Bring back Angela Rainer is the first text to land in my inbox this morning. So thank you to

Angela and indeed everybody who held the fort while I enjoyed a few well-earned days by the

seaside. We return inevitably to the fray and indeed to the Middle East. Do you want to know

something weird? And it only occurred to me as I sat down and thought, do you know what I'm going to begin with this morning? I'm going to begin with the scenes at the airport in Dagestan. Now, I don't know if you're aware of this. I shall give you more details shortly. But then, of course, as soon as I thought to myself, we shall begin with the scenes at the airport in Dagestan. I thought to myself, well, hang on a minute.

Some people will immediately jump on me for not talking about the scenes in Gaza, where the

carnage is now reaching, as expected, the damage and carnage is now reaching apocalyptic levels.

And it doesn't matter which way I go.

If I started the show by talking about the death toll and the destruction raining down on the Gaza Strip,

you would, some people listening, would quite rightly call upon me to talk about the scenes in Dagestan this morning,

which, while nowhere near as lethal, were profoundly

significant, I think, and important to the bigger picture. But if I started talking about that,

which in a sense is news in a way that the unfolding situation in Gaza is not, then other people would quite rightly

call me and take me to task for not talking about Gaza. But I'm going to begin with

Dagestan because I think this is, if you're interested in understanding how such crazy things can happen in the world,

such apparently intractable situations can unfold. I think that the situation in Dagestan is really significant.

So it's a Muslim majority region in the south of what used to be the Soviet Union, in the south of Russia.

It would historically have been the site of pogroms.

It would have been one of the many, many, many places in the world where Jews were chased out of their own home at gunpoint or at the end of swords and burning

torches and an aeroplane was scheduled to land from Tel Aviv at which point a mob assembled

and stormed the airport, looking for Jews.

Tell us where the Jews are was one of the cries coming out.

Cars were being stopped in the environs of the airport,

...