Recent Articles

  • Netanyahu and Jabotinsky

    One hundred years ago, the Revisionist Movement was established at the Café du Panthéon in the heart of the Latin Quarter in Paris by acculturated Russian Jews. Its leader was Vladimir Jabotinsky – an intellectual, a man of letters and a spellbinding orator, a figure often quoted by Benjamin Netanyahu. The link is not coincidental.…

  • Hamas’s Intelligence War

    Before the current crisis of the war in Gaza erupted, there had been four major clashes with Hamas, beginning with Operation Cast Lead in 2008 to Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021. While the media report the human face of the tragedies of war, the book The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2025) by Netanel…

  • The Board of Deputies and Israel

     I am a Jew because our ancestors were the first to see that the world is driven by a moral purpose, that reality is not a ceaseless war of the elements, to be worshipped as gods, nor history in a battle in which might is right and power is to be appeased. The Judaic tradition…

  • Ukraine and the Meaning of Jewishness

    Two weeks ago, Israel joined Iran, North Korea and Belarus in opposing a UN resolution which named and condemned Russia as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine. Its central reason in following these pariah dictatorships was because Donald Trump’s America had done so. This was how Netanyahu’s government commemorated the third anniversary of the…

  • The Fragility of Democracy

    It has been said that the Weimar Republic of post-World War I Germany died twice. It was first murdered, and then committed suicide.  This incisive comment refers to the moral, political, and economic decay of German society during the Great Depression – as well as to the politicians of various right-wing parties in Germany who…

  • Anatevka Revisited: Trump’s Ideas

    Prime Minister Netanyahu was only informed about Donald Trump’s ideas about relocating the Palestinians of Gaza on the day before his meeting with the president. It also came as a surprise to US Secretary of State Rubio and most of Netanyahu’s delegation. Even Netanyahu seemed bemused at this turn of events. As the Trump look-alike…