A brand new series of Have I Got News For You aired on TV recently but the first episode didn’t quite go to plan, forcing the show’s episode to be axed from BBC iPlayer
Victoria also went on social media to correct the error herself(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Hat Trick)
Have I Got News For You’s recent false claim has since been blamed on “digital natives”. The first episode in the new series of the iconic show included a segment where presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell incorrectly claimed that a contract to roll out the Government’s new ID cards has been handed to Multiverse.
Multiverse is a company run by the son of former prime minister Tony Blair, Euan. Jimmy Mulville, who is the founder of the show’s producer Hat Trick Productions, spoke about the mistake.
Speaking on Insiders: The TV Podcast: “What was interesting was this, and this is why I want to talk about it, is that because we now have generations of younger producers who are coming into the business, and they are digital natives, they’re called.
“They’re marinated in social media, and I said, ‘where did we get this story?’, and apparently, the story was put on by a freelance journalist, I won’t mention her name, a freelance journalist who put on her Twitter feed this story about Euan Blair and ID cards.
“And the producer said, ‘well, it had nearly three million views that day’, so it must be true, and no one questioned it. I went, ‘ok, and did we verify anywhere else?’, and then faces became very red around the table, and god bless them, they’re a fantastic team, and they felt terrible about this, really, really awful.
“Which is the right response, and so we’ve now got a new rule, we don’t take stories off social media.” He said that “normally” his team would make sure they had a second source before writing the script for the show but this time that didn’t happen.
The post which is referred to in the podcast is still on X which has been viewed almost three million times in total.
Mulville added: “It’s not defamatory in any way, in fact, the lawyers didn’t pick up on it, our lawyers and the BBC lawyers, didn’t pick up on it.
“It’s a low level mistake, but nevertheless, it is indicative, and it was good to spot it, because what you wouldn’t want to do is to make some kind of egregious claim about somebody and it is defamatory.”
The BBC apologised for the mistake after it was broadcast and the episode was removed from iPlayer last weekend. It was then edited and re-uploaded with the incorrect information removed.
Meanwhile, presenter Victoria also went on social media to correct the error herself as well.
TV presenter Cat Deeley is reportedly feeling anxious about her return to This Morning as she faces backlash and blame over her split from husband Patrick Kielty
22:51, 30 Aug 2025Updated 22:51, 30 Aug 2025
Cat Deeley anxious about return to This Morning after Patrick Kielty split blame(Image: ITV)
Cat Deeley is preparing for her return to ITV’s This Morning after the summer break, but behind the scenes, she’s reportedly feeling unsettled as she quietly navigates the emotional fallout from her marriage ending.
The 48-year-old presenter announced in July that she and husband Patrick Kielty had separated after 13 years together. The former couple share two young sons, Milo, eight, and James, six, and while they have asked for privacy, speculation around the reasons for their split has continued to swirl.
According to a source close to the star, Cat has no intention of bringing up her personal life on air when she reunites with co-host Ben Shephard. “Cat feels anxious ahead of her first day back after announcing the bombshell news of her split during her break,” the source said.
“She has decided NOT to mention the breakdown of her marriage on screen and instead wants to keep the chatty dialogue between her and Ben upbeat and positive for viewers.”
While Cat and Patrick released a united statement to confirm the separation stressing that “there is no other party involved”, those close to her say she has been quietly hurt by the public reaction, particularly around a deeply personal family event.
“She has been hurt that people who don’t even know her have judged her for not going to her mother-in-law’s funeral in March,” the source told The Sun.
Cat and Patrick split after 13 years together
“Even people from within Patrick’s family and inner circle who don’t know her well have criticised her for that and made out that it was the reason for the split when that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The suggestion that she’s to blame for the end of the marriage has reportedly been painful.
“Cat is generally a really positive person but it hurts her to have people piling the blame onto her when this is a painful situation for them both,” the insider added.
Despite the pressure, both Cat and Patrick have made it clear that their focus remains on co-parenting their children.
Cat hosts the daytime show with Ben Shephard
Their joint statement read: “We have taken the decision to end our marriage and are now separated.
