The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict By Jonathan Schneer Published by Random House, (New York 2010), pp. 432 price $30 The Balfour Declaration was the British charter of November 1917 that viewed “with favour” the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Of course, David Lloyd George and … Read more
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner Published by Toby Press, pp. price £19.99 This is a work of recollections, reminiscences and vignettes. Yehuda Avner’s life spans the lifetime of the state of Israel – and in one sense, he tells the traditional story from his earliest days in … Read more
The definition and meaning of Jewishness is an ongoing and indeed eternal preoccupation of the Jewish people. The British writer Howard Jacobson is no exception to the army of explainers. In his latest novel, he looks at the 70 faces of Jewish identity through fictional characters – and leads the reader into a House of … Read more
Israeli recruits gather last month at the graves of fallen soldiers and other victims of war, Mount Herzl cemetery By Efraim Karsh Yale University Press, £20 Palestine Betrayed is a detailed riposte to the version of the Israel-Palestine conflict that places the blame solely at Israel’s doorstep. Efraim Karsh, Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean … Read more
Defend the Realm By Christopher Andrew | Knopf | 1,056 pages | $40 In October 1909, Commander Mansfield Cumming of the Royal Navy and Captain Vernon Kell of the British Army started work in a small office in London’s Victoria Street which had been rented by a private detective. Thus began Britain’s security service, known … Read more
Right-hand man: Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party appeals to ordinary Israelis’ deep-seated fears By Dani Filc Routledge £75 Why do so many impoverished Israelis vote for the Right? Netanyahu’s policies of privatisation and empowerment of the private sector clearly seem to be against their interests. Yet they shout: “Long live Bibi and Israel”. Dani Filc … Read more
Avi Shlaim offers a selective, partial view By Avi Shlaim Verso, £16.99 In this interesting collection of past writings, Avi Shlaim emotionally takes the side of the Palestinians, yet intellectually and rationally views the conflict as a clash between two national movements. While this balance is maintained in his earlier work, more recent writings are … Read more
One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict Benny Morris Yale University Press 240pp £18.99 ISBN 978 0300122817 The Making of Modern Israel 1948-1967 Leslie Stein Polity 412pp £20 ISBN 978 0745644660 Benny Morris is well known as one of the Israeli ‘new historians’. His evaluations of Israel’s birth in 1948 punctured both the official … Read more
Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War against Jewish Terrorism 1945–1948 Author: David Cesarani Publisher: Heinemann Price (RRP): £20 Few books have been written on the British counter-war against Jewish dissident groups in Palestine after the revelations of the Holocaust. Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvati Leumi and Yitzhak Shamir’s Lehi, known pejoratively as ‘the Stern … Read more
Benjamin Disraeli By Adam Kirsch Schocken 259 pages; $21 It is said that when Menachem Begin was arrested by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, in Lithuania in 1940, he took with him a copy of Andre Maurois’s biography of Benjamin Disraeli to stave off the intellectual isolation of an uncertain future. Disraeli, a converted … Read more