Give War a Chance
Lately I am alternating between depressed and angry. I think lots of people will understand. Yesterday was a depressed day, overwhelmed at the sheer hate for Jews in the world and the morally...
View ArticleA Critique of Pure Evil
Yesterday marked a month since the 7 October atrocities, but religious Jews in the diaspora didn’t learn the details until late on 8 October, a month ago today, when Simchat Torah finished. In the...
View ArticleWhere is God? Where is Man?
My wife asked me a while before Shabbat whether I ever felt that God could do more for the Jewish people right now. I said that I have felt that in previous difficult times, but not currently, but that...
View ArticleDo the Gazans Love Their Children?
An oft-quoted adage, popularly, although apocryphally, attributed to Golda Meir, states that, “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” At the start of the current...
View ArticleDeconstructing the Naqba Narrative
I was talking to my parents about something unrelated to Israel. The TV news was on in the background. Earlier in the evening, right after Shabbat, we had seen that Hamas had delayed (at that time,...
View ArticleMarching to an Uncertain Future
My wife and I went to the Campaign Against Antisemitism march on Sunday. It was billed as a march against antisemitism, but there were a number of placards and banners supporting Israel and calling for...
View ArticleThe War on Jewishness and Our Response
Hamas killed a lot more than 1,200 people on 7 October and destroyed many more lives than those of the hostages, the survivors of rape, their families and the families of the murdered. What they...
View ArticleHanukkah: Holiness and the Clash of Cultures
Hanukkah is unlike other Yom Tovim (festivals). It feels quiet and contemplative. The key mitzvah takes place at home, unlike the long shul (synagogue) services that characterise most other Yom Tovim....
View ArticleFrom a Corner of Chutz La’aretz
My brothers are at war and I am staying here. For as long as the Jew hate is vaguely tolerable. I feel guilty, survivor’s guilt. Sometimes it seems there isn’t a safe place for the Jews in the world,...
View ArticleThe War on God
Tonight the UN General Assembly voted to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Inevitably, it is directed at Israel. There was no mention of hostages or Hamas’ atrocities. The vote seems designed to aid Hamas,...
View ArticleCease Ceasefire Calls
I feel almost physically sick that Israel’s so-called allies are saying it is too violent and calling for a “sustainable ceasefire” (whatever that means – an environmentally-friendly one, presumably,...
View ArticleVayigash: Yosef’s Mistake
At the end of this week’s sedra is a strange passage that seems out of place. After describing the descent of Yaakov (Jacob) and the Children of Israel to the land of Egypt and Yosef’s (Joseph’s)...
View ArticleThe Seen and the Unseen
Yesterday evening, reading the James Bond novel Casino Royale, I came across the line that human beings are easier to fight for than principles. This is undoubtedly part (albeit part) of the reason why...
View Article52,200 Dead Israelis
The moderate humanitarian argument against the war in Gaza goes like this: Israel has a right to protect itself, but what it is doing is out of proportion to what it suffered. It should therefore stop....
View ArticleAs Israel goes, so the west will go
The Jewish Standard posted a transcript of an article from American philosopher Eric Hoffer from 1968, the year after The Six Day War. The very short article is eerily still relevant and makes clear...
View ArticleFrom the Makers of the Afghan Withdrawal, Brexit and JCPOA It’s – Palestine!!!
The news I have been brooding over all day (when not arguing unsuccessfully with the company who sold us a defective bed) is that President Biden wants to push towards Palestinian statehood. More...
View ArticleEven in the UK, all kinds of things trigger thoughts of October 7th
The challenge is finding the balance between immersing in the Jewish people’s pain and dealing with the rest of my life
View ArticleThe Jewish state as effigy
Claiming Israel is colonialist, white supremacist, genocidal is how protestors cleanse their own middle class white guilt
View ArticleNaïve Liberals and the West’s Moral Incomprehension
Calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza are growing. Here in the UK, the Labour Party and the Prince of Wales have joined in, with Parliament voting tomorrow on an SNP ceasefire resolution. Although I...
View ArticleHistory is now
The IDF, once feared as much as hated, hasn’t really won a war outright since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 50 years ago. That’s partly because until last October, it hadn’t been involved in a really...
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