World War I
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?
Chemical Warfare in the Middle East: A Brief HistoryThursday, December 13, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
At this time of Hanukkah’s memories of Syrian tyrants past, the Syrian tyrant present, Bashar al-Assad, has reportedly assembled chemical weapons for use against the rebellion.
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.
Editors' Picks
With the Zionists in Gallipoli Natan Slifkin, Rationalist Judaism. Having commanded both the Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Legion during World War I, Colonel John Patterson spent the rest of his life fighting the British establishment for a Jewish homeland.
Mapping the Holy Land Matti Friedman, Times of Israel. Founded in 1865 to explore "the land to which we turn as the fountain of all our hopes," the London-based Palestine Exploration Fund completed its survey in June 1914. One month later, war began.
Educating Adolf Felix Bohr, Spiegel. Biographers of Hitler have long pondered what transformed him from a struggling artist into a demagogue. A new book claims that the key lies in his military service after World War I.
Arendt and the Arabs Richard L. Rubenstein, New English Review. Hannah Arendt feared that Zionism would create a “Jewish island in an Arab sea.” But her Eurocentrism kept her from seeing just how hostile that sea would be.
The Great War's Jewish Soldiers Naomi Sandweiss, Tablet. Military service in the First World War marked the entry of many Jewish immigrants into wider society; but for those in the Jewish Legion, it also represented Zionism's first military victory.
All About the Benjamins Brían Hanrahan, Los Angeles Review of Books. Sustained financially by his friend Gershom Scholem for much of his life, the revolutionary Marxist Walter Benjamin has posthumously become a commercial success.