Book Reviews

Jonathan Neumann’s new book To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel is a scathing analysis of the pseudo-religion of “tikkun olam” — the idea of “repairing,” “fixing,” or “healing” the world. Its unifying thesis is that the concept has…

Hope is not a noun regional analysts of the Red-Sea-Rim associate with Somalia. Regardless of their optic — political, security, cultural, economic — most analysts offer,  following the Africanist school of Martin Meredith, grim reasons for the country’s despair, the grimmest…

Ben-Dror Yemini has devoted a lot of his time as a journalist, first for Maariv and now for Yedioth Ahronoth, to refuting what he regards as false allegations against the Jewish state made by NGOs, academics, and the media. In 2014 he summed up…

The demonization and delegitimization of Israel and bigotry directed toward Jewish faculty, staff, and students is increasing at dramatic rates on university and college campuses. In these supposedly intellectual spaces, virulently anti-Israel “scholars” and student-activists connected to, and supportive of, the global…

The secret-history genre confronts the responsible reviewer with writer’s-block-inducing problems of interpretation and evaluation. Rise and Kill First is no exception. Without access to the classified documents and cloak & dagger sources upon which most of Bergman’s hush-hush history is…

In his latest book, A Half Century of Occupation, Gershon Shafir addresses the issue of why the path towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord remains blocked. He offers the hypothesis that it is the “colonization” of the “occupied Palestinian territories” (OPT)…

Phyllis Chesler is a true liberal – and as such, she is a thorn in the side of the politically correct crowd who style themselves as liberals but are simply inconsistent socialists who think that loving the underdog is what…

The phenomenon of left wing anti-Semitism is not, sadly, new. Some prominent early socialists were openly anti-Semitic. Some Marxists, too, argued (although not Karl Marx himself) that anti-Semitism had a “rational kernel” and could be used to win support for…

In Berlin, am Ufer des idyllischen Grossen Wannsees, liegt die in den letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts erschlossene Villenkolonie Alsen, in der sich zahlreiche jüdische und nichtjüdische Großbürger Sommer-Residenzen errichtet haben. Eine dieser prachtvollen Villen mit Geschichte ist die Wannseevilla,…

Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, authors of The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower (St. Martin’s Press 2017), prove themselves to be far more than experienced and skilled military journalists (Mr. Katz is now the Editor of…