“PUTIN IS ABSOLUTELY insane! He is the super villain of today!” So spoke Volodomyr Vysotski of the Jewish Social Initiative in the Ukraine in a recent interview with the BBC. This is a blunt assessment with which the vast majority of Jews will agree. The threat to use tactical nuclear weapons and the presence of … Read more
THE RECENT VISIT of Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the “Religious Zionism” party in Israel, to Britain, provoked an unprecedented strong response from leading Jewish organisations and an embarrassed silence from many orthodox rabbis. Smotrich met quietly with representatives of Bnei Akiva and Mizrahi, the Religious Zionists’ movement and the chief executive of Chabad in … Read more
The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism Ed. Alessandra TarquiniPublished by Palgrave Macmillan 2021, pp.352 While many look to the rise of both Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany to understand the Left’s evolution on the Jewish question, one period of time that is often overlooked is that of fin de … Read more
“YOU HAVE SAT there too long for all the good you have done. In the name of God, go.” So spoke Leo Amery MP to Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons in the wake of British military failures before the Nazi advance in 1940. These words, originally attributed to Oliver Cromwell during the English … Read more
Seventy years ago this week, Mordechai Oren, an Israeli emissary of the left wing Zionist party, Mapam, mysteriously disappeared in Prague. He was due to go by train to Vienna and then take the next El Al flight to Israel. As the days went by, his friends and family became increasingly worried at the sound … Read more
The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1992: Between Zionism and Antisemitism ed. Alessandra Tarquini Published by Palgrave Macmillan 2021 pp.348 This book of accessible essays by specialists examines the Jewish question, not internally from the perspective of Jews themselves, but externally by European socialist thinkers. Since Zionism was a singular ideology and did not fit … Read more
LAST WEEK, THE killer of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll was sentenced by a French court to 22 years without parole. The courtroom was told that the assault in March 2018 on this aged Jewish woman started out as a petty robbery but was transformed into a frenzied attack — and that this was fuelled by “a … Read more
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