Donald Trump lambasted the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. He called it “one of the most incompetently drawn deals I’ve ever seen.” After he unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018, he assured Americans that he would forge a far better deal than his predecessor, […]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has learned the hard way that his political relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump comes at a high price. While Trump has often been supportive of Israel, the United States’ chief ally in the Middled East, he has occasionally differed with Netanyahu on such hot button issues as Iran and […]
Israel’s forthcoming general election is due to take place in September or October, and if the pollsters are correct Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fail to capture enough Knesset seats to cobble together yet another right-wing coalition. Public opinion surveys released by the Times of Israel and Channel 12 on June 11 predicted that the […]
There has been a negotiated end to the war in Iran, but the volatile issues that triggered it have yet to be resolved. After nearly three months of arduous negotiations punctuated by periodic armed clashes, the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire agreement within the parameters of a memorandum of understanding on June 14. […]
Has Iran constrained Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon? That’s the burning question observers have asked following Israel’s latest clashes with Iran on June 7 and June 8. The events that led to these flareups began when Hezbollah, Iran’s chief proxy in the Middle East, fired rockets and drones into the Galilee. Israel then bombed […]
Erno “Zvi” Spiegel is an unsung hero of the Holocaust — a nearly forgotten Hungarian Jew who saved young Jewish twins in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland from looming death. An inmate in the camp since May 1944, he worked for Josef Mengele, the German physician who conducted gruesome medical experiments on twins he […]
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks against Israel on June 7 and June 8 were stunning yet not surprising. Iran — Israel’s arch enemy and Hezbollah’s chief ally in the Middle East — attacked Israel in retaliation for an Israeli air strike in Dahiyeh, a suburb south of Beirut and a Hezbollah stronghold. Israeli aircraft bombed Dahiyeh […]
Prime Minister Mark Carney finally delivered a long overdue public statement on the unsettling spike of antisemitic incidents in Canada. On June 1, in a candid speech at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, he condemned these assaults, acknowledged that the Jewish community faces “a surge of antisemitism to levels not seen in the postwar period,” […]
Sharon Angelhart’s Hebrew-language movie, Cuz You’re Ugly, is a closely-observed character study of an obese and unattractive young woman who craves intimacy and recognition. It will be screened at the forthcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started on June 4 and runs until June 14. In the opening moments of this Israeli feature film, Avigail […]
Oliver Kolker’s Spanish-language movie, I Had The Heart, engages all the senses. A drama from Argentina with pronounced musical elements, it takes place in Buenos Aires as a handicapped mechanic rises to stardom as a tango singer. It will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which gets underway on June 4 and runs […]