Israel does not hold the key

When Israel was founded out of Jewry's near-destruction, it was at once a liberation for Jews and a disaster for Palestinian Arabs. What happened in the subsequent years - who did what to who and when - is not the subject of this column, but we need to agree that something that was good for one people was bad for another.

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Pogroms that we cannot ignore

The Holocaust, as we know, was not a sudden event and nor is it - as some well-meaning (mostly) religious people often suggest - incomprehensible. Its scale, its ambition was what was remarkable about it. How it came about is not amazing at all.

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Zionists I would want on my side

It's been one of those fortnights. So much so that, in the bookshop at Jewish Book Week last Sunday, I spotted a coffee-table effort with an octopus on the cover and wearily thought "another tome on antisemitism", before closer inspection showed it to be a book on Venetian cookery.

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Mr Morsi’s Nick Clegg moment

This is an unfair world in which people are always trying to bring a guy down. Take President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt. Here's a chap who, since taking the reins of power in his country in June (and then the saddle, the spurs and the bridle), has by and large acted in foreign affairs as his predecessors did.

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Braw bricht lichts of Chanucah

So, readers, "Happy Hannukah!" That's what it says on the strange, giant, zinc candlestick near Jack Straw's Castle in Hampstead (for our more observant customers, I ought to explain that Hampstead is a shtetl about 2,500 miles west of Jerusalem and 10 miles south-east of Radlett).

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The everyday language of hate

It wasn’t so much what a young woman called Naz Kahn said about Jews a few weeks ago that triggered my flight or fight response. It was how she said it.

To recap: Ms Kahn is a recently appointed woman’s officer in the party, Respect, which plays backing band to Bradford West MP George Galloway’s political PJ Proby.

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The rumours and the rampage

Travelling as I was in the middle of last week, I missed the beginning of the story of what became known as the "US film" - in reality a shoddy YouTube trailer made by someone in the US - that led to/sparked/coincided with/had nothing at all to do with (delete according to source) the attacks on US and other diplomatic buildings in the Muslim world.

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Eruv or not to eruv: who cares?

The other day, notices appeared in our area informing of a consultation concerning the erection of an eruv. As the notices went up, so too did the balloon. One hundred per cent of those questioned by Aaronopoll in a survey for this column, were not just opposed to the eruv, they were foaming at the mouth.

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My plan to reboot Anglo Jewry

Jews don't like censuses. We're awkward folk and, anyway, that famous one held in the reign of Caesar Augustus ended up doing us no favours at all. So the bad news is that, in a few weeks, we'll be seeing the results of the 2011 census and we almost certainly won't like them.

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Oh, those loony Jewish lobby fantasies

Somehow I missed it. Three days after 9/11, the former Private Eye editor, Richard Ingram, wrote in the Observer condemning coverage for missing what he considered to be a crucial point.

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Sad shrinking of Europe's Jews

I think I've told readers before that, in many ways, I barely qualify to write this column.

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Religion is no cure, but it helps

News of the Bideford prayers ruling reached me in foreign parts, and provoked a regression. It got more pronounced when the other parts of the establishment - the atheist professor, the former archbishop, the Queen (apparently) and the papers joined the debate.

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'Zionist' has become a dirty word

The other day, on other pages, I took a blast at the more unlikely supporters of Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul. I wrote what was true, that Paul was part of an extreme isolationist and anti-government tendency on the US right, and one that had flirted extensively with folk possessing dodgy views on questions such as race.

Among the more hostile responses was a common theme.

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A worrying choice of words

Last week as he was thinking about his column on Gilad Shalit for The Times, I said to Danny Finkelstein (we were having an Elders cabal over by the book-case), that someone, somewhere was bound to say: "A thousand Palestinians for one Jew! Just shows that they believe a Jewish life is more valuable than an Arab one."

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Our Jewish Communist past

While I was in a coma recently, one of the emails that tumbled into my untended inbox was from a Polish friend with whom I'd had a mild falling out a couple of years ago.

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Anti-Zionists having a laugh

Unpleasant serendipity. On Monday evening, as I was thinking about this article, I received an email in my Times account from the managing editor of a small book publisher, which she runs from her farm-cum-organic herb business in Wiltshire.

She wanted to know whether I would like to take part in a discussion on "Jewish Identity Politics" with one of her authors.

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Conspirers against 'conspirers'

The author and 9/11 conspiracist, Ian Henshall, announced his departure from the big truther's bash on Monday evening, by thrusting his bald head into my face, twice calling me a "f---g scumbag" and then flapping off into the wet night.

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What did he hope to achieve?

Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld of New York must be the kind of friend who, when he comes over, people turn off the lights and hide behind the settee until he's gone again. Let me tell you what he did.

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Killing children - and peace

The other day I received another invitation to a university debate. The motion was "This House Believes That Israel Asks Too Much And Gives Too Little In The Peace Process" and it was assumed that I would speak in opposition, alongside - maybe - someone from the Israeli Embassy and someone from the Zionist Federation.

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Word on the street is… mild

In 2003, a matter of weeks after the fall of Saddam, I went to Cairo to make a programme for Channel 4.

I was apprehensive, not because I was asking about the problem of Middle Eastern antisemitism but because the airwaves and foreign pages had been full of hoary lock-shaking concerning what was universally called "The Arab Street".

TAS (for short) was furious. TAS was potentially violent towards Westerners. It would be best - when encountering TAS - to pretend to be Irish or Patagonian.

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