Eighty years ago, the guns fell silent on the killing fields of France and Belgium. The seemingly pointless slaughter of millions and the defeat of Imperial Germany initiated the growth of revolutionary movements, including both Fascism and Marxism-Leninism, and propelled them on the road to power. The break-up of great empires permitted small nations to … Read more
Lord Jakobovits in Conversation by Michael Shashar. London, Vallentine Mitchell, 202 pages. £19.50Michael Shashar completed the last of his interviews with the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain shortly before Immanuel Jakobovits died a year ago. In one sense this book of conversations paints an autobiographical landscape, but it is … Read more
The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After by Edward W Said 345pp, Granta, pounds 15Edward Said is an eloquent advocate of the Palestinian cause in the west, but he is also a hate figure for both the Israeli right and American neo-conservatives. Like Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, Said … Read more
Shlomo Ben-Ami sounded exasperated. “We are a society living at a high decibel level without a moment of rest,” Israel’s Internal Security Minister said in a newspaper interview last week. What Israel needed from its leaders were the kind of “fireside chats” President Roosevelt used to give to Americans. But instead of calming influences, … Read more
Colin Shindler Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship THE AMERICANIZATION OF ISRAELI POLITICS IN THE 1990S ISRAEL HAS, OF COURSE, CHANGED dramatically since 1967. The publication of the 1999 report of the Human Development Index by the United Nations indicated that Israel occupied 32nd position of 174 countries surveyed, ahead of Hong Kong, … Read more
Leon Trotsky once remarked that those who wanted a quiet life were unfortunate to have been born in the twentieth century. Those with a sense of history—a defining characteristic of the JeW’ish people—would certainly nod in agreement and remember the events of the past hundred years. The purveyors of popular entertainment in Britain will help … Read more
The PLO in the World Order Avraham Sela and Moshe Ma’oz (eds), The PLO and Israel: From Armed Conflict to Political Solution 1964-1994. London: Macmillan, 1997. Pp.x + 310, index. £30 (cloth). ISBN 0-333-72370-8. Roland Dannreuther, The Soviet Union and the PLO. London: Macmillan, 1998. Pp.ix + 222, index, biblio. £45 (cloth). ISBN 0-312-17223-0. … Read more
The last Rosh Hashanah before the millennium will no doubt be the occasion for passionate exhortations in synagogues around the world. Rabbis will in all likelihood circumvent the difficult linkage between a Jewish festival and a Christian happening and appeal to their congregants to reflect on the passage of Jews and Judaism through 1,800 years … Read more
Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin by Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman 292pp, (Granta)13.99. On November 4, 1995, at the end of a jubilant rally for peace, Yigal Amir, a religious student, pumped two bullets into Yitzhak Rabin and a third into his bodyguard.The shots ruptured his spleen, severed … Read more
Two demonstrations recently took place in Israel. One of these, ostensibly a prayer meeting, brought together a quarter of a million Jews—a mixture of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist haredim—onto the streets of Jerusalem to protest against the rulings, and raison d’etre, of Israel’s Supreme Court. Yeshiva students were told that it was ‘an obligation’ to be … Read more