Last Shabbat, 24 April, was the annual day of remembrance of the Meds Yeghern — the “great evil crime” of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. While it often merits a throwaway comment in speeches during Holocaust Memorial Day, it is doubtful whether it earned a mention during the many services in Jewish houses of worship last … Read more
TEHIYA, TSOMET, MOLEDET, KACH, HaTikva, Tkuma, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, HaBayit Hayehudi, Otzma Yehudit — these are just some of the far-right parties that have come and gone, coalesced and fragmented while dwelling in the heart of the maelstrom that defines the Israeli Right. Last week President Rivlin called for “unconventional connections” in forming a new government. … Read more
Review of Lutz Fiedler’s Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence (Edinburgh University Press 2020) pp.408 Lutz Fiedler’s highly informative book about the far Left group, Matzpen, is a welcome addition to the recording of both Jewish and Israeli history. This book started life as a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Dani Diner, a stalwart of … Read more
This timely tome (The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances) by Sigurd Neuberger appeared just as US President Trump’s Deal of the Century was sidelined and diplomatic ties established with several Gulf States. The formal recognition of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was considered more important than extending sovereignty over … Read more
NEXT WEEK, JOE BIDEN will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. While the hopes of many of the world’s Jews are with him, he faces an uphill struggle to repair his country after the chaos of the last four years. At an age when the politically aware quietly leave it to the … Read more
The storming of the Capitol Building by the supporters of the defeated president, Donald Trump, was a shocking event to behold. The citadel of American democracy was being desecrated, an insurrection on live television before an incredulous audience. One American journalist called it ‘the bonfire of the insanities’. And the outgoing president happily fanned the … Read more
Thirty years ago, on 5 November 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) in the US and the Kach party in Israel, was gunned down by an Egyptian Islamist, El Sayyed Nosair, at the Marriot Hotel in Manhattan. He was 58 and a father of four. Kahane had repeatedly proclaimed his … Read more
An interview with Itamar Rabinovich, Israeli Ambassador to the US 1993-1996 during Rabin’s tenure as prime minister Your biography of Rabin opens with a quote from Amos Oz that Rabin was not endowed with Ben-Gurion’s prophetic passion, Levi Eshkol’s warm gracefulness, Golda’s sweeping simplicity or Begin’s populist energy. How then would you characterise Yitzhak Rabin? … Read more
Every elected Israeli prime minister since 1996 has been the subject of a criminal investigation. Sometimes charges were dropped through lack of evidence or defendants were acquitted in court. Yet Ehud Olmert was found guilty as charged and sentenced to prison for the ‘cash in envelopes’ affair while Ariel Sharon’s son, Omri, was indicted for … Read more