Recent Articles

  • Iran is in our eyes and ears

    Iran has been in our eyes and ears throughout the last year. Its direct and open confrontation with Israel has marked a substantial change from the clandestine shadow war that has been ongoing since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Steven R. Ward’s book Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence: A Concise History provides the background to…

  • Standing Up to Netanyahu

    At the end of October, a conference was held near Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the kibbutzim which bore the bloody brunt of Hamas’ October 7 assault.  It was attended by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and another ten government ministers, to support the (re)establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza. Even Yitzhak Goldknopf of the non-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism attended.  Last…

  • Bibileaks and the Jewish Chronicle

    Several Sundays ago, I returned from lunch with friends to read that three of Britain’s best-known and respected Jewish journalists, Jonathan Freedland (Guardian), Hadley Freeman (Sunday Times) and David Aaronovitch (The Times until 2023) had resigned from contributing to the Jewish Chronicle (JC). Freedland wrote that he needed to break his connection with the JC because “I no…

  • Netanyahu and the International Criminal Court

    There has been uproar in the Jewish world about the accusations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which have been levelled at Israel and its call for the arrests of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. The ICC was established in 2002 on the basis of the Rome Statute four years earlier. Its role was to…

  • Building Tunnels in Gaza and Lebanon: The North Korean Connection

    Last week, North Korea launched its latest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-19, which reached deep into space before descending and plunging into the ocean. This event hardly registered in the international media, days before the American election and the latest episodes in the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. While North Korea is 8,000 km…

  • On Chaim Weizmann

    Chaim Weizmann: A BiographyBy Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golan Brandeis University Press (pp. 820) Chaim Weizmann was a remarkable man who truly deserved the accolade of “a founding father of Israel.”This majestic work by Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography is as absorbing as it is comprehensive. Both authors have written about Weizmann for…