Category: Israel

The former Labour minister Alan Milburn has flung all his toys out of his pram by resigning from his post as head of the Social Mobility Commission on the grounds that the government is too preoccupied by Brexit to pay any attention to the needs of poor people — despite the fact that, at least in Milburn’s mind, poverty and inequality were the main reason Britain voted to leave the EU. As the Mail reported: “Mr Milburn said it was striking that 60 of the 65 areas of Britain most…

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For years Israel has been blamed for standing in the way of peace with its Arab neighbours. When it rejected a “peace plan” by the the Saudi regime which would have brought about Israel’s destruction, it was excoriated for turning down a chance to end the Middle East conflict. Now the new Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has proposed another peace plan. Unlike its predecessor, according to the

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Friday, Los Angeles I wrote two days ago that I was appalled at President Trump’s re-tweets of the Britain First videos because this would give ammunition to three groups of people: the racist and extremist group Britain First, Islamist activists and the enemies not only of Trump himself but his entire agenda. In other words, those who threaten further to undermine the west. In the reaction that has followed, I have unfortunately been proved all too correct. Britain First is boasting that the Trump tweets have given an enormous boost…

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On BBC Radio’s Today programme, I discussed with James Rubin President Trump’s retweets of the Britain First videos. I said I thought he had set back the cause of anti-Islamism and I was appalled. You can listen to the exchanges here (at around 0852).

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On BBC TV’s Daily Politics show last Friday, I was one of the two guests of the day alongside Rafael Behr of the Guardian and presenter Jo Coburn. The discussion with successive interviewees included defence cuts, the “Gladstone must fall” statue controversy, the Brexit Big Band “apology tour” and the row over animal sentience. You can watch the whole show here.

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Tzohar, headed by the inspirational Rabbi David Stav, is the Israeli rabbinical organisation which is challenging the monopoly of Israel’s ludicrously harsh and inflexible rabbinate by adopting, within halachah, a more humane, inclusive and rational approach. So much is generally appreciated. What is less widely known is its extraordinary “roots” project. This sets out to prove the Jewish antecedents of Israeli Jews whose families come principally from the former Soviet Union. To their horror, some of these Israelis discover they don’t possess the documentary proof that their families are halachically…

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In the Diaspora, people are aghast at rampant antisemitism and Israel-bashing and dismayed over the failure to halt its apparently inexorable rise. In Britain, the parliamentary group on antisemitism heard evidence last week that anti-Jewish bigotry is now entrenched in many British universities. Student officers have used the Twitter hashtag #Jew while discussing wealth, and the swastika is now seen on campus as a “casual symbol of fun.” In the US earlier this year, researchers from Tel Aviv University found a 45 percent increase on campus of “all forms” of…

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Yet more Arabs have been making startlingly positive statements about Israel and the Jews. In an interview broadcast by the Kuwaiti Alrai TV channel last week, Kuwaiti writer Abdullah al Hadlaq declared that the State of Israel was not an occupying force but represented “a people returning to its promised land”. He went further, declaring that the Jews had a right to the land of Israel according to the Koran: “From the religious perspective, Quranic verse 5:21 proves that the Israelites have the right to the Holy Land. Allah says: ‘When Moses said…

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In 1951, most of the Jews of Iraq were forced out of the country as part of the ethnic cleansing of some 850,000 Jews from Arab lands that took place after the State of Israel was born. Thus the Jewish community which had lived in Iraq for more than 2,600 years, which had figured in the Psalms and in which the Babylonian Talmud was written, was no more. Edwin Shuker is an Iraqi Jew whose family stayed on during the fifties but was forced out in 1971 when he was…

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