Last week the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, telephoned the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza to express his government’s strong support for the Palestinian cause. Significantly Mahathir chose Palestinian Islamism and not Palestinian nationalism, Hamas rather than Fatah, to demonstrate Malaysian solidarity. His publicised telephone call came shortly after his controversial anti-Jewish – as … Read more
Thousands of eager participants are returning from the UK Limmud Festival, whose message of openness in Jewish life has proved a challenge to conformists within the Jewish world and spawned more than 80 Limmud communities across the world – from Beijing to Jerusalem and from New Zealand to New York, run by the brightest and best of … Read more
Forty years ago, the Iranian revolution was reaching its zenith. 1978 had been marked by demonstrations and a massacre of protesters in Tehran’s Jaleh Square in September. By mid-January 1979, the Shah had gone into exile and the Queen’s visit to Iran in the royal yacht, Britannia, had been abruptly cancelled. On 1 February, the Ayatollah … Read more
Eighty years ago, synagogues in Germany burned. It was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass — a turning point in National Socialism’s war on the Jews, when Hitler ordered a state-sponsored assault on its Jewish minority, the first step on the road to Auschwitz. A powerful JC editorial commented: “It is the culmination of a process which … Read more
IT WILL TAKE A NEW generation, and a change of leadership, on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict for there to be a real possibility of progress towards peace, one of the world’s leading scholars on Israel believes. Professor Colin Shindler, a visiting British academic who will deliver the first of three lectures at the University … Read more
75 years ago, Hitler sent a message to his representative in Copenhagen instructing him to rid Denmark of its 8,000-strong Jewish community. “The Jewish Campaign” was scheduled to begin on Rosh Hashanah 5704 — 1 October 1943. Danish Jews would be rounded up, incarcerated and “deported to the East”. Danish resistance to the German occupation … Read more
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the First World War came to an end. Among the vast number of casualties, it had cost the lives of 3,500 British Jews and 12,000 German Jews. It had uprooted millions, demolished great empires and destroyed the ordered worlds of so … Read more
Review of James Loeffler’s Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century; Yale University Press 384 pages; $32.50 The exponents of human rights can often be an irritant to those who hold office even in democratic lands. Those who speak “truth to power” in countries ruled by authoritarian figures often risk imprisonment or worse. … Read more
When the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem last month, Paraguay was quick to follow suit — much to the delight of the Israeli government. At an effusive ceremony in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the Paraguayan president for taking in Holocaust survivors, while President Rivlin said that Paraguay had been a true friend … Read more
Fifty years ago, the student revolt broke out on campuses all over western Europe. The revolutionary fervour of the times spawned a generation who believed that a better world was possible if only we dedicated ourselves. In Communist Eastern Europe there were student demonstrations against state-sponsored anti-Semitism. There were occupations and sit-ins at LSE, Leicester … Read more