THIRTY YEARS AGO, the Soviet Union passed into history. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, a new Russia was born and a plethora of new republics came into existence. The abrupt end of 74 years of Lenin’s experiment gave birth to chaos and collapse. Oligarchs emerged from the subterranean depths. Diehard commissars became diehard capitalists overnight. While many … Read more
Sixty years ago, Arieh Eshel, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, unambiguously condemned apartheid — with far more determination than either the British or the Americans at the international assembly. “It is because the Jewish people has been the classic victims of the doctrine of racial inequality that my delegation appeals with such fervour … Read more
A YEAR HAS passed since Joe Biden was elected as the 46th president of the United States. He entered the White House to great expectations that he would be the very antithesis to Trump — not least to give carte blanche to the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu. He has had to repair the stagnation, caused … Read more
Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Islamist Writings on Resistance and Religion By Erik Skare, published by I. B. Tauris, 2021, pp.266 Forty years ago, a group of students formed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza. It was inspired by the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo by an … Read more
TWO WEEKS AGO, Jews in the Diaspora were instructed in the Torah reading of Parashah Shoftim: “Justice, justice, shall you follow”. Then the reality in Afghanistan intervened. Joe Biden’s long-held belief that US troops should not be in Afghanistan was implemented by an incompetent US military who had not taken into account the worst-case scenario … Read more
‘ANTISEMITISM ISN’T THE first name of hate, it’s the family name’. So spoke Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid at last week’s ‘Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism’ in Jerusalem. Lapid went on to say that the term ‘antisemitism’ applied to ‘anyone who hates so much that they want to kill, eliminate, persecute and expel people just … Read more
Review of Leslie Turnberg’s Mandate: The Palestine Crucible 1919-1939 (Vallentine Mitchell 2021) pp.320 Three years ago, a retired British army officer, Ian Westerman, wrote an article in Ha’aretz, entitled ‘What did the British ever do for Israel?’ This piece, courageously suggested that in an age of decolonising the academic syllabus and retrospectively rectifying the perceived wrongs … Read more
LAST MONTH, the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi was elected president of Iran on a very low turnout of voters. He had easily been defeated in 2017 by the outgoing President Hassan Rouhani who, like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami before him, had hoped to move the Islamic Republic in a more pragmatic direction. In contrast, … Read more
ON SUNDAY THE KNESSET voted to approve the ‘Change’ government of Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. Whether this multi-headed pantomime horse will survive is an open question, but it does appear that Benjamin Netanyahu has been put out to political pasture. While it is too early to write him off, what are we to make of … Read more
David Baddiel is well-known in Britain as a comedian and a writer. He is also unusual – in that he does not shy away from his Jewishness in his stage routine, but actually glories in his identity. The grandson of disenfranchised, well-to-do, Jewish business-people who escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, his Twitter biography is just … Read more