Colin ShindlerFrom 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
Shlomo Ben-Ami sounded exasperated. “We are a society living at a high decibel level without a moment of rest,” Israel’s Internal Security Minister said in a newspaper interview last week. What Israel needed from its leaders were the kind of “fireside chats” President Roosevelt used to give to Americans. But instead of calming influences, … Read more
Colin Shindler Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship THE AMERICANIZATION OF ISRAELI POLITICS IN THE 1990S ISRAEL HAS, OF COURSE, CHANGED dramatically since 1967. The publication of the 1999 report of the Human Development Index by the United Nations indicated that Israel occupied 32nd position of 174 countries surveyed, ahead of Hong Kong, … Read more
Kahane, Meir 1932-1990 American-born Israeli vigilante and political activist Cohen-Almagor, Raphael, The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance: The Struggle against Kahanism in Israel, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994 Dolgin, Janet L., Jewish Identity and the JDL, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977 Friedman, Robert I., The False Prophet: Rabbi .Meir Kahane, from … Read more