GORDON BROWN: POWER WITH PURPOSEBy James MacintyreBloomsbury Publishing336 pages Gordon Brown was prime minister of the United Kingdom between 2007 and 2010. For a decade before that, he managed the country’s finances as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His public persona projected a dour countenance, a son of the Manse (a house for Protestant clergy in Scotland), and … Read more
Last Saturday, 45-year-old Essa Suleiman was charged with attempting to murder two identifiably Jewish men on a rampage in Golders Green, a centre of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox life. Suleiman had been a patient at a London psychiatric clinic and earlier that day, attempted to knife a Muslim friend of 30 years. It was the latest … Read more
The breakdown of negotiations between Iran and the US does not bode well for humanity, but it has been welcomed wholeheartedly by Benjamin Netanyahu, who hopes the delay may yet provide time for the ayatollahs to capitulate. On February 28, shortly after launching an attack on Tehran, Netanyahu announced three war aims: It is clear … Read more
According to recent polls of American Jews, organised by GBAO Strategies and by the Jewish Electorate Institute, between 55 and 60 per cent oppose United States’ military action against Iran. In one poll, 77 per cent expressed their belief that President Donald Trump does not have a plan for the conduct of the war. It marks a … Read more
Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a press conference at the conclusion of the 12-day war against the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran. He went into great detail about how the Israeli operation had removed “the existential threat of Iran”; how the serried ranks of Iranian nuclear scientists had been liquidated; how factories producing centrifuges … Read more
■Review of WORLD ENEMY NO. 1NAZI GERMANY, SOVIET RUSSIA, AND THE FATE OF THE JEWSBy Jochen Hellbeck, Penguin Press, 560 pages; $22 Nazis called the Soviet Union “the most powerful Jewish organization in the world.” Hitler viewed the Jews as the guiding force behind Bolshevism, and the preponderance of Jews in its upper echelons – Trotsky, Zinoviev, … Read more
Last month, the Argentinian government declassified an official file relating to the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. He was known as “the Angel of Death” for his sadistic experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. The release of documentation came about after pressure from Republicans in the US Senate and indicates that the Argentinian authorities knew exactly … Read more
Thirty years ago, Yitzhak Rabin, the then prime minister of Israel, was assassinated as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv. He had been cut down essentially because he had signed a Declaration of Principles – the Oslo Accord – with Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in September 1993. The killing … Read more
Last Friday, Hamas agreed to negotiate an end to hostilities in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages on the basis of the Trump peace framework. Hamas has not said that it will disarm or that its leaders will go into exile and there are clear divisions of opinion within the organisation. The Israelis have … Read more
38 LONDRES STREET: ON IMPUNITY, PINOCHET IN ENGLAND AND A NAZI IN PATAGONIA By Philippe Sands Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 480 pages; In the autumn of 1998, the former president of Chile Augusto Pinochet was awakened from his slumber by several British policemen as he lay in bed recovering from a back operation at … Read more