Giora Goldberg, Ben-Gurion against the Knesset (London: Routledge, 2003). Pp 338. $150.00 cloth. Ben-Gurion, of course, helped to construct and shape the state of Israel, but his actions in the arena of the Knesset, according to Giora Goldberg, led to unforeseen consequences in later years. In the early years of the state, Ben-Gurion wielded tremendous … Read more
Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship By Martin Gilbert Henry Holt 359 pages; $30 Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft By Michael Makovsky Yale University Press 342 pages; $35 In 2002, the BBC ran a phone-in competition to discover who was the greatest Briton of all time. Nearly half a million people voted for … Read more
A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism by Yakov M. Rabkin, published by Zed Press There is a tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism, but this book only deals with a section of it. There is a difference between Jewish opposition which includes sections of the Left and Judaic opposition – … Read more
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis Bat Ye’or Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005 384 pp., pb. $23.95/£17.50, ISBN 083864077X; hb. $49.50/£36.50, ISBN 0838640761 The Israel–Palestine conflict is an obstacle placed in the path of Jewish-Muslim dialogue in Europe. But in this book there is no indication that there are two narratives to this tortuous conflict … Read more
Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, believes there has been a concerted attempt to label his paper as a receptacle for liberal anti-Semitism due to its criticism of current Israeli government policies.In Daphna Baram’s incisive new book, “Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel,” (Guardian Books, £17.99), he is quoted as saying: “And, of course, once … Read more
‘One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate’ by Tom Segev, translated by Haim Watzman, published by Little Brown and Co., pp 612 Tom Segev writes good books – and this is no exception. Their structure is a hybrid between academic endeavour and journalistic seduction. The outcome is a raising from … Read more
The New Israel: Peacemaking and Liberalisation Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled (Westview Press 2000) Between 1975 and 1995, Israel’s GDP grew sevenfold. Its growth rate surpassed several European countries, and the IMF graciously elevated it — together with a number of the Asian tigers — to the status of ‘developed country’. This book of essays … Read more
Holocast and Rescue: Impotent or Indifferent? Anglo- Jewry 1938-1945 by Pamela Shatzkes. Palgrave. 336pp. £45The question of whether more Jews could have been saved by the British and by Anglo-Jewry before and during the Second World War has been a source of debate for more than 50 years. Were the British duplicitous and devious, unwilling … Read more
Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War by Howard M. Sachar. Knopf. 386 pages. $30If there were a sympathy in choice War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound Swift as a shadow, short as any dream. A quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream … Read more
On Yom Kippur in Mishnaic times, our ancestors would push a goat — a symbolic sin – off a nearby cliff. In England, we tend to do this to our chief rabbis. During recent times, the reason has been an injudicious remark to the press about Israel government policy. This in turn provokes a demand … Read more