Before the opening of the new Parliament in London last week, MPs swore allegiance to the Crown on the King James Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sundar Gutka prayerbook, the Koran and the Hebrew Bible. All this demonstrated the wide diversity of British society in 2024. This positive imagery was shattered by the election of … Read more
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East By Robert Fisk, published by HarperCollins (Fourth Estate) 2024 pp.644 Robert Fisk, a long-time foreign correspondent for the Independent, died in Dublin in October 2020. This posthumous book which picks up from where his 2005 book The Great War of Civilisation left off and which covers the … Read more
At this week’s Yom Hazikaron ceremony on Mount Herzl to remember the fallen in Israel’s wars, Prime Minister Netanyahu commented: ‘We will realise the goals of victory – and at the centre of them is the return of all our hostages’. Many hostage family members simply do not believe him and regard such pronouncements as … Read more
Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent 1948-1977 Yale University Press 2023, pp.320 In the early 1960s, Ben-Gurion implied that ideological Zionism, after the founding of the state, had lost its meaning. The imperative to emigrate and build up the Hebrew republic had been replaced by support for successive Israeli governments, bolstered by an … Read more
Sunday’s attack on Israel by Iran involved 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles and 110 surface-to-surface missiles, according to leaked Israel reports to the New York Times. Most came from the Iranian mainland with a few fired by proxies in Iraq and Yemen. Israel, in conjunction with the armed forces of the US, UK, France and Jordan, defended … Read more
Since the start of the war with Hamas, a mere 540 have enlisted to help the war effort. On the other hand, 66,000 young haredi men have received an exemption from military service during the past year, a member of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate told a Knesset Committee last month. The ruling exempting haredim from … Read more
Professor Colin Shindler, you have, for the first time, opened up a disciplinary field that did not exist before you. Indeed, you are surprisingly the very first Professor of Israel Studies in the United Kingdom. You are also the President and Founder of the European Association for Israel Studies. You have already written twelve books, … Read more
The result of the election in Israel in 1977 is known in Hebrew as ‘the Earthquake’. It marked the end of the Labour party’s long rule and the beginning of the long decline of the Israeli Left. The party with which Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson had identified was replaced by Menahem Begin’s … Read more
Last week, Amos Biderman published his daily cartoon in Ha’aretz. It depicted Netanyahu standing alone amidst the ruins of Gaza and sporting a MAGA (Make America Great Again) style hat — albeit in blue and white. The hat was labelled “Total Victory!” Below Netanyahu’s feet, hidden from view, deep underground in a tunnel, were the caged … Read more
When Israel’s Declaration of Independence was signed, only two of the 37 signatories were women – Rachel Kagan and Golda Meir. This is symbolic of the profound difficulty that women faced in the ideologically male-centered world that existed in the days of early Zionism, in which women were generally expected to remain at home and forget … Read more