You were amongst the pre-war founders of Bnei Akiva-Bachad in London, but when did you leave for Israel? After my father discovered that her father had perished in Auschwitz, the family went from London to Palestine in May 1947. I was still engaged in Zionist work in London at that time as Director of … Read more
Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996. Pp.470, biblio. ISBN 1-878379-53-4. Mordechai Bar-On has written an overview of the Israeli peace movement from the birth of the State in 1948 up to the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn … Read more
Zionism has always posed a problem for the ultra-orthodox. Unlike the religious Zionists of the Mizrachi, they always preferred the actual arrival of the messiah rather than his indeterminable coming to inaugurate a new era in the Holy Land for the Jewish people. Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, was nothing less than a blot … Read more
So who, then, was responsible for the murder of Yitzhak Rabin? Yigal Amir, certainly. The General Security Services for their complacency, undoubtedly. But who else beyond the immediate participants of that black deed? At which point does the delineation between certain blame and political accusation become blurred? Indeed, the Brooklyn-based Jewish Press told its 350,000 … Read more
From the NNLS Memorial Service Monday 6 November 1995 Colin Shindler Today is a black day for the Jewish people, but as King Hussein said this morning, it is also a day of remembrance and commitment. It has been said many times today that Yitzhak Rabin was a man of war who became … Read more
In September 1982, Erev Rosh Hashanah 5753, Israel’s Christian allies murdered over 700 Palestinian men, women and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Like Kennedy’s assassination, many Jews will vividly recall what they were doing when the news broke and will not easily forget the pictures of the dead and dying … Read more
Some British rabbis believed the peace process to be responsible for the recent massacre of worshippers in Hebron. The tension amongst the settlers, they argued, had pushed Baruch Goldstein over the edge. The situation was to blame. In this way, they shifted any moral consideration from themselves and were able to circumvent condemnation of the … Read more
In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Edward Said passionately condemned the Israel-PLO Accord as “an instrument of Palestinian capitulation, a Palestinian Versailles”. Said emotionally dismantled the Accord and found little of value. “A century of sacrifice, dispossession and heroic struggle”, he wrote, “had finally come to nought”. Said gloomily accentuated the … Read more
A crisis in Israel’s ruling coalition was always a distinct possibility, ever since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin persuaded the secular Meretz and the religious Shas parties to join his Labour-led government But now the strains are beginning to show. Shas, together with other religious parties, has been calling for the dismissal of Shulamit Aloni, the … Read more
Yitzhak Rabin’s offer to allow 100 deported Palestinians to return from their freezing camp in Lebanon was the result of pressure, not just from the Clinton administration, but from within his own cabinet. With hindsight, dovish ministers in the Labour-led coalition regarded the deportation of more than 400 Hamas supporters as an incredible blunder. … Read more