The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand. London: Verso, 2009. 332 pp. This book has been promoted as “an international bestseller” that demolishes all previous connotations of the Jews as a people. Shlomo Sand approvingly quotes the French historian, Marcel Detienne, “How can we denationalise national histories?”— and this seems to be the … Read more
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews Photo The Grande Synagogue de la Victoire in Paris in October. CreditEd Alcock for The New York Times LAST week, Twitter shut down a popular account for posting anti-Semitic messages in France. This came soon after the firing of blanks at a synagogue near Paris, the discovery … Read more
In 1940, Eric Hobsbawm, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, characterised the war against Hitler as one of rival imperialisms between the Allies and Nazism and not as an anti-fascist struggle. Although millions of Jews were trapped by Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Hobsbawm was silent. He regarded the sacrifice of the Jews … Read more
During Jewish Book Week in February 1958, the great Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher, gave a talk entitled “The Non-Jewish Jew”. It was later published and became required reading for the student revolutionaries of the 1960s. Deutscher tried to explain why some Jews embraced the revolutionary imperative and relegated their Jewishness to a secondary level. As … Read more
Stalin’s last years were ones which were pervaded by Jewish conspiracies and Zionist plots. The first show trial in Hungary of László Rajk in 1949 was also the first in which ‘international Zionism’ was invoked for crimes committed. Three out of the six of Rajk’s six co-defendants were Jews. Local Communists in Western Europe parroted … Read more
Why is the far left so antagonistic towards Israel? Such fixation is no doubt fuelled to a great degree by the forty-year long settlement drive on the West Bank and the political inanities of a succession of right-wing governments in the country. But its deeper roots lie in the age of decolonisation. In 1945, there … Read more
What would have been the reaction of the British left if Adolf Hitler had been victorious in 1940 and successfully conquered the United Kingdom? Clement Attlee and the Labour Party leadership would have undoubtedly fought on the beaches and the landing grounds. Its members would have joined the resistance or fled to Canada to establish … Read more
The accusation that British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, holds dual loyalties is not new to British politics. In November 1919, on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Sir Herbert Samuel, told an audience at the London Opera House that he hoped for “a self-governing commonwealth under the auspices of an established Jewish majority.” … Read more
Is contact with a foreign university the same as support for the regime? The essentially Trotskyist boycotters of Israeli academic institutions certainly believe so. But so does Student Rights, associated with the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, which has attacked SOAS for agreeing to teach students a master’s degree in Finance at Tripoli’s Al Fatah University … Read more
The definition and meaning of Jewishness is an ongoing and indeed eternal preoccupation of the Jewish people. The British writer Howard Jacobson is no exception to the army of explainers. In his latest novel, he looks at the 70 faces of Jewish identity through fictional characters – and leads the reader into a House of … Read more