The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago was a watershed in the collapse of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. It also marked the lowest point in the far right’s march to power. The far-right came into existence when, opposing Menachem Begin’s support for the 1979 treaty between Israel and Egypt, it broke … Read more
Professor David Cesarani, who has died at the early age of 58, was an international expert on the Holocaust and on anti-Semitism who spoke on several occasions to the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS. During his career, he held posts at Leeds, Manchester, QMC, Southampton and finally at Royal Holloway. He was an advisor … Read more
Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport By Saul David (Hodder and Stoughton pp. 446, 20 pounds) In 1976 Palestinian Arabs from a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and German far leftists from the Revolutionäre Zellen hijacked an Air France Airbus with nearly 250 … Read more
Boycotting Israel is Wrong by Philip Mendes and Nick Dyrenfurth This academic overview of the boycott against Israel argues that the BDS campaign is “bad For Israelis, bad for Palestinians, and is corrosive of progressive movements and civil society”. The authors believe the campaign plays on the lack of understanding about the complexity of the … Read more
In Jews Against Themselves, Edward Alexander, a retired English professor from Seattle, deals with the concept of “Jewish apostasy” – members of the tribe who “abandon” the State of Israel. Throughout this collection of essays, the author vents anger against Jews of ‘the progressive persuasion” who fall “to mobilize their intellectual resources on behalf of … Read more
In one pamphlet, the Sephardim of Bevis Marks express their relief in a special prayer that Queen Victoria had survived an assassination attempt at Constitution Hill in June 1840. Another is a declaration of fealty to the crown by the Portsmouth Jewish community when King George III visited the town in June 1773. Elsewhere, there … Read more
At this critical hour for mankind, let every Jew and Jewess utter a solemn vow that, come what may and whatever the trials in store, they will stand body and soul by Britain, giving all that they have, never despairing, determined that so far as they can achieve it, the crowning disaster of a desolate … Read more
The far-left candidate in the British Labour Party leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn, is performing very well. He stands out from the other candidates in projecting a clear vision of the future in an age of austerity and plucks at the socialist heartstrings of many a party member – a yearning for traditional Labour values and … Read more
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s attempts to be re-elected by confronting the White House, two weeks before Israel’s election, antagonised many American Jews, over two thirds of whom had voted for President Barack Obama; it highlighted fundamental differences in approach between the Jewish state and the most powerful Diaspora community. The same was true in … Read more
June 18 marks 200 years since the Duke of Wellington’s forces defeated Napoleon’s armies in a muddy field in Belgium. The battle is seen as the final act in one of the greatest military campaigns in European history, the end of a decade-long struggle for power on the continent and the day Wellington saved Britain … Read more