The Odessa-Born Jew-Turned British Secret Agent Who Might Have Inspired James Bond

A native of tsarist Russia, Sigmund Rosenblum left for Britain in 1890s, where he took the name Sidney Reilly and at some point began working for a precursor of MI6 (the UK equivalent of the CIA). Thus began a career of espionage and intrigue that, according to some, was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. It is also the subject of Benny Morris’s Sidney Reilly: Master Spy, which tries to sift through legend and speculation to determine the facts of Reilly’s exploits. A.E. Smith writes in his review:

By the end of 1918, [Reilly] was back in Russia, this time in his hometown of Odessa, reporting back to MI6 on the progress of the Civil War in southern Russia where three armies—White, Red, and Ukrainian nationalists under Symon Petliura—were engaged in an existential struggle. Reilly was unabashedly partisan, praising White commander Anton Denikin’s “absolute honesty . . . political moderation, immense popularity, and . . . loyalty to the Allied cause” and dismissing Petliura as “ephemeral.” What he failed to mention was that the region’s Jews were helplessly caught in the middle of this war. Pogroms across Ukraine and the Donbas dwarfed those of the 19th and early-20th centuries, resulting in an estimated 50,000 casualties. Of these, more than 90 percent were carried out by Ukrainian nationalists or Denikin’s Whites and about 8.5 percent by the Red Army.

Even with their knee-jerk Edwardian anti-Semitism, Reilly’s upper-class colleagues in MI6 and the Foreign Office were horrified by what they saw. “The longer and more bitter the struggle against the Soviets,” wrote Captain George Hill in June 1919, “the more sanguinary the pogroms.” But Reilly evidently cared little for the fate of his fellow Jews, downplaying their plight in his reporting, and characterizing them as a pro-German fifth column.

Herein lies the central theme of Reilly’s life. From his name to his passport to his officer’s commission, Reilly seemed to go to great lengths to conceal, even repudiate, his Jewish identity. This is, of course, not an uncommon story. . . . Jewish history is full of shapeshifters and tricksters, and certainly Reilly seems to be one of them. In the story of his life, there is virtually nothing overtly Jewish. That, as above, seems to be the way he wanted it.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Jewish history, Odessa, Russian Jewry, Spies

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF