The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1992: Between Zionism and Antisemitism ed. Alessandra Tarquini Published by Palgrave Macmillan 2021 pp.348 This book of accessible essays by specialists examines the Jewish question, not internally from the perspective of Jews themselves, but externally by European socialist thinkers. Since Zionism was a singular ideology and did not fit … Read more
New Year, 1953. British Jews looked forward to a year far better than the one that had just passed. In the summer of 1952, they had watched in horror the trial in Moscow, and subsequent execution, of Jewish writers and poets. This was followed by the false conviction and killing of Jewish communists in Prague … Read more
LAST WEEK, THE killer of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll was sentenced by a French court to 22 years without parole. The courtroom was told that the assault in March 2018 on this aged Jewish woman started out as a petty robbery but was transformed into a frenzied attack — and that this was fuelled by “a … Read more
THIRTY YEARS AGO, the Soviet Union passed into history. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, a new Russia was born and a plethora of new republics came into existence. The abrupt end of 74 years of Lenin’s experiment gave birth to chaos and collapse. Oligarchs emerged from the subterranean depths. Diehard commissars became diehard capitalists overnight. While many … Read more
Ring of Spies: How MI5 and the FBI brought down the Nazis in America by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones Published by the History Press 2020, pp. 288, price £20.00 Frederick the Great once commented that his French military opponent, Marshal de Soubrise was always followed by a hundred cooks. ‘I, on the other hand, am always followed … Read more
Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Islamist Writings on Resistance and Religion By Erik Skare, published by I. B. Tauris, 2021, pp.266 Forty years ago, a group of students formed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza. It was inspired by the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo by an … Read more
TWO WEEKS AGO, Jews in the Diaspora were instructed in the Torah reading of Parashah Shoftim: “Justice, justice, shall you follow”. Then the reality in Afghanistan intervened. Joe Biden’s long-held belief that US troops should not be in Afghanistan was implemented by an incompetent US military who had not taken into account the worst-case scenario … Read more
Review of Internment in Britain in 1940by Ines Newman, published by Vallentine Mitchell, 224 pages; $74.95 Following the fall of France in the summer of 1940, there was a deep trepidation that Britain would be the next to be overrun by the Nazi war machine. British Jews feared that they were about to suffer the … Read more
Review of Ralph Hope’s The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present (One Word 2021) pp.336 ‘Every citizen has a right to express his opinion freely’. So stated the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — the Communist half of Germany between 1949 and 1990. Its state security, the Staatsicherheit or Stasi however … Read more
Review of Leslie Turnberg’s Mandate: The Palestine Crucible 1919-1939 (Vallentine Mitchell 2021) pp.320 Three years ago, a retired British army officer, Ian Westerman, wrote an article in Ha’aretz, entitled ‘What did the British ever do for Israel?’ This piece, courageously suggested that in an age of decolonising the academic syllabus and retrospectively rectifying the perceived wrongs … Read more