“There is no other party involved. We will continue to be united as loving parents to our children and would therefore kindly ask for our family privacy to be respected. There will be no further comment.”
Cat is expected to keep things light when she returns to her presenting role on This Morning and is reportedly hoping that her personal life and marriage split will not be brought up upon her return to TV screens.
At least three people have been killed and several injured in a fire blamed on protesters in Sulawesi island.
Published On 30 Aug 202530 Aug 2025
At least three people have been killed and five were injured in a fire blamed on protesters at a regional parliament building in eastern Indonesia, as widespread demonstrations rock the Southeast Asian nation.
Indonesia’s disaster management agency, in a statement on Saturday, confirmed the deaths following the Friday evening fire in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, some 1,600km (994 miles) east of the capital, Jakarta.
“From last night’s incident, three people died. Two died at the scene, and one died at the hospital. They were trapped in the burning building,” the secretary of Makassar city council, Rahmat Mappatoba, told the AFP news agency on Saturday.
He accused protesters of storming the office to set the building on fire.
Indonesia’s official Antara news agency also said the victims were reported to have been trapped in the burning building, while the disaster agency said two of the injured were hurt while jumping out of the building.
Several people injured in the fire are being treated in hospital, officials said.
The fire has since been extinguished.
Indonesia has been rocked by protests across major cities, including Jakarta, since Friday, after footage spread of a motorcycle delivery driver being run over and killed by a police tactical vehicle in earlier rallies over low wages and perceived lavish perks for government officials.
In West Java’s capital city of Bandung, commercial buildings, including a bank and a restaurant, were also reportedly burned on Friday during demonstrations.
In Jakarta, hundreds of demonstrators massed outside the headquarters of the elite Mobile Brigade Corp (Brimob) paramilitary police unit that was blamed for running over motorcycle delivery driver Affan Kuniawan.
Protesters threw stones and firecrackers, and police responded with tear gas as a group tried to tear down the gates of the unit, which is notorious for its heavy-handed tactics.
On Saturday, a local online news site reported that young protesters had massed in Jakarta and were heading to the Brimob headquarters before they were stopped by a barricade.
Police said they had detained seven officers for questioning in connection with the driver’s death. The number of protesters injured in the violence is reported to be more than 200, according to the Tempo news site.
The protests are the biggest and most violent of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s tenure, and are a key test less than a year into his presidency.
Prabowo has urged calm, ordered an investigation into the unrest, visited the family of the slain delivery driver, while also warning that the demonstrations “were leading to anarchic actions”.
Student protesters face off with riot police during a protest outside Jakarta’s police headquarters in the capital on Friday [Mast Irham/EPA]
As authorities identified the shooter in the deadly attack on CDC headquarters as a Georgia man who blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a union representing workers at the agency is demanding that federal officials condemn vaccine misinformation, saying it was putting scientists at risk.
The union said that Friday’s shooting at the Atlanta offices of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which left a police officer dead, was not a random incident and that it “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2883, said the CDC and leadership of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must provide a “clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation.”
The 30-year-old gunman, who died during the event, had also tried to get into the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta but was stopped by guards before driving to a pharmacy across the street and opening fire, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Saturday.
The man, identified as Patrick Joseph White, was armed with five guns, including at least one long gun, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
Here’s what to know about the shooting and the continuing investigation:
An attack on a public health institution
Police say White opened fire outside the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday, leaving bullet marks in windows across the sprawling campus. At least four CDC buildings were hit, agency Director Susan Monarez said on X.
DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose was mortally wounded while responding. Rose, 33, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan, had graduated from the police academy in March.
White was found on the second floor of a building across the street from the CDC campus and died at the scene, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. “We do not know at this time whether that was from officers or if it was self-inflicted,” he said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the crime scene was “complex” and the investigation would take “an extended period of time.”
CDC union’s call
The American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2883, is calling for a statement condemning vaccine misinformation from the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency is led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who rose to public prominence on healthcare issues as a leading vaccine skeptic, sometimes advancing false information.
A public statement by federal officials condemning misinformation is needed to help prevent violence against scientists, the union said in a news release.
“Their leadership is critical in reinforcing public trust and ensuring that accurate, science-based information prevails,” the union said.
Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, has said Kennedy is directly responsible for the villainization of the CDC’s workforce through “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust.”
Kennedy reached out to staff on Saturday, saying that “no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.”
Thousands of people who work on critical disease research are employed on the campus. The union said some staff members were huddled in various buildings until late at night, including more than 90 young children who were locked down inside the CDC’s Clifton School.
The union said CDC staff should not be required to immediately return to work after experiencing such a traumatic event. In a statement released Saturday, it said windows and buildings should first be fixed and made “completely secure.”
“Staff should not be required to work next to bullet holes,” the union said. “Forcing a return under these conditions risks re-traumatizing staff by exposing them to the reminders of the horrific shooting they endured.”
The union also called for “perimeter security on all campuses” until the investigation is fully completed and shared with staff.
Shooter’s focus on COVID-19 vaccine
White’s father, who contacted police and identified his son as the possible shooter, said White had been upset over the death of his dog and had become fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a law enforcement official.
A neighbor of White told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that White “seemed like a good guy” but spoke with her multiple times about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines in unrelated conversations.
“He was very unsettled, and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,” Nancy Hoalst told the newspaper. “He emphatically believed that.”
But Hoalst said she never believed White would be violent: “I had no idea he thought he would take it out on the CDC.”
Houayxay, Laos – Fishing went well today for Khon, a Laotian fisherman, who lives in a floating house built from plastic drums, scrap metal and wood on the Mekong River.
“I caught two catfish,” the 52-year-old tells Al Jazeera proudly, lifting his catch for inspection.
Khon’s simple houseboat contains all he needs to live on this mighty river: A few metal pots, a fire to cook food on and to keep warm by at night, as well as some nets and a few clothes.
What Khon does not always have is fish.
“There are days when I catch nothing. It’s frustrating,” he said.
“The water levels change all the time because of the dams. And now they say the river is polluted, too. Up there in Myanmar, they dig in the mountains. Mines, or something like that. And all that toxic stuff ends up here,” he adds.
Khon lives in Laos’s northwestern Bokeo province on one of the most scenic stretches of the Mekong River as it meanders through the heart of the Golden Triangle – the borderland shared by Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
This remote region has long been infamous for drug production and trafficking.
Now it is caught up in the global scramble for gold and rare earth minerals, crucial for the production of new technologies and used in everything from smartphones to electric cars.
A fisherman along the Mekong River in Bokeo province, Laos [Al Jazeera/Fabio Polese]
Over the past year, rivers in this region, such as the Ruak, Sai and Kok – all tributaries of the Mekong – have shown abnormal levels of arsenic, lead, nickel and manganese, according to Thailand’s Pollution Control Department.
Arsenic, in particular, has exceeded World Health Organization safety limits, prompting health warnings for riverside communities.
These tributaries feed directly into the Mekong and contamination has spread to parts of the river’s mainstream. The effects have been observed in Laos, prompting the Mekong River Commission to declare the situation “moderately serious”.
“Recent official water quality testing clearly indicates that the Mekong River on the Thai-Lao border is contaminated with arsenic,” Pianporn Deetes, Southeast Asia campaigns director for the advocacy group International Rivers, told Al Jazeera.
“This is alarming and just the first chapter of the crisis, if the mining continues,” Pianporn said.
“Fishermen have recently caught diseased, young catfish. This is a matter of regional public health, and it needs urgent action from governments,” she added.
The source of the heavy metals contamination is believed to be upriver in Myanmar’s Shan State, where dozens of unregulated mines have sprung up as the search for rare earth minerals intensifies globally.
Laotian fisherman Khon, 52, throws a net from the bank of the Mekong River without catching anything [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said at least a dozen, and possibly as many as 20, mines focused on gold and rare earth extraction have been established in southern Shan State over the past year alone.
Myanmar is now four years into a civil war and lawlessness reigns in the border area, which is held by two powerful ethnic armed groups: the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the United Wa State Army (UWSA).
Myanmar’s military government has “no real control”, Abuza said, apart from holding Tachileik town, the region’s main border crossing between Thailand and Myanmar.
