations that China pressured a UK university into pausing research on alleged human rights violations have raised questions about the state of academic freedom.

In early November 2025, it was reported that Sheffield Hallam University had paused Professor Laura Murphy’s research on Uyghur forced labour in China, later apologised, and restarted the work. Media outlets linked the pause to pressure from Chinese authorities. South Yorkshire Police have referred the allegations on to counter-terrorism police as they are thought to fall under the National Security Act.

A spokesperson for Sheffield Hallam said the pause arose from insurance and other procedural issues and denied any China-related commercial motive.

“We have apologised to Professor Murphy and wish to make clear our commitment to supporting her research and to securing and promoting freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law,” the spokesperson said.

Academic freedom is “the human right to acquire, develop, transmit, apply, and engage with a diversity of knowledge and ideas through research, teaching, learning, and discourse.” When scholarship is restricted or politically steered, the public loses access to evidence and the means to hold power to account.

Academic freedom is a measure of democratic health, and tracks closely with the quality of democratic institutions. Declines often appear before other signs of democratic erosion. Global datasets such as the Academic Freedom Index and V-Dem show a decade of decline across much of the world.

Scholars at Risk, a non-governmental organisation supporting threatened academics, reports similar patterns. Their findings of 395 attacks on scholars, students, and institutions in 49 countries and territories between July 2024 and June 2025 are “indicative of deteriorating global conditions for academic freedom”.

How pressure on academic freedom happens

Pressure on academic freedom is rarely dramatic. In domestic cases, where a government puts pressure on academics in its own country, it often accumulates through policies and decisions that narrow intellectual space and encourage self-censorship.

A familiar playbook targets institutions, academics and students. It includes politicised appointments, selective funding or budget cuts, legal intimidation through strategic lawsuits and travel and conference bans.

Alongside domestic pressures, transnational repression is a rising threat. This is intimidation, surveillance or coercion directed from outside a country’s borders. This is what is alleged in the Sheffield Hallam case.

Transnational repression increasingly targets civil society organisations, journalists, and academia. It undermines democratic life, and reminds us that universities are part of the infrastructure of scrutiny and accountability.

Human rights organisations Freedom House and Amnesty International have documented the experiences of scholars and students from China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and elsewhere working abroad. These scholars have reported monitoring, online harassment and even contact by domestic authorities with family members back home after campus events.

Pressure on academic freedom is a democratic problem first. Wherever it originates, the effect is the same: less evidence in the public sphere.

A societal right

Academic freedom is increasingly recognised as a human right, grounded in article 15 (the right to science) of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. This is an important connection. It underscores the societal importance of freedoms in research, teaching and academic debate.

Its connection to international human rights standards also means that states and institutions have duties to respect, protect and fulfil the right. They must refrain from unlawful interference and prevent third-party pressure. They should take positive measures so teaching and research can proceed without fear.

In England, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 places duties on universities to protect lawful speech. The Office for Students confirms the main duties took effect on 1 August 2025.

Where intimidation on UK soil is state linked, the National Security Act 2023 includes offences of assisting a foreign intelligence service and foreign interference. The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme adds further levers.

For example, it requires the disclosure of political influence directed by foreign powers. It is important that these frameworks are used to enable, not chill, teaching, research, campus debate and external engagement.

What universities can do

The following three steps reflect emerging international standards. Universities need clear policy, structured protection, and transparent escalation, creating workable defences they can implement.

1. Adopt a clear policy on academic freedom and transnational repression

Universities should commit to non-interference in research and teaching. They should have a single confidential reporting channel for intimidation, and protection for diaspora and exiled communities. Make these rules visible in staff and student guidance.

2. Build a protection pipeline

Universities should assess risks for sensitive research or fieldwork, including digital and family exposure. They should assign a case lead, provide legal and security advice, and, where needed, relocate or host threatened scholars. They should embed funding rules that are neutral towards different viewpoints and insert academic freedom clauses in all partnerships.

3. Document and escalate threats

Universities should keep an anonymised log of interference attempts. They should publish funding and partnership registers, and report credible threats to the appropriate authorities.

They should train staff to spot red flags such as pressure through consulates, funders or foreign institutions. University staff responding to threats should act in line with their country’s human rights obligations to protect human rights defenders, including exiled academics.

