A few days after the United States announced that Israel and the United Arab Emirates would normalize relations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu triumphantly spoke of a new spirit in the Middle East that would break down barriers between Israel and Arab states and eventually lead to an Israeli accommodation with the Palestinians. The new doctrine, […]
Jerusalem’s light rail commuter line cuts sleekly through Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, bringing Jews and Arabs into close proximity whether they like it or not. Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai uses this train as a device to draw pen portraits of everyday Israelis and to examine some of the problems that bedevil contemporary Israel. His film, […]
Two preppy Canadians find themselves in a dreary village in Poland in the dead of winter. What are they doing there? Zach Bernbaum answers the question in his quirky Canadian feature film, The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova, which is currently playing online. Night has fallen in Dombrova, and siblings Sarah and Aaron Cotler (Katherine Fogler and […]
As pro-Russian separatists battled to decouple eastern Ukraine from the rest of the country from 2014 onward, the Russian government claimed that Jews and other minorities were endangered by the new, pro-Western Ukrainian government, or, as it called it, the “fascist junta.” “Of course, this was pure agitprop, but that didn’t stop Russia’s state-controlled media […]
Incredulously enough, a street in the eastern Ontario town of Ajax is named after a German naval officer who was an ardent Nazi and a keen supporter of Adolf Hitler. Langsdorff Drive bears the name of Hans Langsdorff, the captain of the Graf Spee, an ill-fated cruiser that engaged the British Navy in the first major […]
In 1999, the Israeli government approved a master plan to build thousands of housing units in the strategically important E-1 area of the West Bank. Twenty one years on, the ambitious project continues to languish due to the objections of Israel’s chief ally, the United States. A succession of U.S. presidents have come out against […]
Hermann Goring, the commander of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe and one of Adolf Hitler’s chief lieutenants, would surely be spinning in his grave if he knew that the German and Israeli air forces are currently conducting their first joint exercise in Germany. German pilots have trained in Israel twice before, but this is the first time […]
The Democratic Party’s 80-page platform on foreign and domestic policy devotes only three paragraphs to Israel, a major U.S. ally. But their inclusion in the official party program received final approval only after an impassioned debate pitting progressives against mainstream Democrats at their national convention, which ended yesterday in Milwaukee. The committee that produced the […]
A small minority of emancipated Jews in 19th century Europe, having tasted a whiff of liberty and freedom as equal citizens under the law, went one step further. They converted to Christianity, leaving behind Judaism once and for all and fully integrating themselves into Christian societies. Ellie R. Schainker, a professor of history and Jewish […]
To the European Jewish refugees who found a temporary haven in Shanghai during the late 1930s and early 1940s, China’s biggest port was as faraway as any metropolis in the Far East could be. Vibrant, chaotic, dirty and cosmopolitan, Shanghai was a destination of last resort for upwards of 20,000 German, Austrian, Czech and Polish Jews […]