Neither the RCSS nor the UWSA are “fighting the junta”, he said, explaining how both are busy enriching themselves from the chaos in the region and the rush to open mines.
“In this vacuum, mining has exploded – likely with Chinese traders involved. The military in Naypyidaw can’t issue permits or enforce environmental rules, but they still take their share of the profits,” Abuza said.
‘Alarming decline’
Pollution from mining is not the Mekong River’s only ailment.
For years, the health of the river has been degraded by a growing chain of hydropower dams that have drastically altered its natural rhythm and ecology.
In the Mekong’s upper reaches, inside China, almost a dozen huge hydropower dams have been built, including the Xiaowan and Nuozhadu dams, which are said to be capable of holding back a huge amount of the river’s flow.
Further downstream, Laos has staked its economic future on hydropower.
According to the Mekong Dam Monitor, which is hosted by the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, DC, at least 75 dams are now operational on the Mekong’s tributaries, and two in Laos – Xayaburi and Don Sahong – are directly on the mainstream river.
As a rule, hydropower is a cleaner alternative to coal.
But the rush to dam the Mekong is driving another type of environmental crisis.
According to WWF and the Mekong River Commission, the Mekong River basin once supported about 60 million people and provided up to 25 percent of the world’s freshwater fish catch.
Today, one in five fish species in the Mekong is at risk of extinction, and the river’s sediment and nutrient flows have been severely reduced, as documented in a 2023–2024 Mekong Dam Monitor report and research by International Rivers.
“The alarming decline in fish populations in the Mekong is an urgent wake-up call for action to save these extraordinary – and extraordinarily important – species, which underpin not only the region’s societies and economies but also the health of the Mekong’s freshwater ecosystems,” the WWF’s Asia Pacific Regional Director Lan Mercado said at the launch of a 2024 report titled The Mekong’s Forgotten Fishes.
In Houayxay, the capital of Bokeo province, the markets appeared mostly absent of fish during a recent visit.
At Kad Wang View, the town’s main market, the fish stalls were nearly deserted.
“Maybe this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow,” said Mali, a vendor in her 60s. In front of her, Mali had arranged her small stock of fish in a circle, perhaps hoping to make the display look fuller for potential customers.
At another market, Sydonemy, just outside Houayxay town, the story was the same. The fish stalls were bare.
“Sometimes the fish come, sometimes they don’t. We just wait,” another vendor said.
“There used to be giant fish here,” recalled Vilasai, 53, who comes from a fishing family but now works as a taxi driver.
“Now the river gives us little. Even the water for irrigation – people are scared to use it. No one knows if it’s still clean,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the pollution from Myanmar’s mines.
A fish seller at Kad Wang View, the main market in Houayxay, where stalls were nearly empty during a recent visit [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
‘The river used to be predictable’
Ian G Baird, professor of geography and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said upstream dams – especially those in China – have had serious downstream effects in northern Thailand and Laos.
“The ecosystem and the lives that depend on the river evolved to adapt to specific hydrological conditions,” Baird told Al Jazeera.
“But since the dams were built, those conditions have changed dramatically. There are now rapid water level fluctuations in the dry season, which used to be rare, and this has negative impacts on both the river and the people,” he said.
Another major effect is the reversal of the river’s natural cycle.
“Now there is more water in the dry season and less during the rainy season. That reduces flooding and the beneficial ecological effects of the annual flood pulse,” Baird explained.
“The dams hold water during the rainy season and release it in the dry season to maximise energy output and profits. But that also kills seasonally flooded forests and disrupts the river’s ecological function,” he said.
Bun Chan, 45, lives with his wife Nanna Kuhd, 40, on a floating house near Houayxay. He fishes while his wife sells whatever he catches at the local market.
On a recent morning, he cast his net again and again – but for nothing.
“Looks like I won’t catch anything today,” Bun Chan told Al Jazeera as he pulled up his empty net.
“The other day I caught a few, but we didn’t sell them. We’re keeping them in cages in the water, so at least we have something to eat if I don’t catch more,” he said.
Fisherman Hom Phan steers his boat on the Mekong River [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
Hom Phan has been a fisherman on the Mekong his entire life.
