‘For some people, life was split in two on 22 June 1941, for some on 3 September 1939 and for others on 18 July 1936.’ So wrote Ilya Ehrenburg after the horrors of the Second World War, referring to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and to the declaration of war by Britain … Read more
STALIN’S APOSTLES: THE CAMBRIDGE FIVE AND THE MAKING OF THE SOVIET EMPIREBy Antonia SeniorPublished by PublicAffairs, 480 pages; $29 From the 1930s up until Stalin’s death in 1953, six million people were sent to the Soviet Gulag. A quarter did not survive. Another 16-17 million were transported to strict regime labor camps, where the death rate … Read more
David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have all resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom since the Brexit Referendum in June 2016. These 10 years have been a period of profound instability and a rise in populism on both the Left and the Right. For British Jews, … Read more
A couple of weeks ago, there was an early morning fire near a major kosher supermarket in London’s Golders Green. Many feared that this was yet another assault on the Jewish community. It coincided with the breaking news that the pro-Iranian Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq had been behind 18 attacks in Europe. The group was … Read more
GORDON BROWN: POWER WITH PURPOSEBy James MacintyreBloomsbury Publishing336 pages Gordon Brown was prime minister of the United Kingdom between 2007 and 2010. For a decade before that, he managed the country’s finances as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His public persona projected a dour countenance, a son of the Manse (a house for Protestant clergy in Scotland), and … Read more
Last Saturday, 45-year-old Essa Suleiman was charged with attempting to murder two identifiably Jewish men on a rampage in Golders Green, a centre of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox life. Suleiman had been a patient at a London psychiatric clinic and earlier that day, attempted to knife a Muslim friend of 30 years. It was the latest … Read more
The breakdown of negotiations between Iran and the US does not bode well for humanity, but it has been welcomed wholeheartedly by Benjamin Netanyahu, who hopes the delay may yet provide time for the ayatollahs to capitulate. On February 28, shortly after launching an attack on Tehran, Netanyahu announced three war aims: It is clear … Read more
According to recent polls of American Jews, organised by GBAO Strategies and by the Jewish Electorate Institute, between 55 and 60 per cent oppose United States’ military action against Iran. In one poll, 77 per cent expressed their belief that President Donald Trump does not have a plan for the conduct of the war. It marks a … Read more
Ian Buruma has written many fine works of nonfiction, which include books about Spinoza and Churchill. But his book Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945 is personal. It is a story of anti-Nazi Germans, mischlings (people of non-Aryan origin), and the odyssey and observations of Buruma’s own father, Leo, who was sent from Holland to work in Germany … Read more
Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a press conference at the conclusion of the 12-day war against the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran. He went into great detail about how the Israeli operation had removed “the existential threat of Iran”; how the serried ranks of Iranian nuclear scientists had been liquidated; how factories producing centrifuges … Read more