Joe Balass was born in Baghdad in 1966, only four years before he and his family were forced to leave Iraq for good. He has few memories of his birthplace, but his mother, Valentine, remembers it vividly in his 33-minute documentary, Baghdad Twist, which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Available on […]
Turkey, in a remarkable volte-face, is trying to rehabilitate its battered bilateral relations with Israel. Only nine months ago, during the fourth cross-border war in and around the Gaza Strip, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vigorously blasted Israel. An Islamist and a vocal champion of the Palestinian cause, he condemned Israel as a “terrorist state” […]
Police in riot gear are belatedly clearing the streets of Ottawa of Freedom Convoy protesters who have grossly abused their democratic right to stage peaceful demonstrations. The police are proceeding with extraordinary caution and deliberation despite the protestors’ stubborn refusal to comply with the law and disperse peacefully. Incredibly enough, several have assaulted policemen and even […]
Travelling around Ukraine with a phonograph and wax cylinders in hand, Moyshe Beregovsky methodically preserved the musical heritage of Ukrainian Jews before the Holocaust. A folklorist and ethnomusicologist, he recorded hundreds, if not thousands, of Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, love songs, revolutionary songs, klezmer music and wordless religious melodies (nigunim). He was also […]
China, once a minor player in the Middle East, is expanding its influence throughout the region, both in the Muslim world and Israel. Until quite recently, the Middle East was virtually the preserve of two major powers, the United States and Russia. But in recent years, China has begun catching up. There is no better […]
Father Charles Edward Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, was the voice of the Christian Front, an extreme right-wing organization dedicated to cleansing the United States of Jews and communists. One of the most popular American broadcasters of the 1930s and 1940s, he was also the editor of Social Justice, a widely read newspaper that disseminated […]
The biggest threat to Israel’s long-term stability is its lack of a formal constitution, says Arye Carmon, the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute, which is dedicated to promoting and strengthening democratic values in the Jewish state. Carmon, a philosopher and historian, expounds on this theme in Building Democracy On Sand: Israel Without A […]
Israel has signed security agreements with two pro-Western Arab states in the past few months, signalling the emergence of a new and potentially important strategic alliance in the Middle East. On November 24, Israel and Morocco signed a memorandum of understanding in Rabat, the first of its kind between Israel and an Arab state. On February 4, […]
Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defence League, was an exponent of counter-culture politics and a voice of illiberalism. Assassinated more than three decades ago, he is the subject of Shaul Magid’s erudite and penetrating book, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, published by Princeton University Press. […]
Mel Mermelstein was a fearless fighter and a loyal son who kept faith with his doomed father. Bound by a solemn pledge to him to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, he successfully sued American Holocaust deniers in a celebrated case that exposed them as malicious liars and forced them to pay a hefty financial […]