In a few days, the Israeli electorate will enter the polling booth for the fifth time in almost four years. Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies will aspire to a bloc majority of 61 seats in the Knesset. The current polls suggest that it will be touch-and-go for Netanyahu to overcome his opponents, led … Read more
Tal Elmaliach, Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi, Mapam and the Demise of the Israeli Labor Movement, translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2020), 299 pp. Avi Shilon, The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process, translated from the Hebrew by Ira Moskowitz (London: … Read more
The death of Queen Elizabeth II has been described by many as the end of an era — a watershed in British history. The Queen’s remarkable reign of 70 years — a period only exceeded in recent times by the Sun King, Louis XIV of France — encompassed the end of empire and the decline … Read more
by Jared Kushner Published by Broadside Books 2022, pp.492 Jared Kushner’s account of his four years in the Trump White House produces several interesting revelations. It is all there: the incremental friction with China, impeachment, John Bolton, Russian subversion, Hunter Biden, the wooing of Kim Jong-un, the 6 January assault on the Capitol, the murder … Read more
In 1985, the year of Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1140 Jews were allowed to leave. Four years later — the year when the Berlin Wall fell — the number reached 71,000. Almost a million Soviet Jews emigrated to Israel in the following years. This was … Read more
‘I am a Russian writer. Like all Russians, I am now defending my homeland. But the Nazis have reminded me of something else; my mother’s name was Hannah. I am a Jew. I say this proudly.’ So spoke the noted writer, Ilya Ehrenburg, at a Jewish rally in Moscow in August 1941 as the Nazi … Read more
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called a meeting of ministerial colleagues and interested parties to discuss the threat from the Kremlin to close down the Jewish Agency for Israel in Russia – a body which facilitates the emigration of Jews from that country. Many were unsure whether the Kremlin’s move was merely intimidatory … Read more
A few weeks ago, the urbane Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, came out with a bizarre statement to Italian television that Hitler was of “Jewish blood” and that “the most ardent antisemites are, as a rule, Jews”. Jews, therefore, only had themselves to blame for millennia of persecution and extermination. They had brought it upon … Read more
‘No more silence; no more compromise, no more acquiescence; no more vacillation, no more appeasement’. So spoke a young deputy at a Board of Deputies meeting in September 1982, defiantly challenging its leadership. It was directed at the Board’s Israel policy in the aftermath of the massacre of Palestinians by Christian Phalangists in the Lebanese … Read more
AS THE WAR in Ukraine enters its second month, it is clear that Russian forces have been unable to secure a quick victory. The Ukrainian population, including its 30% Russian speakers, have fiercely opposed the invaders and united most of the international community behind it. Five Russian major-generals have been killed, together with thousands of … Read more