"While current hostility to Jews in the UK is frequently packaged as 'progressive' political comment, its origins are in traditional social attitudes that have been integral to Britain’s history for centuries." So concludes Shalom Lappin in a new paper entitled "This Green and Pleasant Land: Britain and the Jews."

Particularly worth reading is Lappin's treatment of how much of the British left joined with the right to block the entry of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. He writes: "In fact the successful effort to restrict the entry of Jewish refugees was not the work of a specific political group, but a broadly based enterprise that spanned ideological differences. It was the result of a consensus that ran across the political and social spectrum, from upper class Conservative politicians to working class Labour activists and the unions."

When Lappin says that "Britain is unique among Western countries in hosting a large, high profile campaign to boycott Israel," I'm not sure he's entirely right. The boycott movement has reared its head in the Canadian union movement as well as in Ireland. And regardless of whether we think of South Africa as a "western" state, it's certainly another example of a...More >>

Update: more from Solomonia here.

From the moment he became the international community's envoy to the Middle East, there was common agreement that Tony Blair was in for a tough challenge, with the distinct risk of a thankless result.

One of Blair's roles is to build, patiently and quietly, Palestinian institutions. That's based on the understanding that stable societies require stable, transparent governance. Day to day, it means he has to engage in complex negotiations and build trust on all sides.

Only today, for example, Israel's Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, confirmed that more than $20 million would be transferred to pay the wages of local employees of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, citing a request by Blair as a reason for his agreeing to do so. Coming hours after the announcement that Hamas is not interested in negotiations over abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, and a day after terrorists violated the truce by firing a rocket at the Israeli town of Sderot, it cannot have been an easy decision for an Israeli minister,...More >>

According to AB Yehoshua,

The recent episodes of corruption, I believe, are rooted in the division, beginning in 1967, of two altogether distinct sets of norms and values. On the one hand, the moral and jurisdictional principles of the democratic state have continued to be applied in Israel in accordance with the tradition of the rule of law. On the other hand, in the Palestinian territories, a new system of values has been progressively established.

Read the rest here

Sunday night update: Gershom Gorenberg's view of the same topic here.More >>

The Buenos Aires Herald was founded in 1876 and has been published without interruption ever since. Despite the decline in recent decades of the English-speaking community that used to form its core readership, it continues to have a respectable circulation. The newspaper takes pride in the courage its journalists displayed during the 1976 - 1983 military dictatorship when they were among the very few to speak out against the mass slaughter of the government's opponents. In December 2007 it was taken...More >>