就此而言，我必须先给这篇专栏文章下结论：乔纳森·鲍威尔必须卸下国家安全顾问一职。
On this occasion, I must begin a column with its conclusion: Jonathan Powell must step down from his position as national security adviser.
为什么呢？围绕他的质疑已经持续很长时间——尤其是关于查戈斯群岛割让一事，他正是该计划的设计者。但这一次，问题出在他的妻子身上。
Why? Well, there have been concerns swirling around him for a long time – in particular about the Chagos Islands giveaway, of which he is the architect. But this time, it’s about his wife.
这么说吧。我可能和我太太在每件事上都意见不一致——谁又能完全一致呢？——但如果她开始质疑10月7日大规模强奸的证据，我会以价值观不合为由起诉离婚，或者建议她去看看心理医生。而我与国家安全毫无关系。
Put it this way. I might not agree with my missus about everything – who does? – but if she started questioning the evidence of mass rape on October 7, I’d sue for divorce on grounds of incompatible values, or perhaps suggest that she gets her head seen to. And I have nothing remotely to do with our national security.
鲍威尔却不同。他的妻子莎拉·赫尔姆，与他结婚近二十年，从私立学校到剑桥，再到弗利特街，主要为《独立报》担任外交事务记者。但她似乎始终对中东唯一的民主国家抱有奇特的轻蔑之情。
Not so Powell. His wife of almost two decades, Sarah Helm, who bounced from private school to Cambridge and then to Fleet Street, mainly working for The Independent as a foreign affairs journalist. But she seems to have always held a peculiar disdain for the Middle East’s only democracy.
您无疑已经知道，这位女士最近公开表示似乎支持巴勒斯坦行动组织——该组织的一个暴徒曾臭名昭著地用大锤打断一名女警的脊椎——而该组织已被英国政府列为恐怖组另一段广为流传的视频显示，赫尔姆在现已解散的压力团体“中国交流”的一次活动中接受采访。当被问及她的丈夫是否违反《官方保密法》，向她透露他在唐宁街10号的工作细节时，她回答说：“那是忠诚的问题，不是吗？”这很难让人产生信心。
As you will no doubt be aware, this is the woman who recently went public with her apparent support for Palestine Action – one of whose thugs notoriously broke a policewoman’s back with a sledgehammer – which is listed by the Government as a terrorist group. “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action,” Helm wrote after books by novelist Sally Rooney were pulled from shelves because of her support for the banned organisation. Was her husband, as national security adviser, involved in the decision to proscribe the group last year? Helm recklessly took to X to address this suggestion. “Nope,” she wrote. This prompted Alicia Kearns MP, the shadow national security minister, to question whether “the wife of the national security adviser should be leaking where decision-making sits in government on… national security.”
无论如何，这一切都让人们关注到赫尔姆的社交媒体账号，在那里可以发现各种更令人惊骇的内容。2023年10月8日，在以色列南部的血迹还未干透之时，赫尔姆指责欧盟委员会主席乌尔苏拉·冯德莱恩在表达对犹太国家的支持并称其“有权自卫”后，散布“空洞油滑的陈词滥调”。
Kearns has since written to Andy Burnham, echoing my demands that he reconsider Powell’s position. Another clip that has been doing the rounds shows Helm being interviewed at an event for the now-defunct pressure group China Exchange. Asked whether her husband bent the Official Secrets Act to tell her details of his work at No 10, she responded: “That’s a question of loyalty, isn’t it?”That hardly fills one with confidence. Anyway, all this has drawn attention to Helm’s social media account, where all manner of further horrors can be found.
