Sheldon Kirshner's Latest Posts
Israel’s Election Could Bring Liberal Reforms
Israel’s second election in five months has opened the door to the prospect of a legislated program of liberal reforms that could nudge the country toward greater secularization and grant the disaffected Arab minority a far more tangible stake in Israeli society. With the September 17 general election having ended almost as inconclusively as the […]
The Case Of Johanna Langefeld
Johanna Langefeld was a Nazi war criminal with a difference. A German national, she appears to have been the only known concentration camp guard whom some of her victims actually liked. In The Case Of Johanna Langefeld, a documentary currently making the rounds of film festivals, Wladek Jurkow and Gerburg Rohde-Dahl examine her checkered legacy […]
Saudi, Inc.
Saudi Arabia was mired in the medieval past when American prospectors discovered oil deposits beneath its desert sands in 1938. Prior to this seismic event, the Arabian peninsula had hardly changed in centuries, its deeply conservative inhabitants still dependent on traditional ways of earning a livelihood –raising livestock, working in agriculture, fishing and pearl diving, […]
A Regressive Step Away From Peace
The timing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to annex the Jordan Valley and the adjacent northern portion of the Dead Sea — areas of the West Bank that Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War and that Palestinians view as an integral part of a future Palestinian state — was hardly accidental. He issued […]
Hezbollah Jeopardizes Lebanon’s Sovereignty
Shortly after Israel’s relatively brief exchange of cross-border fire with Hezbollah on September 1, the prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, claimed that Hezbollah is not “a Lebanese problem” but “a regional problem.” In effect, Hariri admitted that Lebanon is powerless to control Hezbollah, an increasingly potent Lebanese Shi’a militia aligned with Syria and Iran, […]
Promise At Dawn
Eric Barbier’s biopic of the late French novelist and diplomat Romain Gary, Promise at Dawn, is filled with a succession of melodramatic moments befitting his intense and picturesque life. Based on his eponymous best-selling autobiographical novel, it unfolds mainly in Poland and France — where he was formed as a boy and a man — in […]
The Spy
Eli Cohen, Israel’s greatest known spy, is the stuff of legends. Fifty four years after his death by hanging in Damascus, he still remains a revered figure in Israel. Gideon Raff’s six-part Netflix miniseries, The Spy, burnishes Cohen’s heroic image. In an inspired but improbable feat of casting, British actor Sacha Baron Cohen plays the […]
The Italian Executioners
Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini persecuted its Jewish citizens and played an integral role in deporting thousands of them to German extermination camps. Italy, nevertheless, has tried to distance itself from this shameful period, attempting to leave the misleading impression that Italians had only positive feelings for Jews and blaming Germany, its former ally, for […]
Managing The Conflict With Hamas
It’s a truism that Hamas is a thorn in Israel’s side. Hamas, an implacable enemy that rejects Israel’s very existence, has fought three wars and countless skirmishes with the Jewish state in the past decade, causing untold hardship to Israelis living near the border and misery to the Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Israel, […]
Hitler’s American Friends
Three months before Japan attacked the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Charles Lindbergh addressed a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, to rail against the prospect of American intervention in World War II. Speaking as a member of the American First Committee, a non-profit isolationist organization that was officially incorporated in September […]
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