Olivia Flasch

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Nov 16, 2023, 1:03 PM

The thin line between condemnation and incitement to genocide

Last year, long before the October 7 massacre, I engaged with a former colleague on social media. She claimed that as a supporter of Israel’s right to defend itself against terror attacks committed by Hamas, I was supporting child...

Nov 6, 2023, 9:48 PM

In Gaza, people are dying. Who is responsible for their deaths?

Over the past four weeks, two wars involving Israel have been taking place. The first, an armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, and the second, a misinformation war penetrating our news outlets, social media accounts and personal interactions with...

Oct 26, 2023, 6:14 PM

Here in the upside down world, Jews keep on living

For Jews, there will always be a pre-October 7 and a post-October 7 world. Pre-October 7 was a world in which antisemitism was still rampant, and often masked as its more politically correct cousin, anti-Zionism, but yet a world in...

May 11, 2022, 7:52 PM

On issues of journalism: Deaths and responsibility

As of right now, it is still unclear who killed the Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, or under what circumstances she was killed. Yet, by reading reports about the incident circulating on the web, you would be forgiven...

Feb 4, 2022, 11:04 PM

Some countries are more equal than others

For the past two years, I have been living next door to Amnesty International’s headquarters; a gated building located on a small side street in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch in London. Just outside its gates, on the wall of...

Feb 1, 2022, 4:45 PM

Why Whoopi Goldberg’s comments hurt

Whoopi Goldberg came under fire today for proclaiming that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race as it involved “two groups of white people.” In doing so, she unearthed the complexities that underlies Judaism – and proved that...

Jan 21, 2022, 7:56 AM

Things they tell us

They tell us that being anti-Zionist is entirely different from being anti-Semitic. They tell us that the two have nothing in common. Their message is so strong that in the recent reformulation of a new definition of anti-Semitism (which I discuss...

Jan 2, 2018, 3:06 PM

Vaccines instead of medicine: How we should fight the BDS movement

I’d like to start this new year off with a post about the BDS movement and how to fight it. I recently learned that yet another artist canceled a show she had scheduled to play in Israel after caving...

May 11, 2017, 8:24 PM

They’ll huff and they’ll puff but they won’t blow our house down

I have often found myself questioning the reason behind Israel being constantly criticized, overly monitored, and tirelessly argued about, when countries like Saudi Arabia, whose governmental policies need no introduction, stay out of the limelight. The reason why Israelis,...

Dec 24, 2016, 4:23 PM

The Significance of UNSC Resolution 2334

Since its creation, Israel has been condemned (directly or indirectly) in at least 80 UN Security Council resolutions. As we know, UNSC resolutions can only pass if the US, or any of the other five permanent members of the...

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About Me

Olivia Flasch is an international lawyer who currently lives in London. She studied Public International Law in The Hague, and has a Master's in Law from the University of Oxford. Born into a Jewish family in Sweden, she writes about all things Jewish, as well as about Israel and the world from an international law perspective.