On Dec. 25, the Malaysian government announced it had accepted the withdrawal of two Israeli windsurfers from the International Sailing Federation world youth sailing championships, which was due to begin on Dec. 27. Malaysia’s Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told the Malay Mail Online website that Malaysia, which does not have diplomatic relations […]
Like a snowball rolling downhill, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement aimed at Israel keeps growing — especially among those who teach at universities. That doesn’t bode well for future support for the Jewish state, since a whole generation of students — tomorrow’s politically-active citizens and voters — are increasingly exposed to the dogma of […]
France was, in a sense, attacked twice this month. Apart from the horrific massacre in Paris on November 13, the jihadi attack one week later on the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, the capital of the former French colony of Mali in northern Africa, was also to a large extent aimed at France. The posh […]
Despite the November 13 massacres in Paris and the revelation that one of the Islamic State (IS) attackers apparently arrived in Europe as a “migrant,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who defeated Stephen Harper in last month’s election, remains determined to fast-track 25,000 Syrian migrants into Canada by year’s end. Indeed, one cabinet position has […]
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party won a resounding victory in the Canadian federal election on October 19, winning 184 seats in the 338-seat House of Commons. The ruling Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats, the New Democrats to 44, with the Bloc Québécois at 10 and the Greens with one. This was a very long […]
In parliamentary elections held in Turkey last June 7, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) received nearly 13 percent of the popular vote, giving it 80 seats in the 550-member National Assembly. It marked the first time that a primarily Kurdish party had cleared the 10 percent electoral threshold to enter parliament. […]
This very lengthy Canadian election campaign has revolved around many topics, but it seems that some of the most emotional involve Islam and Muslims. And the way the three main political parties handle these hot-button issues may determine their relative standings on election day on October 19. There have been debates about the intake […]
It’s no secret that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has an authoritarian bent of mind. And that includes his hatred of any criticism. That makes for a very hostile environment for the country’s journalists. One of the country’s preeminent newspapers, Hurriyet, which has a liberal secularist outlook, suffered two attacks on its offices in Istanbul earlier […]
In the late 19th century, the German Marxist August Bebel observed that anti-Jewish prejudice was “the socialism of fools.” Is Jeremy Corbyn demonstrating the accuracy of this phrase yet again? A far-left Labour Party member of parliament in Britain since 1983, Corbyn has just won the leadership of the party following the resignation of Ed […]
On Feb. 5, 1969, almost 47 years ago, my friend Sheldon Kirshner and I published an opinion piece in the now-defunct Montreal Star, entitled “Grave Impasse: Israel and the Palestinians.” We were both university students at the time. (He went on to a career in journalism on the Canadian Jewish News in Toronto.) This was […]