(2025): Israelis Right to Fear a Hostile Palestinian State
A lot is being asked of Israelis, the Jewish diaspora, and friends right now.
(2025) Worlds Within Worlds of Chinese Communism
Review article published in the Sydney Institute Review, September 2025, of Linda Jaivin’s Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China, Old Street Publishing [and also Black Inc.], 2025; & Joseph Torigian’s The Party’s Interests Come First. The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, Stanford University Press, 2025. These two books, written about…
Why Palestinian Recognition is Both Inevitable and Fraught
Australian public opinion in favour of recognition of a state of Palestine is clear. Continuing opposition could merely hasten a form of recognition that would be tantamount to an empty gesture. What is now required is for those genuinely seeking a two-state solution, that enables Palestinians and Israelis to live side-by-side in peace, is to provide a robust, realist edge to what Foreign Minister Wong calls the “matter of when, not if” decision.
(2025) Envoy’s Definition Won’t Conflate Antisemitism with Criticising Israel
The IHRA definition does no more than recognise that anti-Zionism may or may not be antisemitic in its motivation or effects. It nearly always depends on how points are made, content and context.
(2025) BROWNIE
With a complacent title, published by admirers (the imprint Good Times Press is revealing), un-stocked in ‘leading’ bookstores, with word-of-mouth sales, this is the last of the memoirs of Hawke government ministers, published forty years after its election.
Thumbs Up, Craggy
David Keith Cragg, 16.09.1957 -17.03.2025
(2025) Show Me the Evidence
The Assassination of Neville Wran is Milton Cockburn’s indignant rebuttal of corruption allegations against former NSW Premier Neville Wran AC QC (1926-2014; NSW Labor Premier 1976-86).
(2025) How Far Can You Go? A Note on Curtin, Australian Labor, and Conscription in WW II
Many of us broadly familiar with John Curtin, admire his stance to defeat naysayers and introduce conscription for the defence of Australia during World War II.
(2025) Piling on the Criticism: A Comment on McMullin’s Review
Besides alluding to my typo, spelling “abrasives” instead of “abrasiveness” in quoting him, Ross McMullin in the December Recorder, offers a thought-provoking review of my In Search of Chris Watson.
(2024) Three Launches of the James Scullin Monograph
An address on 9 October 2024 at the Sydney Institute, Phillip Street, Sydney, on the launch of James Scullin, Australian Biographical Monographs # 24, Connor Court publishers, subsequently published in The Sydney Papers, 2024.