Academic freedom keeps evidence and ideas in public view. When institutions or authorities yield to pressure, whether foreign or domestic, the loss extends beyond academia. Protecting scholars’ freedom to inquire protects the public’s freedom to know.

Kirsten Roberts Lyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why threats to academic freedom are growing – and how universities can respond to intimidation – https://theconversation.com/why-threats-to-academic-freedom-are-growing-and-how-universities-can-respond-to-intimidation-269121

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Collins, Reader in American Studies and Chair of The British Association for American Studies, King’s College London

For legal reasons, David Adjmi and Will Butler’s play is absolutely not about the recording of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours. But like that famous album, it is a dizzying amalgamation of influences, mercurial talents and creativity that sits among the defining achievements of its generation. And like Fleetwood Mac, too, it is hard to pinpoint precisely what witchy alchemy makes Stereophonic work so well.

Suffice it to say that it does. The play is a masterpiece. A must-see by all accounts. The legendary 13 Tony Award nominations and smash-hit period on Broadway, followed by doubly-extended runs in London’s West End (where I saw it) are fully deserved.

The play follows a group of musicians in their recording studio in late-1970s California putting together an album that, once again, is expressly not Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. For a play that is about a band on the verge of titanic artistic, critical and popular success, the principal theme of the work is failure. Or rather, how to learn and grow from it: how to cut a great track; when to cut and run from a toxic relationship; what to keep or cut from our chequered lives so that we can carry on living.

Some of their rock-star lives seem like a lot of fun, but this really is play about work. The work of music and the work of life itself. Sure, the office might not be cubicles and water coolers. It is more like chez longues and gigantic communal bags of the cocaine (probably the hardest working prop currently on the London stage). Yet this is office politics all the same.

Writer Adjmi’s brilliance is that, for all their rockstar antics, the band in Stereophonic are genuinely labouring for the execution of their vision. At the expense of the health and wellbeing. The beleaguered recording engineer, Grover (Eli Gelb), is in almost every scene working tirelessly at the recording desk. He is the Sisyphus of the soundcheck.

The physical mass of the recording desk placed centre stage takes up much of the space typically reserved for the cast. They teeter tipsily around it. It recalls the omnipresence of the tape recorder driving Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), a work with which Stereophonic has a surprising amount in common. Like Beckett, Adjmi is using recording technology to ruminate on the problem of time, which is where the play transcends its immediate setting and becomes most salient and meaningful.

The stage is split in half with upstage placed behind a glass screen. We can sometimes hear behind it and sometimes cannot. It is a wall. But it is also a stage of its own on which the characters perform. As a metaphor, the staging stands for how in their relentless rock theatricality the characters can’t always communicate. It asks, when does image or spectacle overtake the truth art seeks to reveal to the world?

All this (70s rock bands, heaps of cocaine, beige upholstery, unimpeded sexual license) could be put down to our cultural moment’s obsession with nostalgia – a sign of our being stuck politically and socially. But that would be to miss the point of Stereophonic wholly.

The London theatre scene is awash with jukebox musicals with ropey plots built around forcing famous songs into some weak narrative. These are mostly not musicals so much as tribute acts forced to do skits. Stereophonic channels the nostalgia in a different direction. The songs are not actual Fleetwood Mac songs – but so good is Will Butler’s (of Arcade Fire) score that they could be.

Some of the performances (really performed live by the actors) just soar. This is a nostalgia that does not dwell in the past alone but is pointing forward. It is more like what the late, great critical theorist (following Jacques Derrida) Mark Fisher called “hauntology”.

As the characters disappear from downstage to appear behind the glass wall of the recording booth, this ghostliness is referenced directly. The recording booth makes the actors unreachable. But so does fame and the process of becoming legend. When one of them speaks into the mic it is like someone communicating through the void from the other side.

What makes classic rock so appealing, and such a great subject for a play, is partly the bildungsroman (fiction focused on the growth and development of young people) and crisis central to its story. It’s almost religious. There was no autotuning available to them. There’s no possibility of endlessly recording and recording over. They try to do this, but there are material limits to their endeavours. They have to get it right.

