Yossi Ghinsberg’s vivid memoir, Back To Tuichi: The Harrowing Life-And-Death Story Of Survival In The Amazon Rainforest, is by far one of the most memorable books I have had the pleasure of reading. Published by Random House in 1993, it recounts the author’s near fatal trek into the jungles of Bolivia in 1981. An Israeli […]
U.S. President Donald Trump announced this week that, if “the circumstances were correct,” he would “certainly agree” to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani within weeks. Disclosing he would seek a “very simple” deal focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its stockpile of ballistic missiles, Trump said his administration is “not looking for regime change in […]
Israel has reportedly opened a new front in its concerted campaign to thwart Iran’s military buildup in the Middle East. It would seem that the long arm of the Israeli armed forces has reached Iraq. This is the first time in nearly four decades that Iraq has been targeted by Israel. In 1981, Israeli aircraft […]
Disaster was barely averted when Britain evacuated some 300,000 British, French and Belgium troops trapped in the French port of Dunkirk in the spring of 1940. Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, hailed the evacuation as a “miracle.” Germany, having recently conquered France in a blitzkrieg, could have picked them off on the beaches of Dunkirk. […]
One summer day three years ago, I found Your Ward News, a thin tabloid published quarterly in Toronto, stuffed into my mailbox. As I flipped through its pages, I was horrified and disgusted. It was filled with crude antisemitic articles and drawings. I complained to the postman, realizing he was not responsible for its contents and […]
The Republican president of the United States, Donald Trump, is playing a very selfish, self-serving and ultimately dangerous game. He is imperilling the bipartisan nature of U.S. support for Israel for personal political gain and creating an environment in which antisemitism could flourish. In the past few days, Trump has crossed all red lines by […]
With the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia a fait accompli, Jews were tarred with the accusation that they had fomented and directed it. “Judeo-Bolshevism — the idea that Jews had created and supported Bolshevism and were therefore responsible for its crimes — was an explosive charge that had dangerous and often lethal consequences for Jews […]
Flipping through Netflix’s menu, I came upon Bolivar, the 60-part Colombian television series whose logo is illustrated by a heroic image of Simon Bolivar clad in a fancy dress uniform and sitting astride a white horse with its front feet kicked up in mid-air. Being somewhat familiar with his credentials as an ardent Venezuelan nationalist […]
Eric Bednarski’s poignant documentary, Warsaw: A City Divided, due to be screened at the Jewish Film Festival in Jerusalem later this year, provides viewers with a fresh look at the Warsaw Ghetto. Established in 1940 on the cynically false rationale of halting the spread of infectious diseases, it was an overcrowded, walled-off dumping ground rife with […]
Donald Trump barked and Benjamin Netanyahu caved in. One may be excused for wondering whether Israel is a banana republic, doing the bidding of its master. Israel’s decision to ban U.S. Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a four-day fact-finding trip to examine the conditions of Palestinians […]