The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN Weidenfeld £20 CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN’s interest in the Middle East began when, as an Irish UN representative, he found himself sandwiched between the Iraqi and the Israeli delegates. After his first sanitised contribution on the subject — ‘something in it for both sides’ … Read more
Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy ROBERT WISTRICH Weidenfeld £18.95 IN AN AGE when epithets such as Fascist and Nazi are as liberally sprinkled as political confetti, it is a sobering experience to be confronted with the Hitlerite madness. The first part of Robert Wistrich’s book is also a cultural antidote to the fantasy, … Read more
Sharon: an Israeli Caesar by Uzi Benziman, published by Robson Books, 276 pp, £12.95 Anyone with, what might be termed “a liberal conscience” always tries to locate the good, those small islands of common humanity, in the views and actions of an opponent. However, by the time I had passed page 200, with the war … Read more
The History of Anti-Semitism Volume 4, Suicidal Europe 1870-1933 by Leon Poliakov, pub. 0P/Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 1985 Price £20.00, 422p The recent refusal of the French Minister of Defence to permit the erection of a statue of Captain Alfred Dreyfus at the site of his disgrace and humiliation gave rise to the rumours … Read more
Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow Over World Psychiatry. By Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway. Gollancz £10.95. “Anti-Soviet convictions simply cannot exist. Anti-Soviet statements or opinions are the result, either of mental disturbance or of cynicism or of ignorance.” Not the trite jibe of a seasoned apparatchik, but the considered professional opinion of Dr Stanislav Korolev … Read more
Review of Karpov’s Brain by Gerald Green (Bantam 1984) 523pp. Gerald Green is perhaps best known as the author of the television drama Holocaust. This was viewed by 500 million people world-wide and certainly no one can dispute the educational value of such an exercise. Yet for many who viewed Holocaust from another level, its over-simplification … Read more
Israel’s Lebanon War. By Zeev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari. Allen & Unwin 12.95. As Israel, in the midst of renewed conflict and violence, painfully attempts to disengage itself from the Lebanese maelstrom, the publication of this book is ironically timely. Written by two of Israel’s leading journalists, it is an objective description of how democratic … Read more
The Military-Industrial Complex in Israel: by Dr Yoram Peri and Amnon Neubach, International Centre for Peace in the Middle East. Israeli Society and its Defence Establishment: The Social and Political Impact of a Protracted Violent Conflict. Ed. Moshe Lissak-Frank Cass. £18. SIPR I Yearbook 1984: World Armaments and Disarmament, Taylor and Francis. “What … Read more
Refuseniks The Jews of Hope: The Plight of Soviet Jewry Today Martin Gilbert Macmillan £8.95 The Yugoslav dissident socialist, Milovan Djilas, once commented that since they are pervaded by the spirit of internationalism, the Jews are doomed to be persecuted whenever a regime isolates itself. Martin Gilbert’s book shows that this dictum remains unchanged. Under … Read more
“If Only My People: Zionism in My life”‘ by Immanuel Jakobovits published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson The title ‘Rabbi’ is conventionally understood to be the Hebrew translation for teacher. Yet originally rabbis were expounders and interpreters of Judaism. Their role became institutionalised in the Middle Ages through absorbing a necessary teaching function as spiritual heads … Read more