He steers his wooden boat across the river, following a route he knows by instinct. In some parts of the river, the current is strong enough now to drag everything under, the 67-year-old says.
All around him, the silence is broken only by the chug of his small outboard engine and the calls of distant birds.
“The river used to be predictable. Now we don’t know when it will rise or fall,” Hom Phan said.
“Fish can’t find their spawning grounds. They’re disappearing. And we might too, if nothing changes,” he told Al Jazeera.
Evening approaches in Houayxay, and Khon, the fisherman, rolls up his nets and prepares dinner in his floating home.
As he waits for the fire to catch to cook a meal, he quietly contemplates the great river he lives on.
Despite the dams in China, the pollution from mines in neighbouring Myanmar, and the increasing difficulty in landing the catch he relies on to survive, Khon was outwardly serene as he considered his next day of fishing.
With his eyes fixed on the waters that flowed deeply beneath his home, he said with a smile: “We try again tomorrow.”
The US football league has previously faced legal challenges over its failure to address players’ concussions.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that a gunman who killed five people, including himself, sought out the headquarters of the National Football League (NFL), which he blamed for the brain injuries he suffered from.
Adams said on Tuesday that a note carried by the shooter, identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura, suggests his target was the NFL.
“The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy], a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports,” Adams told CBS News. “He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury.”
But Tamura appears to have arrived at the wrong floor of a New York City office tower and instead opened fire in the offices of a real estate firm, on top of shooting people in the ground-floor lobby.
Police officers work near the scene of a shooting in Manhattan on July 28 [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]
The NFL has previously faced litigation relating to concussions suffered by football players.
The organisation, which oversees professional US football, has denied any link between conditions like CTE and its sport, but it has nevertheless paid out more than $1bn to settle concussion-related lawsuits.
Monday’s shooting has also renewed debate about mass shootings and access to firearms in the US. Tamura reportedly entered the building with an AR-15-style rifle.
The NFL’s headquarters are located in a skyscraper that it shares with other firms.
Tamara is believed to have started shooting as he entered the lobby of the skyscraper. Then, police believe he took the wrong elevator, arriving at the 33rd floor, which contained the offices of Rudin Management, a real estate firm.
There, he opened fire once more and then took his own life.
Among those killed in the shooting was a 36-year-old police officer named Didarul Islam, who had come to the US from Bangladesh and had been on the force for three years.
Other victims include security guard Aland Etienne, Julia Hyman of Rudin Management, and an executive at the BlackRock investment firm, Wesley LePatner.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stated in a memo that there would be an “increased security presence” at the organisation’s offices over the coming weeks.
Tamura is a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, with a history of mental health issues. He never played in the NFL, but he did play football in high school.
The news outlet Bloomberg reported that Tamura’s note alleges that his football career was cut short by a brain injury.
The note also called for his brain to be studied. CTE can only be diagnosed through an autopsy.
A turtle on the runway caused a small private plane crash that killed 2 and seriously injured another person at North Carolina’s Sugar Valley Airport, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB said the pilot lifted one the plane’s wheels to avoid a turtle when he was advised it was on the runway. File Photo by Chris Bjuland/NTSB/UPI | License Photo
June 20 (UPI) — A turtle on the runway caused a small private plane crash that killed two and seriously injured another person at Sugar Valley Airport in North Carolina, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
An NTSB statement said the crash occurred June 3 near Farmington, N,C.. As the plane was landing, the pilot was advised there was a turtle on the runway.
“The pilot landed about 1,400 feet down the 2,424-foot runway and then lifted the right main wheel to avoid the turtle,” the NTSB statement said.
The communications system operator heard the pilot advance the throttle after raising the plane’s right wheel. The operator then lost sight of the plane, according to the report.
The NTSB said a man cutting grass at the end of the runway saw the pilot raise the right wheel to avoid the turtle. The man said the wings of the plane began to rock back and forth.
“Then the airplane took off again, but he lost site of the airplane when it passed behind a hangar,” the NTSB said. “The airplane disappeared just over the trees on the northeast side of the runway and then he heard a loud crash and saw smoke.”
According to investigators, the airplane crashed in a heavily forested area roughly 225 feet northeast of the departure end of the runway.
