Jeffrey Herf

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Mar 2, 2025, 11:24 PM

What Timothy Snyder gets right on Ukraine and wrong on Israel

Snyder said protests were suppressed. Were they? (Screengrab from The Times of Israel)

Comments the historian made to ToI's David Horovitz on antisemitism and events on US campuses are neither convincing nor accurate

Aug 18, 2024, 8:58 PM

Holocaust Museums and October 7

The following are excerpts from a talk delivered to the annual meeting of the American Association of Holocaust Organizations, June 9, 2024, YIVO Institute in New York City. When the first Holocaust museums, and courses on the history of the...

Nov 2, 2023, 11:12 AM

A Historical Perspective on Hamas’ Ideology of Mass Murder

The following essay was first published in Quillette on October 10th, and reprinted in German translation in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 20th. The text of "The Ideology of Mass Murder: Hamas and the origins of the October...

Oct 30, 2022, 12:00 AM

Robert Satloff on Israel’s Moment

My Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 was published in April by Cambridge University Press. The most recent of reviews is by Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East...

Mar 27, 2022, 12:03 AM

Israel’s Moment: A History of International Support and Opposition, 1945-1949

I am pleased to announce that Cambridge University Press has published my book Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949. It is a book that I hope will of particular interest to readers...

Mar 25, 2022, 5:53 PM

‘Ukraine, the Jews and Israel in 1948: Vasyl Tarasenko at the United Nations’

When Vladimir Putin spreads the lie that Ukraine is run by Nazis and thus needs to be de-Nazified in a “special military operation,” he stands in a long tradition of Soviet era propaganda that hurled identical accusations at domestic...

Mar 11, 2022, 6:47 PM

Putin’s Continuities: From ‘Israelis as Nazis’ to ‘Denazifying’ Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, and Ukraine’s resistance has confirmed some old assumptions, shattered prevalent illusions, and led to a remarkable response by the democracies. It also offers yet another example of the disastrous consequences of antisemitism that emerged...

Feb 22, 2022, 5:15 PM

On the international context of Israel’s founding

Last week, Cambridge University Press published my book Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949. The work recalls political coordinates of those years when the global left and an anticommunist President of the...

Jan 23, 2022, 9:34 AM

Time is running short about Iran and the nuclear issue

Time is on Iran’s side. There’s no more kicking the can if we are to prevent a nuclear Iran. Iran may acquire the ability to build nuclear weapons in the coming months. The failure to prevent this development by using,...

Apr 9, 2021, 10:41 AM

IHRA to JDA: Definitions of Antisemitism in 2021

IHRA to JDA: Definitions of Antisemitism in 2021 In 1975 United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring the Zionism was a form of racism. Though subsequently revoked, the accusation became a standard theme in international politics, one which placed...

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About Me

Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He has published extensively on modern German and European history, and in its intersection with the Middle East, most recently, Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist (Routledge, 2024).