Categories
Middle East

Normalization Is On The Table

Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, recently reminded Israelis that the tantalizing prospect of Arab normalization with Israel has been on the table for nearly two decades now. As he suggested on April 2, Arab states offered Israel full normalization of relations at an Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002. […]

Categories
Middle East

A Disturbing Disconnect

There was a disturbing disconnect in Jerusalem yesterday. A day after lead prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari opened the evidentiary phase of Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial on charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud, President Reuven Rivlin asked the sitting prime minister to try to form a new government. With Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party having emerged from […]

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Books

War Of Shadows

As Germany conquered one Western European country after another in 1940, Britain and Italy fought ferocious battles in Libya and Egypt, while the Italian Air Force bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa. Germany intervened in the desert war in 1941, dispatching General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps to assist its Italian ally, which had begin […]

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Film

The Good Traitor

Danish career diplomat Henrik Kauffmann was one of the unsung heroes of World War II. A fervent anti-Nazi, he generated newspaper headlines when he declared Denmark’s embassy in Washington independent of the Danish government following Germany’s invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940. With Denmark cooperating with the German occupying force, he decided he could […]

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Film

Green Book

I missed Green Book when it was released in 2018, but thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch this hugely entertaining and uplifting movie. A drama with comedic overtones, it takes place in 1962, when Jim Crow racial laws were still deeply embedded in U.S. southern states. During this era, African Americans driving through […]

Categories
Books

Right-Wing Extremism In Canada

Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens contend that there have been too few attempts by academics to systematically analyze the ideologies and activities of right-wing extremists in Canada, resulting in a paucity of books and monographs on this important topic. “There can be little doubt, then, that a theoretically informed contemporary assessment is needed,” they believe. […]

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Commentary

False Analogy Causes Harm

Much to its credit, Israel has developed an app which allows fully vaccinated Israelis to enjoy unrestricted access to a variety of public places — shops, malls, movie theatres, gyms, restaurants, cafes and so on — even as the coronavirus pandemic still rages. Thanks to these “green passports,” Israel can gradually return to a semblance […]

Categories
Commentary

Back In The Land Of The Living

I got it! On March 30, at approximately 10:20 a.m., a doctor administered a 0.3 ml dosage of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine into my left shoulder. I felt a fleeting pinprick, and that was it. So far, no side effects. With this jab, I was partially inoculated, but not completely immunized against the ravages of […]

Categories
Film

Amundsen: The Great Explorer

Roald Amundsen was arguably the most renowned explorer of the snow-bound, ice-capped polar regions. The first to reach the South Pole in the Antarctica, he was also  the first to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean. Espen Sandberg’s movie, Amundsen: The Great Explorer, which will be available on VOD platforms on April 6, explores the adventures of […]

Categories
Television

Shtisel Dives Into Its Third Season

Shtisel is back for a third season. The Israeli drama about an ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem is now available on the Netflix streaming network. Rabbi Shulem Shtisel (Dov Glickman), a widower and the headmaster of a religious day school for boys, is the dominant figure in this meticulously crafted production. Bearded and rumpled, he’s clearly the […]