Adjmi’s script suggests that magnetic tape and goodwill can, like a record label’s patience, like our youth itself, run out suddenly and painfully. One day all this hedonism and earthly pleasure will end for them. As it will for us all.

When the label gives the band more time half way through, it is like they have been granted immortality or a stay of execution. Adjmi manages to make the whole enterprise feel as high stakes as a family tragedy.

Indeed, family (found or otherwise) looms large in the minds of the musicians. Singer Holly and bassist Reg’s marriage is breaking down, drummer Simon misses the kids he has neglected for a year recording and boozing in Los Angeles, singer and guitarist Peter reveals the origin of his perfectionism in a conflict with his Olympic-swimmer brother.

The script works by transforming the musicians’ meaningless, very stoned, profusions of words into moments of sudden beauty and clarity. Their druggy murmurings come suddenly to resemble a stunning lyrical murmuration of form and idea.

This technique replays in microcosm the play’s engagement with the surprising human process of discovery and, let’s call it, genius, that happens within the fold of limited mortal time. This is not just a play about rock. It is so much more.

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Michael Collins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Stereophonic: this play about an ailing rock band is a must-see masterpiece – https://theconversation.com/stereophonic-this-play-about-an-ailing-rock-band-is-a-must-see-masterpiece-269227

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aimee Grant, Associate Professor in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University

The term “neurodiversity” is still relatively new. Even now, there’s no firm agreement among experts about what it should include. Does it refer only to neurodevelopmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia? Or should it stretch further, to include mental health conditions too?

Until recently, no one had asked neurodivergent people themselves what they thought about the language used to describe them. So, we decided to do just that. Our new research found a mixture of positive and negative views about words like “neurodiversity” and “neurodivergent”.

Neurodiversity refers to the different ways in which people think and behave. Just as everyone has an ethnicity, everyone has a neurotype. Around 15% of people are thought to be neurodivergent, meaning their brains function differently from what society considers “typical”. The remaining 85% are neurotypical.

In our survey of more than 900 neurodivergent adults across the UK, almost everyone had heard of the word “neurodiversity”. Also, 74% said they used related language, such as “neurodivergent”, to describe themselves.

One finding stood out in particular: how often the language of neurodiversity is used incorrectly. The word “neurodiverse” refers to a group that includes both neurotypical and neurodivergent people. In other words, it’s a mix of different brain types. But it’s often used to describe individuals or groups of neurodivergent people, when the correct term would be “neurodivergent”.

For many participants, this mistake was more than a harmless slip of the tongue. Some described it as deeply irritating, while others saw it as a warning sign. When an expert or organisation got it wrong, especially one claiming to be inclusive, it could be seen as a “red flag”. Some participants thought this was a sign that they used fashionable inclusive language while failing to change exclusionary practices.

Participants also felt differently about how useful the term “neurodivergent” actually is. Some described it as a “safe umbrella” – a simple, inclusive way to talk about their identity without listing multiple diagnoses. One person explained that it saved them from reeling off a “laundry list” of conditions.

Others said it felt safer than naming specific conditions such as autism or ADHD, which can still carry stigma. Saying “I’m neurodivergent” offered a way to share something about themselves while reducing the risk of a negative reaction. It also helped people who were waiting for a diagnosis or who self-identified as neurodivergent but didn’t yet have formal recognition.

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Read more:
Why it’s time to rethink the notion of an autism ‘spectrum’

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But not everyone found the word helpful. Some said it was too broad to mean anything and didn’t communicate their day-to-day challenges or support needs. Others pointed out that many people still don’t understand what “neurodivergent” means, making it ineffective as a way to explain who they are.

There were also concerns that broadening the language could unintentionally increase stigma towards specific conditions, such as ADHD, by lumping everyone together under one label.

Language shapes how we see the world but also how the world sees us. Our research shows that while umbrella terms like neurodivergent can create community and belonging, they shouldn’t replace more specific identities such as autism or ADHD. Both have an important place.

Instead of replacing those words, we should focus on reducing prejudice and discrimination against neurodivergent people, and also on using language that reflects respect and understanding.

Getting it right

As language choices are deeply personal, when you are talking to a neurodivergent person, it may be appropriate to mirror their language choice.

