The result of the election in Israel in 1977 is known in Hebrew as ‘the Earthquake’. It marked the end of the Labour party’s long rule and the beginning of the long decline of the Israeli Left. The party with which Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson had identified was replaced by Menahem Begin’s … Read more
Last week, Amos Biderman published his daily cartoon in Ha’aretz. It depicted Netanyahu standing alone amidst the ruins of Gaza and sporting a MAGA (Make America Great Again) style hat — albeit in blue and white. The hat was labelled “Total Victory!” Below Netanyahu’s feet, hidden from view, deep underground in a tunnel, were the caged … Read more
During the last decade, British Jewry have lost several of its best-loved historians including David Cesarani, Robert Wistrich — and Martin Gilbert. Routledge has now published the ninth edition of Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History which last appeared in 2010. To this have been added maps about Jews in Muslim Lands and Jews in the post-Soviet era. … Read more
Safe Haven: The United Kingdom’s Investigations into Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice by Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood, published by Oxford University Press 2023, pp.309 Thirty years ago, the late David Cesarani published Justice Delayed which revealed that many Nazi collaborators were living peacefully in Britain. This followed on the heels of the War Crimes … Read more
This Thursday in the House of Commons, MPs will debate the possibility of holding a Jewish History Month. Nicki Aiken MP who has secured the debate, argued that it would compliment Black History Month and Islamophobia Awareness Month — both of which have celebrated the value of difference. Even so, it is worthwhile to ask … Read more
Forty years ago, I began to explore my family tree and wrote a letter to the delightfully named Reverend Sunshine at the Chief Rabbi’s Office in London. In a pre-computer age, he was the keeper of the records of Jewish births, marriages and deaths. I asked him specifically about my mother’s family — the Nathans … Read more
There have been commemorations this year to mark several anniversaries: the assassination of President Kennedy (1963), the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Oslo Accords (1993). And less obvious ones that many in Jewish communities would prefer to forget such as the electrocution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in Sing-Sing prison in 1953. Into this latter … Read more
When Israel’s Declaration of Independence was signed, only two of the 37 signatories were women – Rachel Kagan and Golda Meir. This is symbolic of the profound difficulty that women faced in the ideologically male-centered world that existed in the days of early Zionism, in which women were generally expected to remain at home and forget … Read more
This absurd character with horn-rimmed glasses, beside whom James Bond becomes a flavourless creation. He does not shoot, nor use his fists, nor leap from speeding automobiles like James Bond, but he advises on wars, ends wars, pretends to change our destiny and does change it. So wrote the Italian writer, Oriana Fallaci, over 50 … Read more
British Jews view the killings of 7 October as another tragic episode in Jewish history and recalled past massacres in eastern Europe or the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. In contrast, few of the marchers on last Saturday’s pro-Palestine march would have understood it as a pogrom of ethnic cleansing. Many Ashkenazi Jews in the … Read more