Colin ShindlerTeaching 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
Faisal Bodi’s determination to think the unthinkable this week (Jan 3) in advocating the disappearance of Israel does not break a taboo, but it does represent a psychological leap from wishful thinking to respectable argument. It is, in reality, a sanitised reading of the Hamas platform (the major Palestinian Islamic grouping) which rejects the two-state … Read more
Eighty years ago, the guns fell silent on the killing fields of France and Belgium. The seemingly pointless slaughter of millions and the defeat of Imperial Germany initiated the growth of revolutionary movements, including both Fascism and Marxism-Leninism, and propelled them on the road to power. The break-up of great empires permitted small nations to … Read more
Lord Jakobovits in Conversation by Michael Shashar. London, Vallentine Mitchell, 202 pages. £19.50Michael Shashar completed the last of his interviews with the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain shortly before Immanuel Jakobovits died a year ago. In one sense this book of conversations paints an autobiographical landscape, but it is … Read more
Celebrating Life: Finding Happiness in Unexpected Places by Jonathan Sacks. London, Harper Collins. 192 pages. £ 8.99In encounters with the late Oxford don, Sir Isaiah Berlin, the British Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks was regularly rebuffed with comments such as “When it comes to God, I’m tone deaf.” Berlin’s counter-attack was to question how Sacks, … Read more
The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After by Edward W Said 345pp, Granta, pounds 15Edward Said is an eloquent advocate of the Palestinian cause in the west, but he is also a hate figure for both the Israeli right and American neo-conservatives. Like Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, Said … Read more
Norman Finkelstein argues in extracts from his forthcoming book (G2, July 12 and 13) that Holocaust remembrance has become an exploitative industry used to justify Israel’s policies and that the campaign by Jewish survivors for compensation for assets lost under Nazi occupation and slave labour is directed by gold diggers. More disturbing is the Guardian’s … Read more