That said, a general rule is if you’re going to use language around neurodiversity, it’s important to use it correctly. Many neurodivergent people find misuse frustrating, especially when it comes from people or organisations who claim to champion inclusion. To keep it simple:

“Neurodiverse” describes groups that include both neurodivergent and neurotypical people – you may find it helpful to think that “neurodiverse” includes everybody in the universe. “Neurodivergent” refers to individuals or groups of people whose brains work differently, for example, autistic people or those with ADHD or dyslexia.

As one participant put it, getting it wrong might just make a neurodivergent person want to hit you with a dictionary.

Aimee Grant receives funding from The Wellcome Trust and UKRI.

Jennifer Leigh is a co-director of LLB Inclusive Employment Ltd. She has received funding from UKRI and The Royal Society of Chemistry Diversity & Inclusion Fund.

Amy Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What autistic people – and those with ADHD and dyslexia – really think about the word ‘neurodiversity’ – https://theconversation.com/what-autistic-people-and-those-with-adhd-and-dyslexia-really-think-about-the-word-neurodiversity-264920

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Merav Amir, Reader of Human Geography, Queen’s University Belfast

Israel’s top military prosecutor, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, was arrested recently in a case which further reveals the extent of mistreatment of Palestinian detainees and the impunity enjoyed by Israeli security forces. The arrest of Tomer-Yerushalmi, who was, until her resignation last week, Israel’s military advocate general, is the latest development in a dramatic scandal that has been unfolding since February 2024.

It started with a complaint filed by a doctor who had served in the medical facility next to the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel. Professor Yoel Donchin reported that a detainee appeared to have been an victim of a severe assault. The detainee arrived at the hospital showing signs of beating and possible brutal sexual assault.

Following Donchin’s report and a subsequent investigation, a group of reservists from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were arrested on suspicion of abusing the Palestinian. When Israeli military police arrived at Sde Teiman to detain the soldiers, protesters forced entry into the Sde Teiman camp in an attempt to stop the arrest. When that failed, rioters – including armed soldiers on active duty – attempted to break into the military police headquarters and free the arrested soldiers.

This drew attention to the fact that allegations of torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners and detainees have become common in Israeli incarceration facilities since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 2023. Yet, despite ample evidence against Israeli soldiers, prison warders and interrogators from Israel’s security services (Shabak), there have been few attempts to hold anyone accountable.

In some respects, this lack of accountability is consistent with what has long been Israel’s approach regarding violence towards Palestinians. Despite being a country apparently bound by the rule of law, cases in which Palestinians have been mistreated, abused, tortured and killed have rarely been addressed by the Israeli legal authorities. Soldiers and Shabak interrogators enjoy a de-facto impunity for committing crimes against Palestinians, including torture.

This effective impunity exists despite Israel having robust systems to ensure prosecutions. For example, the Ministry of Justice has a dedicated unit to address complaints against Shabak interrogators pertaining to allegations of torture. Yet, out of more than 1,450 complaints filed against Shabak interrogators between 1992 and early 2023, criminal investigations have been opened in just three cases. None have led to indictments.

We argue that these mechanisms of accountability were never primarily motivated by concerns with the rule of law. Nor were they about holding members of Israel’s security forces accountable for crimes committed against Palestinians. They were always mainly a facade, motivated, to a great extent, by an attempt to protect Israel and its security personnel from prosecutions in international courts.

The jurisdiction of international courts is limited by the principle of complementarity. This means that the International Criminal Court (ICC) can only intervene when complainants cannot get justice in domestic courts. By showing that it has an independent legal system to which Palestinians can turn, and which can potentially hold perpetrators accountable, Israel can protect its security personnel from charges by the ICC.

Nevertheless, our research into the use of torture by Israel has found evidence to suggest that this system – weak as it was in terms of accountability – actually did restrain Israeli interrogators.

The restraining effects of these accountability mechanisms became even clearer when they all but ceased to function after October 7 2023. For example, a study published in September, which examined complaints lodged by Palestinians with Israeli non-governmental organisations, found “diverse forms of reported violence that could potentially constitute torture”. Ample testimonies suggest what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called a “rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy”.

