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. 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
In May 1926, a Jewish watchmaker approached a middle-aged man sporting a cane and attending his favourite restaurant in the Rue Racine in Paris. The watchmaker asked the man his name and, after hearing the response, pumped five bullets into him, adding two more as he lay dying on the pavement. The dead man was … Read more
Last year, the spiritual mentor of Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, gave a sermon in the Great Mosque in Mosul. The advance of Daesh will not stop, he proclaimed, “until we hit the last nail into the coffin of Sykes-Picot”. He was referring to the secret agreement, concluded 100 years ago this week by the Conservative … Read more
The signatories to the letter do not mention that not one single Bundist was ever elected to the Sejm, the Polish parliament during the inter-war years. The Zionists and the ultra-orthodox were far more successful. In 1939 the Bund depended on an electoral arrangement with the Polish Socialist party for its municipal election gains. Those … Read more