ISRAELI FOREIGN POLICY(Indiana University Press 2020 pp.356) $48.54 Uri Bialer There is a profound difference between the objective outcome of a thought-through policy and the superficial sound bites of transient politicians. Uri Bialer’s excellent and well-researched Israeli Foreign Policy: A People Shall Not Dwell Alone (Indiana University Press 2020) provides any reader with an intelligent appraisal of … Read more
IN MARCH 2019, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told the Christian Broadcasting Network he believed that God was acting through President Trump to protect the Jews of Israel. While Queen Esther had saved the Jewish people from certain Persian annihilation during Purim, today, Pompeo argued, President Trump was saving the Jews from the wrath of … Read more
Last Monday the UAE Ambassador and its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh, was rapturously greeted by the American Jewish Committee in New York. It was a celebration of the decision of Israel and the United Arab Emirates to proceed towards a normalisation of diplomatic relations. While it was clearly different from the … Read more
SULTANIC SAVIORS AND TOLERANT TURKS by Marc David Baer Writing Ottoman Jewish history, denying the Armenian genocide338pp. Indiana University Press. $95 (paperback, $45). Until quite recently, whenever Turkey was criticized for its approach to minorities – Greeks, Kurds and Armenians – they were known to deflect the argument by pointing to 500 years of tolerance … Read more
EIGHTY YEARS AGO, on August 6, 1940, 25,000 Jews stood in silence on the streets of New York to bear witness to the funeral cortège of Vladimir Jabotinsky as it passed by. The death of the Revisionist Zionist leader at the age of 59 shocked the Jewish world and he was mourned by friend and foe … Read more
On hearing of the terrible explosion in Beirut, the first fear for many was that an Israeli operation to hit a Hezbollah arms dump had gone disastrously wrong. Israel denied any involvement as did Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah — although Hezbollah has stored supplies of Ammonium Nitrate in London and other European cities in the … Read more
For British Jews of a certain age, Alfie Bass, David Kossoff, Warren Mitchell and Lionel Bart were household names in the world of popular music and theater. They were also children of London’s Jewish East End who aspired to make it in the wider world, felt very Jewish, but at the same time were perplexed by … Read more
“Israel can be a partner, a junior partner, but a perfect partner for China in the development of a variety of technologies that change the way we live, how long we live, how healthy we live − in every area.” So spoke Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to China in March 2017. He then went … Read more
Review of The Room where it Happened: A White House Memoir by John Bolton Published by Simon and Schuster, pp. 577 price £25.00 John Bolton is the hawks’ hawk, a maximalist who takes no prisoners — someone who even worried Trump by his views. A neo-con veteran of the Reagan, Bush père and Dubya administrations, … Read more
Eighty years ago on 16 July 1940, Hitler issued Führer Directive No.16 which instructed his forces to prepare for an invasion of the United Kingdom. The Nazis had conquered France and on a clear day could see the white cliffs of Dover — they readied themselves to launch Operation Sealion. A few weeks before, David … Read more