Maybe the astounding result in the 2016 American presidential election, which saw the most improbable of candidates, Donald Trump, beat the seasoned pro, Hillary Clinton, should not have been the shock it was. A system that had completely failed tens of millions of people for decades, and especially after 2008, needed a rude awakening. The […]
The war in Syria, nuclear proliferation, trade and the Israeli-Palestinian issue were on the agenda during a November 9-11 tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He began his trip, to mark 25 years of diplomatic ties between Israel and Russia, with a visit to the Western Wall in […]
On October 26, at the request of his family, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, was formally declared dead, almost 72 years after he disappeared in January 1945. Few positive stories emerged from the Holocaust. For every Oskar Schindler, the subject of the 1993 movie Schindler’s […]
A war that started 60 years ago provided Canada with its now familiar role as a peacekeeping force on behalf of the United Nations. On October 29, 1956, Israeli forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. In a swift, sweeping operation of 100 hours, under the leadership of then chief of the General Staff, Moshe […]
October 23 marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a nationwide revolt against the Soviet-imposed government of the Hungarian People’s Republic. It lasted until November 10, when it was crushed by Soviet tanks. At least 30,000 people were killed and some 200,000 others fled to the west. Imre Nagy had […]
On July 14, Bastille Day, a terrorist drove a truck into a crowd in Nice, France, killing 84 people. In a particularly notorious incident two weeks later, two men stormed a church in Normandy before slitting the throat of an elderly priest. In the streets of Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, extremists are recruiting […]
The killings in Syria go on, despite efforts to end the carnage. The country’s largest city, Aleppo, lies in ruins. Millions have fled the country. What makes this such an intractable problem? Syria is a very complex country, a kaleidoscope of rival ethnicities and sects. If history is a guide, this is a state that […]
It’s amazing to think that it has been 80 years since the famous Battle of Cable Street, which took place on October 4, 1936 in London’s East End, where most of England’s Jews lived at the time. I say this because when I began researching my PhD dissertation on London Jews and British Communism in […]
With the passing of Shimon Peres on September 28, Israel has lost the last of its major founding fathers. Peres, who was 93, had a career in public service that spanned more than six decades. He held almost every senior post in Israeli politics, including those of prime minister, foreign minister, defence minister, finance minister […]
It’s been 15 years since the infamous United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, known as Durban I, was held in the South African beach resort city of Durban from Aug. 31 to Sept. 8, 2001. It was chaired by then South African Foreign Minister Jacob Zuma, the country’s current […]