Review of From Antisemitism to Anti-Zionism: The Past and Present of a Lethal Ideology ed. Eunice G. Pollack Published by Academic Studies Press 2017, pp.426 This book is a collection of essays which looks at the transition of anti-Zionism into antisemitism in our time. There are some excellent essays in this collection such as David Hirsh’s … Read more
In 1999, Ehud Barak defeated Benjamin Netanyahu with the slogan, “Too many lies for too long!”. While a similar disdain exists today, do you think that it was inevitable that Benny Gantz would go into government with Netanyahu even after the stalemate of three elections? Netanyahu is a highly intelligent and crafty politician. Over the … Read more
Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution by Shlomo Avineri Published by Yale University Press 2019, pp.221 Why should Karl Marx be included in Yale’s excellent Jewish Lives series when the subject of this fascinating book never referred to his Jewish origins? Shlomo Avineri, the eminent Israeli intellectual and academic, has attempted to unravel Marx’s connection to … Read more
Searching for Socialism, by academics Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, traces the odyssey of Labour’s “Old Left” from the 1970s until the defeat of the far left in last year’s elec-tion. It looks at the political voyage of left-wing Brexiteers from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn; and also indicates that the mindset of the far … Read more
AT JEWISH DINNER PARTIES in north west London, the topics of discussion not so long ago were Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to deal with anti-Semitism and the inanities of Netanyahu’s latest manoeuvre to remain in power – topics all swept away, including the dinner parties themselves, by social distancing and self-isolation. Instead of tea and biscuits … Read more
Review of Laurel Leff’s Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life and Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Germany Published by Yale University Press 2019, pp.357 To be hired by an American university, a refugee scholar (from Nazism) had to be world-class and well connected, not too old and not too young, not too right and … Read more
Two weeks ago, Mario Sandoval, a professor at the Sorbonne’s Institute of Latin American Studies, was finally extradited to Argentina after a seven-year legal fight. In a former life, he had been a police officer during the military junta then assigned to unit 3.3.2 at Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada, the naval college known … Read more
Review of Trinity by Frank Close, Published by Allen Lane 2019, pp. 528 Thirty years after his death in Communist East Germany, the saga of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs still astonishes. The author of Trinity, Frank Close, a distinguished professor of theoretical physics, has forensically dissected this story with nuance and insight.Fuchs came of … Read more
The Road from Kristallnacht: Unlearning the Past Seventy-Five years ago tomorrow, on 12 November 1944, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle laid a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It commemorated the multitudes who had fallen during World War I. Churchill, De Gaulle and many others … Read more
Kristallnacht took place on the nights of November 9 and 10 1938 as a planned act of revenge for the killing of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a seventeen Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan. 200 synagogues were burned to the ground, thousands of Jewish shops and homes ransacked, 30,000 sent to Buchenwald, Dachau and … Read more