Next week Barack Obama will give the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg to commemorate the centenary of the birth of South Africa’s first post-apartheid leader. South Africans will be exhorted “to find the Mandela in each of us” while scores of business leaders and media celebrities are spending a night inside the prison cells … Read more
Review of Anshel Pfeffer’s Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu Published by Hurst, pp. 424 Netanyahu” means “given by God” in Hebrew. Anshel Pfeffer, one of Israel’s most insightful journalists and the author of this excellent biography, clearly doesn’t believe this to be the most appropriate of surnames for Israel’s current prime … Read more
Shortly after midnight on 5 June 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian living in the US, in the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles during his campaign to become president. Kennedy died the next day – it was the first anniversary of the outbreak of the Six Day war. In subsequent years, Sirhan … Read more
THE transformation of Szymon Perski from Vishnyeva in Belarus into Shimon Peres, a founding father of the state of Israel, is a reflection of how the Jews have moved from the margins of history to its mainstream after two millennia of dispersion and persecution. An urbane cultured man who spoke several languages and wrote poetry, … Read more
Britain’s Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives 1917–1948, Michael J. Cohen (New York and London: Routledge, 2014), isbn 978-0-415-72985-7, pp. 518, £90. This is a revelatory book, which comprehensively details Britain’s contentious and anguished moment in Palestine as ruler and colonizer. In one sense this is a solid “old-fashioned” factual overview of British policy during the thirty … Read more
‘His career was as brilliant and promising as it was meteoric and short-lived. His advent seemed to usher in a new era flashing a ray of hope to a darkened world. He faced the desperate problems of our age with courage, with youthful vigour, with profound understanding and deep sympathy for the underprivileged, the disinherited … Read more
Campaigning in Finchley and Golders Green in 2001 (Photo: Sidney Harris) Prior to her visit to meet the rising Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1984, I was asked to join a delegation in Finchley to meet Margaret Thatcher. I hesitated because I was no fan and believed her policies to be destructive and divisive. Yet … Read more
There has been a great welcome for the new Pope from Jewish groups. They point to his good relationship with Jews — “our elder brother” — and his strong condemnation of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. He has even co-authored a book with a rabbi that will appear in English … Read more
An Interview with Gerald Kaufman MP 5 August 1992 CS: I believe that you apologized to your constituents shortly after Labour’s defeat in the 1992 elections for not being in a position to do more to help eradicate their poverty. GK: I didn’t apologize. What I said was that those of my constituents who were in a … Read more
Communism was deemed by its adherents to be eternal. Few could contemplate its decay and a final crumbling into the dust of ages. Its meaning was its existence. Most who lived under Communism accepted their lot, avoided trouble and got on with living their lives as best they could. Few possessed the courage and foresight … Read more