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Tuesday 9th September: Edinburgh

Darren's debate: Are protests against Israel encouraging anti-Semitism?

Free Speech spoke to a young British man going to join the IDF, Israel's armed forces.

We鈥檙e BACK! That鈥檚 right, forget Dr Who, forget Bake Off, the biggest television event of the year is here: the return of Free Speech! *Pulls party popper*

Our first show is on Tuesday 9th September at 8pm. One issue we鈥檒l be looking at is the question of Israel and Palestine which dominated the headlines over the summer.

In our research we came across a young man named Darren who has decided to travel to Israel to join the army. Whilst talking to him about his experience we came to the question of anti-Semitism. What do you think? Have the Gaza protests 鈥 such as calls to make Scotland a 鈥樷 鈥 crossed the line? Or is the cry of anti-Semitism being used as a way of deflecting legitimate criticism of Israeli foreign policy?

Our debate is in Edinburgh and of course it鈥檚 just one week before the big vote on whether Scotland becomes an independent country.

Our panel is made up of two speakers from each side of the debate: Joan McAlpine from the Scottish National Party, and Martin Compston, star of the Ken Loach film Sweet Sixteen, will be asking our audience to vote YES for Scotland to become an independent country; while Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, and leader of the Scottish Conservative party, Ruth Davidson, will be saying NO.

As you can surely agree, it鈥檚 an incredibly high-level and attractive panel for your debating entertainment.

You can join the debate during the show on Tuesday 9th September (8pm 大象传媒3 鈥 don鈥檛 miss it!) by tweeting or messaging us. But you don鈥檛 have to wait until then to get talking about this topic. There鈥檚 our and , and you can also vote on what questions we should be asking on our . It鈥檚 a veritable explosion of interactivity which will no doubt break the internet.

Join the debate

Have a look for behind the scenes photos, links to what we鈥檙e reading and watching, hashtag games and lots of other nonsense.

Tricycle Theatre

By the way, we recorded the above film with Darren before he went off to Israel this summer. In the film he talks of a theatre 鈥渂anning鈥 the UK Jewish Film Festival. The theatre he鈥檚 talking about is the Tricycle Theatre in London which had refused to host the festival while it received some of its funding from the Israeli embassy. The theatre had offered to replace the 拢1,400 grant with its own money but the festival said the Tricycle's demands were unacceptable. A few weeks ago the Tricycle Theatre changed its mind though and said that it had 鈥渨ithdrawn its objection and invited back the UKJFF on the same terms as in previous years with no restrictions on funding from the embassy of Israel in London.