Lenin was only interested in Jewish nationalism in so far as it related to the Russian workers’ movement Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political … Read more
Sir, The Jews emerged as an ethnic group in the area known as the Pale of Settlement in eastern Europe in the 18th century. Many considered themselves to be part of a people with a culture, history, literature, languages and a religion. Zionism and other solutions to the Jewish question emerged out of the advent … Read more
Protesters against Israel’s incursion into Gaza demonstrate in Trafalgar Square in January. Anti-Israel feeling at SOAS was more noticeable during this period, says Professor Colin Shindler. But he says he has never faced antisemitism from students or lecturers As a former chemistry lecturer, Colin Shindler knows all about explosive situations. His new appointment could certainly … Read more
Avi Shlaim offers a selective, partial view By Avi Shlaim Verso, £16.99 In this interesting collection of past writings, Avi Shlaim emotionally takes the side of the Palestinians, yet intellectually and rationally views the conflict as a clash between two national movements. While this balance is maintained in his earlier work, more recent writings are … Read more
One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict Benny Morris Yale University Press 240pp £18.99 ISBN 978 0300122817 The Making of Modern Israel 1948-1967 Leslie Stein Polity 412pp £20 ISBN 978 0745644660 Benny Morris is well known as one of the Israeli ‘new historians’. His evaluations of Israel’s birth in 1948 punctured both the official … Read more
Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War against Jewish Terrorism 1945–1948 Author: David Cesarani Publisher: Heinemann Price (RRP): £20 Few books have been written on the British counter-war against Jewish dissident groups in Palestine after the revelations of the Holocaust. Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvati Leumi and Yitzhak Shamir’s Lehi, known pejoratively as ‘the Stern … Read more
Benjamin Disraeli By Adam Kirsch Schocken 259 pages; $21 It is said that when Menachem Begin was arrested by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, in Lithuania in 1940, he took with him a copy of Andre Maurois’s biography of Benjamin Disraeli to stave off the intellectual isolation of an uncertain future. Disraeli, a converted … Read more
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/zion.shtml BBC Radio 4 7 July 2009
Jonathan Schanzer. Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine. Palgrave Macmillan. London & New York. 2008. pp. 256. During the early part of the Gaza war of 2009. Amira Hass. the Israeli journalist known for her incisive commentary on the Palestinian territories and often accused of pro-Palestinian sympathies. wrote that Hamas operatives had begun to … Read more