One of the most daring missions carried out by the Mossad unfolded in Sudan between 1979 and 1984. It was from there, a remote scuba diving resort on the Red Sea managed and run by Mossad agents, that Israel’s external intelligence agency smuggled thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. This little-known operation is dramatized in The […]
On September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the still unfinished al-Kibar nuclear reactor in northeastern Syria being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy. Yaakov Katz’s absorbing book, Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission To Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power (St. Martin’s Press), tells the story of this daring mission from […]
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are known to engage in a deceptive practice under which their exported products are affixed with misleading “made in Israel” labels. Of course, Jewish settlers believe that the West Bank, conquered by Israel during the Six Day War and populated in the main by Palestinian Arabs, is an integral […]
The Israeli municipality of Ramat Gan recently passed a resolution permitting public bus service on the Sabbath. It’s a long overdue and welcome development, to say the least. Common sense prevailed when Carmel Shama-Hacohen, the mayor of Ramat Gan — a suburb of Tel Aviv — succeeded in convincing city council to approve a resolution allowing two bus lines […]
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labor Party, is finally getting really serious about the scourge of antisemitism within its ranks. Several days ago, while claiming that this volatile issue has been exaggerated by the media and by his opponents, he belatedly admitted that his left-of-center party has a “real problem” with antisemitism and that it must […]
It comes as no surprise that home-grown fascists in Western Europe collaborated with the German occupation of their respective countries during World War II. Philip Morgan, in Hitler’s Collaborators: Choosing Between Bad and Worse in Nazi-Occupied Europe (Oxford University Press), mentions them in his wide-ranging book, of course. But what really interests him are not […]
Twenty one years ago, a historic conference in Washington, D.C. ended with representatives of 44 governments endorsing a set of principles designed to assist the heirs of Jewish collectors recover works of art that Nazi Germany had looted. Under the terms of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, or the Washington Declaration as it is […]
Benjamin Netanyahu marked a historic milestone on July 20 amid speculation whether he will still be Israel’s prime minister after the September 17 general election. Having held office for 4,876 days, or slightly more than 13 years, he surpassed David Ben-Gurion — Israel’s first and probably greatest leader — as its longest-serving prime minister. Netanyahu, a […]
Kellyanne Conway, U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisor, asked a very odd and potentially troubling question on the very day her impetuous, mercurial and unpredictable boss tore into four Democratic congresswomen in a racially-charged rant during which he advised them to “go back” to the “places from which they came.” During a press conference on the […]
Israel’s new minister of education, Rafael Peretz, appears to have a penchant for spouting nonsense. Peretz, appointed to his position in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s caretaker government last month, stirred anger when he likened Jewish intermarriage around the world as a “second Holocaust.” He compounded his maladroitness by endorsing “conversion therapy” for gay young men […]