Review of Internment in Britain in 1940by Ines Newman, published by Vallentine Mitchell, 224 pages; $74.95 Following the fall of France in the summer of 1940, there was a deep trepidation that Britain would be the next to be overrun by the Nazi war machine. British Jews feared that they were about to suffer the … Read more
‘ANTISEMITISM ISN’T THE first name of hate, it’s the family name’. So spoke Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid at last week’s ‘Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism’ in Jerusalem. Lapid went on to say that the term ‘antisemitism’ applied to ‘anyone who hates so much that they want to kill, eliminate, persecute and expel people just … Read more
Review of Ralph Hope’s The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present (One Word 2021) pp.336 ‘Every citizen has a right to express his opinion freely’. So stated the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — the Communist half of Germany between 1949 and 1990. Its state security, the Staatsicherheit or Stasi however … Read more
Review of Leslie Turnberg’s Mandate: The Palestine Crucible 1919-1939 (Vallentine Mitchell 2021) pp.320 Three years ago, a retired British army officer, Ian Westerman, wrote an article in Ha’aretz, entitled ‘What did the British ever do for Israel?’ This piece, courageously suggested that in an age of decolonising the academic syllabus and retrospectively rectifying the perceived wrongs … Read more
LAST MONTH, the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi was elected president of Iran on a very low turnout of voters. He had easily been defeated in 2017 by the outgoing President Hassan Rouhani who, like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami before him, had hoped to move the Islamic Republic in a more pragmatic direction. In contrast, … Read more
Eighty years ago, at precisely 3.15 a.m. on the night of 22 June 1941, General Heinz Guderion moved his Panzers across the bridge, spanning the River Bug. This was the beginning of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union — an invasion which took the lives of over 20 million Soviet citizens including over two … Read more
ON SUNDAY THE KNESSET voted to approve the ‘Change’ government of Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. Whether this multi-headed pantomime horse will survive is an open question, but it does appear that Benjamin Netanyahu has been put out to political pasture. While it is too early to write him off, what are we to make of … Read more
David Baddiel is well-known in Britain as a comedian and a writer. He is also unusual – in that he does not shy away from his Jewishness in his stage routine, but actually glories in his identity. The grandson of disenfranchised, well-to-do, Jewish business-people who escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, his Twitter biography is just … Read more
NETANYAHU IS DOWN, but is he out? At the time of writing, this question remains unanswered. In the interim, he has reverted to his old habit of incitement as he did just before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. His supporters in the Likud together with the Kahanists and the quiet admirers of Yigal Amir have door-stopped … Read more