Not Really Their Crowd

Conservative Party Attitudes To Jews 1900 -1950 by Harry Defries. Frank Cass, 268 pages. pounds 18.50 One hundred years ago, British Jews were regarded as “un-English,” an alien entity in British society, “a sinister force bent on the destruction of the Empire.” Harry Defries argues that, while there was always prejudice in the British Conservative … Read more

Sharon, Arafat must go

Since the commencement of the current intifada, we have made a clear distinction between unpalatable news and biased news in the highly selective depiction of Israel in the national media. All of us are long-time supporters of the Israeli peace movement, but we are not prepared to serve as apologists for Palestinian terrorism or blind … Read more

Zionism’s Rift with the Left

Today’s British left has little understanding of Jews and anti-semitism because it was not forged by the struggle against fascism in the 1930s and the Holocaust (The hatred that won’t die, February 28). Jews are perceived to be white, bourgeois and invisible – certainly not members of the oppressed. The left is rationally anti-antisemitic, but … Read more

One Hell of a Party

Hizbu’llah Politics and Religion by Amal Saad- Ghorayeb. Pluto Press 254 pages. £14.99Hizbullah calls itself “the party of God,” which exudes a whiff of undiluted certainty that it – and it alone – knows the pathway to heaven. It’s not surprising, therefore, that anti-Judaism is a tenet of Hizbullah truth. Indeed, as Sheikh Na’im Qasim, … Read more

Jabotinsky and Ukrainian Nationalism

  Jabotinsky and Ukrainian Nationalism: A Reinterpretation Israel Kleiner, From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2000). 199pp. Foreword by Wolf Moskovich. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 1-895571-33-2 (paper) A unique figure in the Zionist firmament Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist … Read more

Zionism and the Fin de Siècle

Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky by Michael Stanislawski, University of California Press, pp282, price £12.95   History is in the mind of the beholder – until someone discovers new material which undermines passionately held truths. Michael Stanislawski, a Professor at Columbia University, has had access to the … Read more