Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin: A New LifeFriday, May 3, 2013 by Asaf Romirowsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ensuring that another Holocaust would never take place was Menachem Begin's paramount concern, even when he was Prime Minister of Israel, pursuing Yasir Arafat in his Beirut bunker.
The Challenge of SovereigntyTuesday, April 16, 2013 by Michael B. Oren | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On the eve of Israel's independence, David Ben-Gurion sat alone, questioning whether a people so long accustomed to being the victims of sovereign power could take responsibility for themselves.
World War II and the Impossibility of Polish HistoryWednesday, February 27, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Must any history of Poland in the Second World War therefore put the Jews and the Holocaust at the center? If it does not, is that originality or revisionism?
The PeacemakerMonday, November 26, 2012 by Seth Lipsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
About Menachem Begin the thing that I remember most was the way he talked. Begin wouldn’t say that he was born on the eve of the First World War; he’d say, as he did when a group of us from the Wall Street Journal interviewed him in 1981, that he was born “into” World War I.
Tal TalesTuesday, July 31, 2012 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Tomorrow, the Deferral of Military Service for Yeshiva Students Law (Temporary Measure), better known as the Tal Law, will expire. This law is not just any law: it is the latest enactment of the so-called “status quo arrangement” that frames the uneasy relationship between Israel’s Haredi and secular populations, and between religion and State more generally.
Alfred Nobel’s Other MistakeFriday, July 20, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In a world obsessed with awards, the Nobel Prizes stand out as something special. As prizes proliferate, Nobel laureates still attain global respect in their fields and celebrity beyond, as well as, nowadays, a prize of over a million dollars.
On the Eve of the Six-Day WarForty-five years ago today, on June 4, 1967, Israel and the Jewish world were in suspense. Today, we recall the Six-Day War as a stunning martial victory by the Jewish state; but on the war's eve, this outcome was wholly unforeseeable. Indeed, the odds appeared firmly stacked against Israel.
Editors' Picks
"More Estonians than Etonians" Charles C. Johnson, Tablet. A philo-Semite ever since her family rescued a Jewish girl from Vienna in 1938, Margaret Thatcher gave unprecedented prominence to Jewish politicians in her government.
The Arab Netanyahu Alex Joffe, Project Syndicate. Netanyahu "defends his country’s interests, and hints at conciliation but gives up little—much like a traditional Arab leader."
Raising the Altalena Matthew Bell, BBC. Ben-Gurion's 1948 decision to the sink the Altalena reflected his determination to dominate Begin's Irgun. A new project to raise the ship will also exhume their rivalry.
Jabotinsky's Dream Rafael Medoff, JNS. Half a century before liberal Jewish activists made common cause with the civil rights movement, the revisionist Zionist was already speaking out against racism in the U.S. and South Africa.