Colin ShindlerHizbu’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
The Body and the Blood – The Holy Land’s Christians at the Turn of a New Millenium A Reporter’s Journey by Charles M. Sennott. Public Affairs. 479 pages. $30 There are two billion Christians worldwide – and some of them are Palestinian Arabs. About 32,000 Christian Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza, which … Read more
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: 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
Divided Against Zion by Rory Miller. London, Frank Cass. 275 pages. £20.00 Anyone here in London who reads the liberal/Left press these days despairs about their fundamental ignorance – not only about Israeli history and Zionism – but also about Palestinian-Arab politics. That’s why it is refreshing to read Dr. Rory Miller’s book about the … Read more
Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City by Bernard Wasserstein. London, Profile Books. 412 pages. Pound Sterling 20 Jerusalem is the center of the cosmos, advises the Midrash, and many Diaspora Jews concur. Even for the most secular of Jews, “kotel-ology” has a hold. There is a feeling that this is the core, the … Read more
Teaching Conflict and Controversy: A New Course in Israeli and Jewish Diaspora Studies The Israel-Palestine conflict is undoubtedly a controversial subject where there are no absolutes. But it is also extremely interesting – and it is this fact that has attracted students from very diverse backgrounds to my course on Zionism at the School of … Read more
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate by Tom Segev. Translated by Haim Watzman. New York, Metropolitan/Henry Holt. 612 pages. $35/NIS 149Tom Segev writes good books – and this is no exception. They are hybrids between academic endeavour and journalistic seduction. The outcome is a resurrection of subjects which have been turned … Read more
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate Tom Segev Little, Brown, £25, 612pp When General Allenby entered Jerusalem in December 1917 to claim the Holy Land for the Empire, he inaugurated a 30-year period of political confusion which culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel and the large-scale exodus of … Read more
From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism (Holmes and Meier) pp. 283 This book is in fact an updated version of Amnon Rubinstein’s From Herzl to Gush Emunim and Back: The Zionist Dream Revisited which was published in 1984. If the original was catalyzed by Rubinstein’s reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, … Read more