antisemitism Global conflict Jewish people 

Holding hostage the memory of the Jewish dead

A profound and bitter battle between Israel and Poland has been brought to crisis point by the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is being commemorated by world leaders this week at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem and next week at Auschwitz itself. The roots of the row lay in remarks made last December by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He claimed that Poland helped start World War II, and accused it of being an antisemitic country that had welcomed Hitler’s plan to liquidate Europe’s Jews. A few days later, Polish…

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crazy world Videos 

Our crazy world: Poland v Israel round two, Labour party antisemitism

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired the latest developments in our crazy world. On our agenda this week: well, afraid it’s pretty much wall-to-wall antisemitism. There’s a lot of it about, alas. We first of all discuss the row that blew up between Israel and Poland over remarks, made first by Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu and then by its new foreign minister Israel Katz, drawing attention to the complicity of Polish people with the Nazi persecution of the Jews. As I wrote here,…

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Europe Israel 

Is Netanyahu making deals with the devil?

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been severely criticized for cozying up to sundry dictators, autocrats or governments that downplay or deny their country’s role in the Holocaust. Among those he has either visited or hosted are Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who boasts of creating an “illiberal democracy” and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who once compared himself to Hitler. The next summit of the Visegrád group, an alliance of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, will be held this month in Jerusalem.…

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interview My books 

The legacy of Polish Holocaust denial

The legacy of Polish Holocaust denial The controversy over Poland’s role during the Holocaust has exploded yet again. Remarkably, a joint statement issued by the Polish and Israeli governments intended to draw a line under the row has been denounced by Yad Vashem. Embarrassingly for Israel, it claims that the statement hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as “safeguarding the historic truth about the Holocaust” includes “grave errors and deceptions” and contains “highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field”. By coincidence my novel, The…

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