Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has floated a trial balloon that had no business being launched in the first place. Katz told journalists recently that he is promoting a plan to squeeze the 2.2.million Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the Gaza Strip into a “humanitarian city” that will be built on the ruins of Rafah. A […]
Hezbollah, having been degraded by Israel during the low-intensity war of attrition in 2023 and 2024 and the all-out two-month war in 2024, is reeling from its defeat as it attempts to regroup and recover. But the path forward will be exceedingly difficult for Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy which, until last year’s conflict, was Israel’s […]
The Palmach, the elite fighting unit of the Haganah self-defence force in British Mandate Palestine, is at the core of Palmach Rising, a 95-part Israeli television series now available on the Izzy streaming platform. Described as a teen drama, each episode is about 20 minutes in length. Judging by the first five, they are likely […]
I last saw Judgment At Nuremberg years ago, when I was a teenager. Some films age badly, but after watching it again recently on the Turner Classic Movie channel, I can confidently say that it stands the test of time. It is a fine film that deals accurately and seriously with a historically important subject. […]
Adam Raz, in his meticulously researched book, Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property (Verso), exposes an extremely sensitive and explosive issue, one that Israelis cannot conveniently sweep under a rug. Raz, an Israeli human rights researcher and historian, deals with the plunder of moveable property left behind by Palestinian Arabs who fled or were forced […]
Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump since last July appears to have gone reasonably well, certainly better than his previous visit in April. The Israeli prime minister and the U.S. president met at a White House dinner on July 7 to discuss several core topics — the prospects of a ceasefire in the […]
Michael Curtiz’s classic, Casablanca, was released by the Warner Bros. studio in 1943 following its premiere in the previous year. Despite the passage of eight decades, it is remarkably fresh. I watched it on the Turner Classic Movies television channel, and it remains as vital and engaging as it was when I last saw it […]
The first season of House of Promises, a bright and atmospheric German-language period piece which takes place in Berlin from the late 1920s until the Nazi takeover in the 1930s, is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. The opening scene is captivating and original, hinting of much more to come. Arthur Grunberg (Alexander Scheer), […]
We live in a turbulent age of dislocation. Far-right ethno- nationalism is surging. Extreme left-wing ideologies are on the uptick. Radical Islamist movements have become increasingly influential. Amid these developments, democracy has come under siege and a strain of antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism has emerged. Shalom Lappin examines these unsettling trends in The New Antisemitism: […]
From the moment David Ben-Gurion declared statehood in 1948, Syria, the beating heart of Arab nationalism, has been one of Israel’s most vociferous enemies. But with the sudden fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last December and his replacement by a new government that seems to seek an accommodation with Israel and has distanced itself […]