Categories
Commentary

Guernica’s Thought Police

Two words come to mind to describe the rash and unreasonable decision by Guernica to retract a personal essay by Israeli author Joanna Chen: disgusting and disgraceful. It reminds us all that cancel culture is thriving in America. This prominent online literary magazine, based in New York City, is reeling after a self-inflicted wound. On […]

Categories
Commentary

Chuck Schumer Went Out On A Limb

Chuck Schumer, the top-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Congress and the Senate majority leader, went out on a limb yesterday, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a major obstacle to peace, calling for a fresh election and a new leadership in Israel, and endorsing a two-state solution. Schumer’s 40-minute speech was seen as yet […]

Categories
Commentary

Unruly Palestinian Protesters Should Not Be Tolerated

The Toronto Police Service is currently reviewing a pro-Palestinian demonstration that led to the abrupt cancellation of a dinner that was to be hosted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the Art Gallery of Ontario on March 2. “If it is determined that illegal activity occurred, charges can […]

Categories
Commentary

Russia And Ukraine Bogged Down In A War Of Attrition

Two years on, Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has bogged down into a messy World War 1-style stalemate — a costly trench war of attrition that has consumed men and materiel at an alarmingly rapid pace. In the past few months, however, the revitalized Russian army has gained ground in the east and the […]

Categories
Commentary

Israelis Need To Share Military Service Equally

For decades now, Israeli politicians have spoken of the pressing need to pass legislation mandating military service on a compulsory and equitable basis. This would mean that the vast majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews would no longer qualify for draft exemptions and would have to share the burden of defending the homeland along with secular and […]

Categories
Commentary

A Precedent-Shattering Court Verdict

Justice was served in London, Ontario, on February 22 when Nathaniel Veltman was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 25 years in a case that revolved around pure, unadulterated racism. Veltman, 23, was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder after deliberately ramming his pickup truck into four total strangers out […]

Categories
Commentary

An Insidious Form Of Hatred

Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism and its former ambassador to Israel, did not mince words. After learning that Leah Goldstein — a Canadian Jewish athlete who had been a professional cyclist — had been disinvited as the keynote speaker at an International Women’s Day event in Peterborough, Ontario, on […]

Categories
Commentary

An Outrageous Comparison From Brazil’s Blinkered President

Brazilian President Luiz InĂ¡cio Lula da Silva owes the Jewish people and the state of Israel an unreserved apology after likening Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip to Nazi Germany’s diabolical plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Silva’s flippant and blinkered comparison, steeped in appalling ignorance and boundless maliciousness, prompted Israeli Foreign Minister […]

Categories
Commentary

Aleksei Navalny — A Beacon Of Moral Clarity

Aleksei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died in a Siberian penal colony on February 16 at the age of 47, signed his death warrant when he returned to Russia from Germany after recovering from a botched assassination attempt. A gadfly who was a thorn in the side of Russia’s authoritarian government, he was probably the […]

Categories
Commentary

Israel’s Rocky Relationship With UNRWA

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is clearly an organization under sharp scrutiny after Israel presented donor nations with evidence that twelve of its employees participated in Hamas’ deadly attacks against Israel on October 7, and that ten percent of its staff, or 1,200 individuals, are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. As a […]