“The airplane was wedged between several trees and remained in one piece except for a few pieces of fabric that were found in an adjacent stream next to the accident site,” the NTSB statement said.
“The fabric on the fuselage, cowling and wings was completely burned off and the airplane frame was visible.”
Israel launched a campaign against former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after he blamed the Israelis for the breakdown of his mission to achieve an interim agreement with Egypt following the 1973 war, according to declassified British documents
The documents, unearthed by MEMO in the British National Archives, showed that the Israeli government lobbied US Congressmen to turn American opinion against Kissinger, accusing him of “delivering” Israel to Egypt and “humiliating” Israeli ministers.
In late March 1975, Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt collapsed. Although he initially avoided publicly assigning blame, he privately told his UK counterpart, James Callaghan, that Israeli leaders were primarily responsible. Kissinger argued that the Israelis had “locked themselves into an inflexible position on non-belligerency,” that “wouldn’t allow them to escape”. He also informed his British counterpart that he “warned the Israelis once the step-by-step process had broken down the situation might change rapidly to their disadvantage”.
Egypt publicly declared that Kissinger’s approach had failed due to Israeli intransigence, specifically their insistence on non-belligerency, which Egypt rejected before a comprehensive settlement involving all aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the Palestinian issue, is reached.
Following the breakdown, the administration of President Gerald Ford began a comprehensive reassessment of its Middle East policy. The US National Security Council (NSC) informed the British embassy that the review “will be far reaching and will include an examination of military and economic assistance to Israel” and focusing on “principles underlying US policy rather than on tactical considerations”.
Although the Ford Administration avoided publicly blaming either party, US media reports suggested that Kissinger viewed Israel as primarily responsible for the failure. This impression was reinforced when it was revealed that President Ford had sent a strongly worded letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, criticising Israel’s inflexibility before the breakdown of the negotiations.
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) files show that the US NSC told British Ambassador Peter Ramsbotham “in confidence” that Ford’s message to Rabin had been “very tough” and had referred critically to Israeli stubbornness during the negotiations.
Ramsbotham reported that while the Israeli embassy denied “in the strongest possible terms” any responsibility for the failed talks, support for Israel in the US “will come under increasing critical scrutiny.”
Relations between Kissinger and Israel deteriorated further. British Ambassador to Israel William B. J. Ledwidge observed increasing distrust toward Kissinger in the Israeli press, a sentiment he believed was encouraged by Israeli leaders. Ledwidge reported the relations were “in the process of becoming distinctly worse than the relations between Israel and the United States administration”. He assessed that this was “clearly inspired by briefing from Israel’s leaders”.
In a highly secret report, Ledwidge noted that the Israelis were “making no secret of the fact that Kissinger is angry with them for their stubbornness in the recent negotiations and President Ford agrees with him”.
After talking to “enough of well-informed” Israelis, Ledwidge concluded that Israel’s leaders were “worried by the strength of the disapproval which is being expressed by Washington”. “In the present situation the fact of Kissinger’s anger with Israel is perhaps more important than the justice of accusations against them”, the ambassador added.
Leon Dulzin, then treasurer of the Jewish Agency and a Likud leader, also complained to the ambassador that there as “very little negotiation” during Kissinger’s shuttle accusing the top US diplomat of aiming at “persuading the Israelis to give Sadat what he wanted”. Dulzin, a former Israeli cabinet minister and trusted by leading Zionists overseas, added that Kissinger “had never really accepted the proposition that Israel was entitled to any price in return beyond a continuation of American economic and military aid and general goodwill”.
A satirical drawing showing Israel pandering to Henry Kissinger of the United States while Egypt’s President Sadat gets away with the oil rich Sinai desert. [David Rubinger/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images]
An Israeli source close to Rabin told the ambassador that the Israeli prime minister believed that Kissinger “had tried to deliver the Israelis to Sadat” and he (Kissinger) “had become angry when he found that it would not work”. Rabin came to the conclusion that “he only wished he could talk directly to the Egyptians” without Kissinger’s go-between.
At a dinner with visiting US Congressmen, Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister, accused Kissinger of “humiliating” him, complaining that he played role in delaying his important visit to the US. Peres asked the Congressmen to “say as much (about Kissinger claimed behaviour) when they returned to Washington”.
