Mehnaz Afridi is appalled by two troubling phenomena in Muslim communities — the “lack of understanding” of the Holocaust and the “growing antisemitism.” She should know. An Indian Muslim born in Pakistan, she’s director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College, a Catholic liberal arts institution in New York City. It’s […]
With the start of a new year, Israel is focused on countering a looming threat developing on the Golan Heights. Iran, which has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, is establishing a military presence on Syria’s side of the Golan, which, until very recently, was partially held by rebel forces seeking the removal of Syrian President […]
The Jewish working class of Eastern Europe has passed into the mists of time, but during its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it produced a remarkable cadre of utopian revolutionaries ranging from Socialists and Communists to Bundists and Zionists. Whether manual workers or intellectuals, they emerged from what was the Pale […]
The Dead Sea, a lifeless lake bereft of fish and aquatic plants, has attracted an endless stream of visitors since time immemorial. Shared by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, this hypersaline body of water in the Jordan Rift Valley is 67 kilometres in length, 18 kilometres in width at its widest point and a […]
Neo- Nazi propagandist Andrew Anglin has gone into hiding, but his disappearance is hardly a mystery. If he resurfaces at a fixed address long enough, he will be served with a U.S. federal lawsuit that would compel him to appear in a court to face a myriad of charges that could cost him dearly. Anglin, […]
Julia Phillips Cohen’s path-breaking book, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era, published by Oxford University Press, is the first to tell the story of Jewish political integration into a modern Islamic empire. The process, which began with the Tanzimat reforms enacted by the Ottoman Empire from 1839-1876, emancipated non-Muslim minorities. From that […]
In principle, international sporting competitions should be open to all nations with absolutely no exceptions. Countries that refuse to abide by this golden rule should be forbidden to host such events and banned from competing in them, period. Which brings us to the speed chess championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which took place from December […]
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was a defining moment in the leadup to World War II. Pitting two diametrically opposed ideologies against each other, the three-year conflict was ostensibly a struggle between the left-of-center Republicans and the right-wing Nationalists. On a broader level, it was effectively a proxy war between the fascism […]
As about one million Muslim refugees from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan poured into Germany in 2015 and 2016, commentators congratulated the German government for its spirit of empathy and generosity. Not every German agreed with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy, but a vocal minority of Germans who welcomed the migrants left the distinct impression […]
Israel is haunted by the specter of tunnels. For years now, Israel has been consumed by the fear that Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip will sneak into Israeli territory through tunnels and attack border communities in murderous raids that will cause multiple casualties. Palestinian tunnels have been on Israel’s mind especially since the summer of […]