It’s no secret that Israel is doing everything in its power to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, but it’s an open question whether Israel was responsible for recent explosions that damaged two Iranian nuclear sites. A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behrouz Kamalvandi, disclosed that these blasts caused “significant damage” to advanced equipment, […]
Israel and the Soviet Union were enmeshed in an intense clash of arms in the Sinai Peninsula from the end of the 1967 Six Day War until the conclusion of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Soviets poured more than 50,000 advisors, technicians and pilots into this effort on behalf of its defeated Arab ally, […]
Ilan Stavans compares his lengthy trip to Latin America a few years ago to an ethnographic expedition undertaken by the fabled folklorist S. Ansky to Eastern Europe in the second decade of the last century. In his Yiddish-language book, The Enemy At His Pleasure, Ansky offered an acute analysis of Jewish life in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine […]
Contrary to some expectations, July 1 turned out to be an uneventful day in Israel. It came and went without a much-anticipated announcement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel would unilaterally annex a substantial portion of the West Bank, home to 2.5 million Palestinians and 450,000 Israeli Jews. He had said he would launch […]
Roger Van Boxtel, the chief executive officer of the Dutch national railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), would do well to stop in his tracks and reconsider one of his recent decisions. Last month, NS announced it would donate five million euros ($5.6 million) to four Dutch centers dedicated to combating antisemitism and memorializing the Holocaust, […]
Plessy v. Ferguson, a U.S. Supreme Court verdict of immense magnitude, drew little national attention when it was handed down in 1896, but its effects on race relations in the United States were staggering and long-lasting. The ruling, written by Henry Billings Brown, upheld the Separate Car Act, which Louisiana had enacted in 1890 “to […]
There was a time in American politics when Israel could usually count more on Democrats than Republicans for understanding and support. But since the accession of Donald Trump to the presidency, the pendulum has swung the other way. In fact, this is a historic process that has actually unfolded incrementally over the decades. A Democratic […]
The United Arab Emirates, a conservative, pro-American Arab state, regards Israel as a potential partner, but its willingness to establish formal diplomatic relations with it is constrained by one overwhelming obstacle, the Arab-Israeli dispute. A federation of seven emirates, including Dubai, the UAE has cozied up to Israel in recent years. Two factors account for […]
Keir Starmer, the new leader of Britain’s Labour Party, lived up to a solemn promise and did the right thing by sacking his shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, on June 25. Starmer, who succeeded the discredited Jeremy Corbyn as party leader in April, pledged to root out antisemitism within its ranks and rebuild trust with […]
I can think of no better a statue to remove from its lofty pedestal than that of Queen Isabella I of Spain. Statues of the monarch, who expelled Jews from Spain in 1492 under the infamous Alhambra Decree, are found in a plethora of countries. Streets have been named after Isabella as well. A thoroughfare […]