The loosening of the reins since October 2023 can be explained, to a large extent, by the Hamas attack itself. The viciousness of the attack was perceived by many in Israel as changing the rules. In the eyes of many Israelis, it legitimised a response which is unconstrained by domestic or international law.

But this process began prior to Hamas’ attack. Israel’s legal mechanisms of accountability had already been weakened on the eve of October of 2023. This is due, in large part, to the judicial overhaul which was launched by the current Israeli government in January of that year.

From the moment the Netanyahu government assumed power at the end of 2022, it has done all it could to dismantle the independence of the Israeli judicial system. Its targeting of the judiciary was driven, in no small part, by the wish to remove anything that could stand in the way of expanding settlements, exercising harsher violence against Palestinians and, ultimately, annexing the West Bank.

The targeting of this system has eroded its ability to withstand pressures. It has effectively left it unable to investigate war crimes and press charges against security personnel. The demise of this system played a central part in unleashing the unprecedented levels of Israeli violence against Palestinians witnessed over the past two years.

Finding a scapegoat

It’s against this backdrop that the resignation and arrest of Tomer-Yerushalmi can be understood as part of the bigger story of the seminal change in Israel’s approach towards accountability.

When word got out in July of last year that she was planning to press charges against those responsible for the assault on the detainee in Sde Teiman, the military lawyer was attacked by the government and its supporters. She was painted as a traitor by ministers and in the right-wing media. Regular demonstrations were held outside her home and, worse, she was assaulted by proponents of the accused soldiers on the streets. Security around her had to be tightened after she started receiving death threats.

Trying to protect herself and her team from these attacks, Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked CCTV footage of the assault in Sde Teiman to the press. In her resignation letter, she wrote that she authorised the leak in an attempt to counter the false propaganda directed against the military law enforcement authorities.

She told a meeting of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee that investigating allegations of abuse of this nature was a show of strength rather than of weakness. The independence of the military justice system was, she said, “essential to the state’s arguments in international tribunals”. She added: “There are countries for which the question of whether they sell and supply us with munitions is [determined by] whether we investigate when we receive a complaint.”

She seems to believe that Israel’s legal system must be seen to act when it encounters cases as severe as this. But in Israel after October 7 this appears no longer to be the case. As the response by Netanyahu and other ministers suggest, Israel is no longer interested in maintaining even this facade of accountability.

The leaked video prompted public outrage. But the government has managed to shift the focus away from the alleged atrocities the soldiers committed and onto the leaking of the footage. Netanyahu called this “perhaps the most severe propaganda attack against the State of Israel” in its history”.

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Read more:
Israeli doctors reveal their conflicted stories of treating Palestinian prisoners held in notorious ‘black site’ Sde Teiman

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The official allegations against Tomer-Yerushalmi include tempering with the committee set to investigate the link, and providing a false statement to Israel’s High Court of Justice concerning the affair. But even before the video was leaked – and well before Tomer-Yerushalmi was revealed as the leaker – Netanyahu’s far-right government colleagues were attacking the investigation itself.

Minister of national security Itamar Ben Gvir called it “shameful” and demanded “a full backing for our hero soldiers”. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called the abuse allegations “blood libels against the State of Israel” – a reference to antisemitic lies told about Jewish practices in medieval Europe.

It seems, then, that Tomer-Yerushalmi is being targeted not for the offences she is now investigated for. She is rather attacked for one of the very few cases in which she decided to act in accordance with her role.

The tribulations of the first woman to ever serve as the military’s most senior lawyer must therefore be understood as part of a broader story. This is about the Netanyahu goverment’s efforts to rid Israel of its mechanisms of accountability while also bringing the judiciary under executive control.

In the meantime, the victim of this gruesome assault is still suffering from its aftermath. His injuries have left him with several medical complications and permanently disabled. He was released back to Gaza in the last hostage deal. He was not asked to provide his testimony prior to his release.

Merav Amir receives funding from the ESRC.

Hagar Kotef receives funding from the ESRC.

– ref. Arrest of top whistleblower shows extent of Israeli impunity over torture of Palestinian detainees – https://theconversation.com/arrest-of-top-whistleblower-shows-extent-of-israeli-impunity-over-torture-of-palestinian-detainees-266489