Colin Shindler1990 was a bad year for both Israelis and Palestinians. It was the year when the dialogue had to stop. The pragmatists on both sides who had advocated partition and compromise proved unable to restrain their vociferous maximalists, who spoke the language of violence and retaliation. Deep emotions and tribal passions pushed aside the voices … Read more
Andrei Sakharov died on 15 December 1989. The abundance of tributes accorded to him tended to concentrate on his more recent role is an opponent of the gradualist policies of the Gorbachev regime. Yet perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for the historic changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union and, … Read more
On the 800th anniversary of the York Massacre: Yom Kippur as Jewish History On Yom Kippur, Jews come to shul for a plethora of reasons. Many come for reasons of faith. Others come for reasons of culture. Still others come for reasons of both faith and culture. Some come out of a sense of guilt. Some … Read more
A new Jewish listings monthly, New Moon, appears on Thursday. A sort of Jewish Time Out, it sets out to appeal to the younger generation of Anglo-Jews whose needs and interests have remained unanswered by the official face of the community. Whether this initiative will be translated into financial stability is another question. The Jewish … Read more
Last Friday morning, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, president of the Board of Deputies, paid a courtesy call on Mr Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel, and no doubt exchanged pleasantries of a non-controversial nature. If the Board delegation had walked toward the Damascus Gate on Shabbat afternoon, they would have witnessed another side of the Israeli … Read more
MARGARET THATCHER’S current difficulties seem to herald the end of an era: three foreign secretaries within as many months; the exit of an experienced team from the uppermost echelons of government to the back benches and less important posts; the trouncing of the Tories in the European elections — the first defeat since she entered … Read more
The Tory objective seems to be and is probably seen by most of them, including Mrs Thatcher, as the utopia of economic neo-liberalism: every man an entrepreneur, the triumph of the unrestricted market and the dismantling of state interference in the economy and the affairs of the private citizen. In short the anarchism of the … Read more
On December 30th 1988, the writer and translator, Yuli Daniel died in Moscow at the age of sixty-three. A few days later, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to return from self-exile in Paris to pay homage at his graveside at Vagavanskoye cemetery. For a whole generation, the names of Daniel and Sinyavsky were synonymous with the … Read more
Although returning participants may now try to paper over the cracks, the necessity to stage a solidarity conference was the clearest indication yet that Mr Shamir does not have full support for his policies in the diaspora and that loyal dissent is a serious obstacle. According to Ehud Olmert MK, co-ordinator of the conference on … Read more
AS ANGLO-JEWISH personalities fly out from London to attend the “Prime Minister’s Conference on Jewish Solidarity with Israel”, a group of prominent Jewish writers, academics. intellectuals and communal leaders has issued a statement which casts doubt on the value of their visit. Asking “which Jews today do not express solidarity with Israel?” they commented that ‘it seems increasingly likely that this is a … Read more