Building Tunnels in Gaza and Lebanon: The North Korean Connection

Last week, North Korea launched its latest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-19, which reached deep into space before descending and plunging into the ocean. This event hardly registered in the international media, days before the American election and the latest episodes in the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. While North Korea is 8,000 km … Read more

On Chaim Weizmann

CHAIM WEIZMANN: A BIOGRAPHYBy Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golan Brandeis University Press (pp. 820) Chaim Weizmann was a remarkable man who truly deserved the accolade of “a founding father of Israel.”This majestic work by Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography is as absorbing as it is comprehensive. Both authors have written about Weizmann for … Read more

Hitler’s People

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich By Richard J. Evans, published by Allen Lane 2024, pp.598 Why did so many hitherto responsible citizens become fellow travellers in Hitler’s Germany? Why were ordinary people in their millions sucked into a whirlpool of deception? These are the questions that have been repeatedly asked since 1945. … Read more

Jews on the Dark Side: Russia and Venezuela

At the beginning of this month, Victor Kara-Murza, a British-Russian dissident, was suddenly released from his Siberian strict-regime camp and flown out of Russia as part of a major prisoner exchange. Murderers and spies were taken to the East, free thinkers and human rights activists were taken to the West. When asked if this exchange … Read more

Between Islamic Nationalism and Christian Nationalism

Before the opening of the new Parliament in London last week, MPs swore allegiance to the Crown on the King James Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sundar Gutka prayerbook, the Koran and the Hebrew Bible. All this demonstrated the wide diversity of British society in 2024. This positive imagery was shattered by the election of … Read more

British Jews and the General Election 2024

If numerous opinion polls on the forthcoming general election in the UK are to be believed, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is on course to achieve its lowest number of seats in the House of Commons since 1906. In contrast, the victory of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is predicted to exceed Tony Blair’s landslide in … Read more

Israel and the US: Dealing with Donkeys

At this week’s Yom Hazikaron ceremony on Mount Herzl to remember the fallen in Israel’s wars, Prime Minister Netanyahu commented: ‘We will realise the goals of victory – and at the centre of them is the return of all our hostages’. Many hostage family members simply do not believe him and regard such pronouncements as … Read more

On Pinchas Rutenberg

When Pinchas Rutenberg, one of the giants of the Zionist movement, died in 1942, his friend, the writer Moshe Smilansky described him as “a great engineer with the soul of a poet.” Nevertheless, Rutenberg is missing from the public consciousness, even among those who treasure Jewish history. He stipulated in his will that no funds should … Read more

On Martin Gilbert

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