P a t r i c k B i s h o p T H E R E C K O N I N G How the killing of one man changed the fate of the Promised Land 320pp. Collins. £20. Avraham Stern was the leader of the “Stern Gang”, or Lehi, and one of…
P a t r i c k B i s h o p T H E R E C K O N I N G How the killing of one man changed the fate of the Promised Land 320pp. Collins. £20. Avraham Stern was the leader of the “Stern Gang”, or Lehi, and one of…
As Israel celebrates the 66th anniversary of its founding, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to introduce an addition to the country’s basic laws — the closest thing it has to a constitution — to “legally anchor” Israel as a Jewish state. It seems that Mr. Netanyahu wishes to define the country as the nation-state…
Several decades ago, the journalist, Uzi Benziman, wrote a biography of Ariel Sharon. The Hebrew version appeared as He Doesn’t Stop at Red Lights. The English-language edition was sedately entitled Sharon: An Israeli Caesar — perhaps for a more impressionable readership. Yet both titles encompass the complexity of Sharon, the hard-line politician who gave up…
Menachem Begin was born 100 years ago this week in Brest-Litovsk, a town at the nexus of several east European cultures. It belonged to the newly independent Poland during his formative years and Begin absorbed its customs and manners. Begin’s formality contrasted dramatically with his couldn’t-care-less Labour opponents in later years. Although he came from…
Shamir: a colourless tough guy Yitzhak Shamir was the accidental prime minister. When Menachem Begin resigned in 1983, the mantle of responsibility fell on Shamir’s shoulders. The colourless, uninspiring, 68-year-old was the stop-gap choice instead of the feared Ariel Sharon and the lightweight David Levy. Yet, including the two years when he almost shared power…
Vladimir Jabotinsky Vladimir Jabotinsky was one of the founding fathers of the modern Zionist movement. He was one of the great inspirers of discriminated and impoverished Jewish youth in Eastern Europe in the inter-war years. In a pre-television era, audiences would sit patiently for hours, enthralled and entranced by his rhetoric. A Russian-Jewish intellectual who…
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…
INTRODUCTION In October 1947, two weeks before the vote on UN Resolution 181, the Revisionist Zionist headquarters in Paris approached the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement, the General Zionists, the Marxists of Hashomer Hatzair, and Ahdut Ha’avodah to form an anti-partition front.1 This willingness by Arieh Altman’s Revisionists to cultivate their deadly enemies on the Left…
The general election in Israel on 10 February 2009 produced a move to the political right, likely to be capped by the formation of a new governing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud. In the perspective of Israel’s history, however, there are losers as well as winners among the established forces on this side of the…
When the Irish rebels were pulled out of the General Post Office on Dublin’s O’Connell Street 90 years ago, they were jeered and spat upon by the locals. Decaying fruit was hurled at the wounded and the maimed. The Easter Uprising in 1916 was a courageous, futile affair - another link in the chain of…