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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 […]

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Film

This Land Is Mine

Jean Renoir’s rousing anti-Nazi drama, This Land Is Mine, was a boilerplate propaganda film intended to whip up patriotic fervor and strengthen U.S. public support for the ongoing war against Germany. During its production, the German army was still in conquest mode. But when the picture was released in May 1943, the tide had turned, […]

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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 […]

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Middle East

Gaza War Exposes U.S.-Israel Disagreements

The rift between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israel-Hamas war is growing wider and is looking increasingly worrisome from Israel’s perspective. The tensions that have erupted in the last few months feel like a replay of Israel’s duels with the United States over the past six decades. David Ben-Gurion and Dwight Eisenhower clashed […]

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Books

The Last Generation Of Jews In Poland

The title of Efraim Shmueli’s book, The Last Generation of Jews in Poland (Academic Studies Press), is a little misleading. Shmueli, a Polish Jew born in Lodz in 1908, focuses on the storied Jewish community of Poland during the 1920s, when it was home to 3.3 million Jews, representing nine percent of its population. It […]

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Middle East

Turkey’s Erdogan — A Hopeless Case

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a hopeless case as far as Israel is concerned. Turkey’s impetuous president is and has been extremely and unfairly critical of Israel since gaining national office in 2003. Time and time again, he has hurled gratuitous insults at Israel to satisfy his Islamic base at home, curry favor with the Palestinians, […]

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Film

The Last Metro Revisited

Francois Truffaut’s feature film, The Last Metro, was released in 1980, eleven years after Marcel Ophuls’ past-breaking documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, opened in theaters in France. In his stunning movie, Ophuls exposed the crimes of the collaborationist Vichy regime, which allied itself with Nazi Germany and betrayed French Jews in the name of […]

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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 […]

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Middle East

Gantz’s Trip Exposed Israel-U.S. Tensions Over Gaza

Benny Gantz’s unauthorized visit to the United States earlier this week is likely a reflection of the growing tensions between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and the future of the Gaza Strip. Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, the leader of the centrist National Unity Party, […]

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Middle East

Israel’s Gaza Campaign: A War In Progress

Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip has evolved into a classic textbook example of how a well-trained, superbly equipped modern army conducts intensive urban warfare in a densely-populated area whose 2.3 million residents have often been cynically used by the governing authority as human shields. Israel’s air, land and sea offensive has been […]