David Landau: Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 631 pp. Did Ariel Sharon have a clear-cut ideology? How can all the inconsistencies in his political outlook be reconciled? It can be argued that Sharon belonged to the flexible Ben-Gurion school of perception of current reality. In addition, Sharon was…
Some British Jews believe that London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies is a den of anti-Semitic iniquity. Some British Trotskyites believe that it is the center of the Zionist conspiracy. Both caricatures exist at one and the same time. Both are false. SOAS, however, is unusual in London colleges in that its firstclass…
The Qatari-owned website Al Araby proudly proclaimed that “SOAS becomes the first UK university to boycott Israel”. This was patently untrue. It was not “SOAS” the institution that voted - not the governing body, not the administration, not even formally the lecturers’ union, but an invented “SOAS community”. Anyone could vote who wanted to -…
Résumé The reaction by the Left in Britain and France to the Arab Spring was one of both joy and opportunity in 2011, but had descended into a muffled and confused embarrassment by 2014. Yet this tentative alliance with Islamism mirrors past ideological mishaps such as a belief in Stalinism or the initial acceptance that…
Menachem Begin: A Life, by Avi Shilon, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2012, xii þ 546 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-16235-6 This book is an English translation of Avi Shilon’s biography of Menachem Begin that first appeared in Hebrew in 2007. Although the author is a journalist with academic interests, this popular work is informed and comprehensive…
Since the idea for this book was first mooted, back in 2008, the concept has evolved considerably. The world has moved on. Barack Obama was then a marginal outsider for the presidential prize. Thus, the ideas at the heart of this book have gone through an extensive process of being reformulated, updated and fully developed….
The Origins of Zionism Zionism grew out of the French revolutionary tradition, the Jewish and European Enlightenments – with the Bible as a cultural and historical backdrop. It was a progeny of early nineteenth century European nationalism – when nationalism belonged to the Left rather than the Right. In part, it took as the paradigm,…
Israel Studies is not an innovation at institutions of higher education in Europe. Modern Hebrew and the study of the Holy Land reach back certainly into the nineteenth century. At my own college, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, such academic interest began with the British Foreign Office’s…
THE OLD LEFT AND THE NEW LEFT Since the end of the peace process in the 1990s and the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political Left and the…
Protesters against Israel’s incursion into Gaza demonstrate in Trafalgar Square in January. Anti-Israel feeling at SOAS was more noticeable during this period, says Professor Colin Shindler. But he says he has never faced antisemitism from students or lecturers As a former chemistry lecturer, Colin Shindler knows all about explosive situations. His new appointment could certainly…