An unusual chapter in Russian history unfolded between 1827 and 1856, when Jewish boys and men were kidnapped and forcibly brought to camps, known as cantons, to be trained as soldiers in the Tzarist army. Often snatched when they were as young as six years old, they were sent to vocational schools, after which they […]
The Festival of Lights was tragically and momentarily dimmed in Sydney, Australia, on December 14 when two gunmen opened fire on a Chanukah festival on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in the bloodiest antisemitic incident in Australian history. One of the victims, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was a Chabad emissary who organized this festive event. Arsen […]
Years ago, I visited Marrakesh, a city in Morocco on the edge of the great Sahara Desert. I found it picturesque and exotic, a pleasant tourist destination of narrow cobblestone streets, gated residential homes, sandstone fortresses, and a central square brimming with snake charmers, hawkers and hustlers. While passing through its old quarter of crumbling […]
A year ago, on December 8, President Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime in Syria fell like a house of cards and was immediately replaced by an Islamist government led by Ahmed al-Shara, a former jihadist affiliated with Al Qaeda. It was a defining moment in Syria, an Arab state misruled by the Assad family for more […]
At its general assembly meeting in Geneva last week, the European Broadcasting Union judiciously came down on the side of fairness and justice. It allowed Israel to continue participating in the Eurovision Song Contest, the next one of which takes place in Vienna in May. Some members, having denounced Israel’s conduct of the war in […]
The Ku Klux Klan, the most powerful far-right American movement during the 1920s, was far more potent than its white supremacist forebearer, which emerged following the U.S. civil war. With a membership of over one million within a few years of its founding, it amassed more political power than any Klan before or since. Its […]
Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays seethes with potentially explosive family secrets. Unfolding in Arabic and Hebrew, and set in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, this subtle feature film explores unsettling corners of relationships and the manner in which Israeli Jews and Arab Israelis try to manage them. It opens in theaters in the United States […]
In an unprecedented request, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked President Isaac Herzog for a pardon. If granted, it would absolve him of criminal charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust in three separate but related cases. Netanyahu claims that a positive response from Herzog would have a beneficial effect on healing divisions in […]
The Palestinian Authority hopes to supplant Hamas as the governing power in the Gaza Strip and play a central role in the second phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. This may be a bridge too far as matters stand today. The Israeli government opposes the participation of the PA in the future […]
It was unlike any day in Israel’s history. On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip stormed into southern Israel, unleashing an atrocity on a scale that Jews thought was no longer possible after Israel’s creation in 1948. Israel was caught “completely by surprise,” write Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot in […]