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
Sixty years ago, Arieh Eshel, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, unambiguously condemned apartheid — with far more determination than either the British or the Americans at the international assembly. “It is because the Jewish people has been the classic victims of the doctrine of racial inequality that my delegation appeals with such fervour … Read more
LAST WEEK, FOUR DEMOCRAT members of the US Congress, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attempted to remove a $US1 billion support package for Israel’s Iron Dome defence system from a stopgap spending act in the House of Representatives. They failed due to the overwhelming opposition of 420 of their colleagues. Did … 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
‘ANTISEMITISM ISN’T THE first name of hate, it’s the family name’. So spoke Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid at last week’s ‘Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism’ in Jerusalem. Lapid went on to say that the term ‘antisemitism’ applied to ‘anyone who hates so much that they want to kill, eliminate, persecute and expel people just … Read more
ON SUNDAY THE KNESSET voted to approve the ‘Change’ government of Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. Whether this multi-headed pantomime horse will survive is an open question, but it does appear that Benjamin Netanyahu has been put out to political pasture. While it is too early to write him off, what are we to make of … Read more
David Baddiel is well-known in Britain as a comedian and a writer. He is also unusual – in that he does not shy away from his Jewishness in his stage routine, but actually glories in his identity. The grandson of disenfranchised, well-to-do, Jewish business-people who escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, his Twitter biography is just … Read more
NETANYAHU IS DOWN, but is he out? At the time of writing, this question remains unanswered. In the interim, he has reverted to his old habit of incitement as he did just before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. His supporters in the Likud together with the Kahanists and the quiet admirers of Yigal Amir have door-stopped … Read more
When the existence of a European Association of Israel Studies (EAIS) was first publicized a decade ago, many believed that it was merely a front for advocacy and that the discipline was an invented one. The last ten years have borne testimony instead to a profound intellectual endeavour that indicates Israel Studies is an area … Read more