Another player was Yehoshua Rabinowitz, then Israeli minister of finance who was also informed by Washington that he must postpone his visit to discuss economic aid yet once more. Sources told the UK ambassador that Rabinowitz understood that he will not be received until the re-assessment of American Middle East policy was completed. Rabinowitz detected the “hand of Kissinger in the repeated delays of his mission”, the sources said.
The dispatches from the British embassy in Tell Aviv indicated that the Israelis were talking “as if they were convinced that Kissinger himself is the chief organiser of the present wave of American displeasure which has reached such heights”.
Senior official in Israeli Foreign Ministry Yeshayahu Anug strongly criticised Kissinger in a conversation with the UK ambassador. He said “for the first time we saw him (Kissinger) behaving like a Jew”. Anug argued that when the shuttle went wrong, Kissinger “behaved as if he had been personally betrayed by the Israelis and lost his cool completely”.
In his assessment, the ambassador concluded that many Israelis “feel that the Zionist State does indeed irritate Kissinger”.
The documents also reveal that some Israeli figures questioned Kissinger’s personal attitude toward their country. According to Ledwidge, the Israelis who knew Kissinger believed when Israel was founded in 1948, he regarded it as “an aberration that could not be last”. They acknowledged that he changed his mind later. But Kissinger had been criticised because since the 1967 war, he has always been convinced that Israel “would be obliged to evacuate all the territories she had occupied as a result of the pressure of international opinion”.
An account of a secret briefing Kissinger gave to Jewish leaders in December 1973 showed him making harsh comments about Israel’s military performance during the Yom Kippur War and emphasising the limits of US support.
According to this account, shown to the British ambassador by an Israeli diplomatic official “in strict confidence”, Kissinger “was brutally unsympathetic to Israel throughout his briefing”. He was quoted as saying “Israel had lost the Yom Kippur war strategically and that even if she had surrounded and defeated the Third Egyptian Army, she would not have reversed the verdict”.
“If there were another war, the US might not be able, even if she were willing; to mount an airlift and Israel might fare worse than she had in 1973”. He even accused Israelis of “misleading the Americans about their military plans during the latter part of the war”.
In a separate dispatch, the British embassy in Washington reported that Kissinger “has suspected for months that the Israelis were casting him for the role of “fall guy”. The British ambassador to Tel Aviv commented that “no doubt the Israelis have had for a long time past a contingency plan for doing precisely this’ and perhaps they “have now reached the point of putting it into effect”.
British diplomats in London concluded that while the Israelis had reasons to criticise Kissinger, they were mistaken to view his actions as motivated by personal animosity. Instead, they believed that Kissinger’s pressure aimed to avoid another conflict that “would ultimately damage Israel and the West more than the Arabs”. As seen by Michel S Weir, Assistant Under-Secretary and director of Middle East and North Africa, Israel considered the pursuit of this major objective and any final settlement, which would involve it giving up most of the foreign territory she is occupying, as “personal spite”. This was considered as a “measure of the chasm that separates Israeli thinking from that of the outside world”. In as much as the Israelis had accepted the idea of withdrawal, Kissinger was “surely entitled to feel betrayed, Weir concluded.
![- A fisherman along the Mekong River in Bokeo Province, Laos [Al Jazeera/Fabio Polese]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Fishermen-Laos-Fabio-Polese-34-1753773262.jpg)
![Laotian fisherman Khon, 52, throws a net from the bank of the Mekong River without catching anything [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Fishermen-Laos-Fabio-Polese-26-1753861860.jpg)
![A fish seller at Kad Wang View, the main market in Houayxay, where stalls were nearly empty during a recent visit [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Fishermen-Laos-Fabio-Polese-44-1753862477.jpg)
![Hom Phan, 67, steering his fishing boat on the Mekong River [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Fishermen-Laos-Fabio-Polese-43-1753863104.jpg)
![A satirical drawing showing Israel pandering to Henry Kissinger of the United States while Egypt's President Sadat gets away with the oil rich Sinai desert. [David Rubinger/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-530701224.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1)