Colin ShindlerIn a country that specialises in resurrection, the second coming of Yitzhak Rabin, as leader of the Israeli Labour Party after a 15 year intermission was not unexpected. Despite his considerable political talents, Rabin’s bitter rival Shimon Peres was deemed unelectable — he failed in four elections to arrest the drift to the right and … Read more
In the end, Yitzhak Shamir could not please both the Americans and the Israeli far right. Without the support of the Moledet, Techiya and Tsomet parties, Shamir was, this week, left two seats short of a majority in the Knesset, making an election virtually inevitable. Even bribery had failed: his offer of more money for … Read more
Yitzhak Tabenkin was, together with David Ben-Gurion and Berl Katznelson, one of three who made the Labour-Zionist revolution in Palestine during the pre-State struggles in the inter-war period. Indeed, Ben-Gurion was said to have joined Poale Zion at Tabenkin’s home in Warsaw at the turn of the century. All were highly influenced by the Marxist-Zionist … Read more
Communism was deemed by its adherents to be eternal. Few could contemplate its decay and a final crumbling into the dust of ages. Its meaning was its existence. Most who lived under Communism accepted their lot, avoided trouble and got on with living their lives as best they could. Few possessed the courage and foresight … Read more
The only reason Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir attended the Ma-rid peace conference on he Middle East was because he was forced to by James Baker and George Bush. Even though, according to one newspaper poll, 91 per cent of Israelis were in favour of the conference, nothing else would have induced Shamir to … Read more
THE PALESTINIAN UPRISING: A War by Other Means By F. Robert Hunter — I.B. Tauris, London PROFESSOR HUNTER IS AN American academic who decided to spend a year on sabbatical leave at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in order to write a book on Egypt and Tunisia. His year away instead coincided with … Read more
President Bush’s threat last week to veto any immediate Congressional approval of the US$10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel for the absorption of Soviet Jewish immigrants caused a near apoplectic reaction in Jerusalem and from the Israeli government’s hardline supporters in the United States. The reaction has hardly been diffused by secretary of state … Read more
JONATHAN Sacks’s elevation to the Chief Rabbinate marks a watershed between the generations: the pre-Holocaust generation and those born after the war. Unlike those scarred by the years of fascism and anti-Semitism, their sons and daughters do not seem to have that psychological need for survivalist policies and symbols; they are generally more open … Read more
Itzik Feffer is not only a talented Yiddish poet; he is also a gifted journalist and a splendid speaker. It is difficult to draw any fast line of demarcation between Itzik Feffer the poet and Itzik Feffer the public worker. His poems are calls to action. They are simply worded, like folk poems, full of … Read more
One year ago, the two Germanies became one. The hated Berlin Wall was literally pulled down by the will of the people. The Stalinist gerontocracy which had ruled East Germany for more than four decades collapsed like a pack of cards. Their eyes and ears, the members of the Stasi secret police, were run to … Read more