将近三周后，正值以色列军事行动伊始，电台主持人詹姆斯·奥布莱恩将哈马斯描述为“一个对人性、理性和外交免疫的嗜杀死亡邪教”。赫尔姆的回应是什么？“詹姆斯，你可以做得比这更好。”（“詹姆斯”后面漏掉的逗号是她的，不是我的。）到了12月，赫尔姆将注意力转向了被哈马斯强奸、杀害和残害的以色列女性。
On Oct 8, 2023, before the blood had even dried in southern Israel, Helm accused Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, of spouting “empty glib tropes” after she expressed support for the Jewish state and said it had “the right to defend itself”. Almost three weeks later, at the very start of Israeli operations, the radio presenter James O’Brien described Hamas as “a murderous death cult immune to humanity, reason and diplomacy”. Helm’s response? “James you can do better than this.” (The neglect of the comma after “James” was hers, not mine.)
“确实令人费解的是，竟然没有一个以色列强奸受害者在这一点上提供自己的证词，”她写道，同时分享了一条令人毛骨悚然的小帖子，该帖子由“电子起义”的负责人发布，指责犹太国家“为制造种族灭绝的同意而进行暴行宣传”。
By December, Helm was turning her attention to the Israeli women who had been raped, murdered and mutilated by Hamas. “It is certainly puzzling that not a single Israeli rape victim has given their own testimony on this,” she wrote, sharing a ghoulish little post by the director of “Electronic Intifada” accusing the Jewish state of “atrocity propaganda to manufacture consent for genocide”.
此后几年里，她曾暗示加沙人害怕阿拉伯帮派（她说这些帮派“往往是以色列的合作者”）甚于害怕哈马斯；将10月7日的袭击归咎于以色列的建立，并将该国比作纳粹（以及其他言论）。据《旁观者》报道，她还转发了一条推文，称“犹太复国主义[是]种族主义”，并声称“几乎整个英国政治和媒体阶层都是‘种族主义者’”。
In the years since, she has suggested that Gazans fear Arab gangs (who she said are “Israeli collaborators often”) more than Hamas; blamed the October 7 attacks on the establishment of Israel and compared the nation to the Nazis (amongst other statements). She also, according to the Spectator, re-posted a tweet saying “Zionism [is] racism” and claiming “almost the entire British political and media classes are “RACIST”.
那是否也包括她丈夫所供职的政府？对此同样有现成的帖子：《旁观者》还指出，她转发了一条建议，称“安迪·伯纳姆领导下的犹太复国主义工党政府”正“与以色列战犯情报机构勾结”。
Would that include the Government for which her husband works? Once again, there’s a post for that: the Spectator also highlighted how she re-posted a suggestion that the “Zionist Labour government under Andy Burnham” is “colluding with Israeli war criminal intelligence services”.
现在，这就触及了问题的核心。政府最近对犹太国家实施制裁，并在社交媒体上无休止地炫耀此事，从而破坏了自己与以色列的关系。
Now, this brings us to the heart of the matter. The Government has recently vandalised its relationship with Israel by slapping sanctions on the Jewish state and crowing about it endlessly on social media.
当然，我们从中以关系里获益要大得多，尤其是在情报共享方面；摩萨德提供的线索挽救了无数英国人的生命，包括上个月被挫败的、据称针对英国皇家空军费尔福德基地的恐怖阴谋中可能丧生的那些人。
Of course, we have been the far greater beneficiary of that relationship, particularly in intelligence sharing; Mossad tip-offs have saved countless British lives, including those that may have been lost in the alleged RAF Fairford terror plot that was foiled last month.
由于我们不必要的敌对态度，这一切现在都悬而未决。为了什么？巴勒斯坦人一再拒绝的神圣“两国方案”更近了吗？换句话说，为了推行一种更关心加沙激进主义、而非保护英国人免受圣战威胁的、旨在标榜道德的外交政策，我们的国家安全已被置于严重危险之中。就像我说的，鲍威尔必须下台。
All this now hangs in the balance as a result of our unnecessary hostility. For what? Is the hallowed “two-state solution” – which the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected – any closer? Our national security, in other words, has been placed in grave jeopardy for the sake of a virtue-signalling foreign policy that is more concerned with Gaza activism than keeping Britons safe from jihad. Like I said, Powell has to go.