David Bennun

Writer

Latest from David Bennun

Is love all you need? The Beatles and the risk of misguided empathy

A naive misjudgement by John Lennon epitomises our current era’s foolhardy ruling ideology

3 min read

John Lennon, his wife, artist Yoko Ono, and Michael Abdul Malik, February 4, 1970 (Image: Getty Images)

The past is never dead: people crossing Allenby Street in Tel Aviv in 1947, with Rimon Cinema on the left

Farewell to Eden: Christie, Camus and a daring unfashionable view on the birth of Israel

3 min read

Evil tide of Judeophobia: Kibbutz Be'eri resident Miri Gad Mesika visiting her parents' burnt out house in October 2025; mourners look at flowers laid next to beach in memory of Jews murdered at Bondi Beach, in Sydney on December 20, 2025

The most lucid and coherent summary of today’s antisemitism you will read

4 min read

Members of the Jewish community in the Stamford Hill area (Image: Getty Images)

We need to stand up for one another – because no one else will

3 min read

Without gay Jewish Brian Epstein we would have no Beatles

The extraordinary life of the greatest of pop managers is revealed in a new biography

3 min read

August 6, 2026 17:19

Scrupulously honest: Brian Epstein receiving the 1965 Edison Award for the Fab Four at the Grand Gala du Disque in Amsterdam

Deny the Islamist reality and the far right will exploit the truth

The problem Jews have is that, if we dare name our persecutors, the Good People™️ – in their standard inversion of all evidence and moral logic – will say it is we who are the bigoted aggressors

3 min read

August 6, 2026 16:45

A makeshift memorial in front of the Brandenburg gate for the victims of the Christopher Street Day pride parade attack on August 2, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. (Image: Getty Images)

Do critics of FIFA’s plans to ‘sell off’ the World Cup not remember Qatar 2022?

Gianni Infantino’s new proposal has stirred up controversy – but many will think the beautiful game has sold its soul long ago

3 min read

July 29, 2026 19:21

FIFA President Gianni Infantino (Image: Getty Images)

The forgotten European football stars who were murdered for being Jewish

David Bolchover’s book about the doomed players who were once celebrated for their brilliance

3 min read

July 14, 2026 18:24

Forgotten legends: (clockwise from top) winger Leon Sperling, standing fourth from right, with the Poland team before the 1924 Olympics; Hakoah Vienna in 1924, with Austrian defender Max Scheuer on the far left; Arpad Weisz, who became the youngest coach to win the Italian League

The far-right crocodile that will eat you last is still going to eat you

Some of my fellow Jews, terrified by what is being levelled at us from the left, fall into the ‘my enemy's enemy trap’. Aligning oneself with such people is not just immoral, it is also a grievous strategic error

3 min read

July 10, 2026 15:37

Saltwater crocodile (Image: Getty Images)

From the Front Line review: Vasily Grossman gives us an unrivalled picture of the war

David Bennun is mesmerised by the Soviet Jewish journalist’s articles, and what they reveal about him

5 min read

June 26, 2026 12:06

Obdurate insistence: the writer Vasily Grossman, and Jews arriving at Treblinka in August 1942

Even an escape to the sun lies in the long shadow of this conflict

Would Spanish locals have been as hospitable if they’d known one key fact about this tourist?

3 min read

June 19, 2026 12:24

Landscape around the small Spanish town of Daroca (Image: Getty Images)

Go and see Paul Simon – an icon of New York’s Jewish golden age

If the time and place he was born into had been like today, we might never have heard of him. As if to underline the point, an organisation of ‘musicians and cultural workers’ is calling for a Eurovision boycott while Israel is included

3 min read

May 14, 2026 10:35

Go and see Paul Simon – an icon of New York’s Jewish golden age

The Kanye West affair isn’t as bad as it seems –it’s much, much worse

It is a curious irony that of only one people on Earth is it demanded they must at all times behave with perfect Christian charity – and that is the Jews

3 min read

April 15, 2026 10:44