A RECENT academic survey indicated that 93 percent of British Jews believe that Israel forms some part of their identity. Given the crisis of anti-Zionism in Labour, this poses a dilemma for Labour Jews ‒ where does their loyalty lie, to their Jewishness or to their party? While Jews have historically been prominent in leftist movements, it is also true that a ”Jewish … Read more
The Last Days of Stalin Joshua Rubenstein Yale University Press, £25 When Stalin died on Purim, in 1953, beggars in Jerusalem rattled their tin cans and cried “Haman is dead!” In the USSR, there were public tears and private joy. Huge, inconsolable crowds appeared in the streets and many participants were crushed underfoot in the … Read more
Why have Jews always been involved disproportionately in the social activism of the times? Clearly a central reason must be the inheritance of historical memory; after the Shoah, all Jews are survivors. This was the reason why many Jews were shocked by Ken Livingstone’s inaccurate remarks that Hitler supported Zionism. That it emerged from a Labour man—whose party which has celebrated difference … Read more
Jeremy Corbyn’s latest gaffe — in inadvertently comparing Israel with ISIS — diverted attention away from the Chakrabarti Inquiry’s findings into anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour party. This not only distracted the public gaze away from Shami Chakrabarti’s determined attempt to plough a rational course through the minefield of defining anti-Semitic innuendo, but also concealed the … Read more
Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism (Columbia University Press 2016) pp.321 by Michele Battini The Italian academic, Michele Battini examines the gradual transformation of the traditional Christian anti-Semitic charge of usury into modern anti-Jewish anti-capitalism. Fuelled by the economic transformation in the nineteenth century and the self-regulated market, anti-Jewish anti-capitalism emerged … Read more
Display "“Left out: The rise of the Israeli right” — TLV1 Podcasts" from tlv1.fm Click here to display content from tlv1.fm. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to load this content. Always display content from tlv1.fm Open "“Left out: The rise of the Israeli right” — TLV1 Podcasts" directly June 2016
Review of Asaf Sinaver’s Abba Eban: A Biography (London 2016) 464pp. Duckworth Overlook. £25 Abba Eban (1915–2002), who served as Israel’s Foreign Minister between 1966 and 1974, was regarded by many in the international community as Talleyrand’s heir. In Israel, by contrast, he was derided for his Jewish liberalism and quintessentially English intellectual approach to diplomacy. The Labour Prime Minister Levi Eshkol … Read more
Ephraim Katzir was born in Kiev on 16 May 1916. His father, Yehuda Katchalski, was an accountant and an adherent of Zionism. Katchalski and his wife, Tsila, originally lived in Łódź, then in the Tsarist empire, now in Poland. Łódź was a centre of socialist politics and radical endeavour. During the 1905 revolution an uprising … Read more
It is often stated that there is an ongoing delegitimisation of Israel. What is rarely mentioned is that there has been a parallel delegitimisation of Zionism – an ideological demonisation by those who are often ignorant of its history and evolution. Such ignorance is the underpinning which allows legitimate criticism to occasionally tip over into … Read more
Briefing Paper: Labour Party Inquiry on Anti-Semitism Who am I? I am an emeritus professor at SOAS, University of London. My book, Israel and the European Left was published in 2011 and I have long been interested in this area. I have therefore written this briefing paper which traces the road which has led to … Read more