False Dichotomies

Christmas is an awful time of year for those that do not partake in its rituals. That is, of course, a truism, but it’s interesting to see what it looks like for those who choose to opt out. This year was the first time in about ten years that I was not otherwise engaged in some Jewish related activity. It was also the first time in a while that Hanukah began on Christmas Day. I wanted Christmas to be a time of monging out, of watching movies and eating shitty food. But the television on offer was, for the most part, of poor quality. Christmas is a bad time for information freaks – the newspapers thin out, the emails are reduced to a mere trickle – so we have to stock up on books as if they were food for a nuclear winter. My tome of choice was Robert Fisk’s 1500 page magnus opus, The Great War for Civilisation. I have made it about half way through, up to the Allied betrayal of the Kurdish and Shia uprisings following the first Gulf War. Continue Reading »

Off into the London night we went, out to spin some tunes at a party. My friend’s dad rang to tell him that Ariel Sharon had had a stroke. We soon established that the stroke was of the minor variety, but in the intervening minutes speculation raged wildly. I was chastised for suggesting that this could be a good thing, and my weak joke about playing a tune by The Strokes and dedicating it to the infirm Prime Minister was received with incredulity. Continue Reading »

As the week has worn on, his remarks have become progressively more obscene. His metamorphosis, though, from a cynic to an outright denier has been quicker than most. This morning, President Ahmadinejad of Iran declared that “They [the Jews] have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and they place this above God, religions and the prophets.” I’m afraid there is no clever analysis for this, no secret diplomatic plan to reveal. He means every word he says. Ahmadinejad believes that the 12th Imam or Mahdi, the last in the line of descendants from Ali, the founder of Shi’a Islam, vanished in 941 and will soon return. In other words, these are the end of days, times ripe for crude anti-Semitism. If you were worried by talk of George W Bush claiming divine inspiration for the invasion of Iraq, this should terrify you. Continue Reading »

“Peres was not an ideologue but a technocrat and an arch-pragmatist…Practical considerations alone guided his actions.” Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall

In a column for the New Statesman last week, Rory Bremner imagined what would happen if Tony Blair followed Ariel Sharon’s lead and dealt with discontent within his own party by forming a new one. Of course, this was not a practical suggestion. It was simply a way of highlighting how extraordinary a method of changing political realities this was. Continue Reading »