Sol Stern

Jul 15, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Jesse Tisch |Akiva Schick |Sol Stern

Oxford University Press 312 pp., $24.95 In 1939, William Butler Yeats was placed on trial. The charge: spreading false ideas, namely the absurd belief “that art ever makes anything happen.” It was, of course, a made-up trial—Yeats was already dead. It was conceived by W. H. Auden, his fellow poet, who then famously declared that “poetry makes nothing happen.” For many, Auden’s statement was a goad: Can writing, in fact, change society?

Jan 10, 2024 | quillette.com | Sol Stern |Matt Hanson |Aaron Sarin

I. It is now painfully obvious that much of the media was caught out by Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, and even more so by the (sometimes violent) outbursts of Jew-hatred dressed up as “anti-colonialism” on the streets and elite campuses of the West. The young activists now embracing the world’s oldest hatred are not likely to fall silent any time soon.

Nov 10, 2023 | commentary.org | Sol Stern

O n the morning of October 7, waves of Hamas death squads entered Israel for the sole purpose of murdering defenseless Jews. The leaders of the Islamist terrorist movement were so confident they were on the right side of history that they boasted about their atrocities, released graphic videos of butchered Jewish mothers and babies, and then promised to do it again. Unfortunately, they weren't entirely wrong in their assessment of the likely world reaction.