The International Judo Federation issued an important announcement on September 3, one that bodes well for Israeli athletes. The federation disclosed that Israelis will be able to compete on equal terms at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam in the United Arab Emirates on October 25-27. This is doubtless a step in the right direction. At last […]
Margaret Mitchell, the unknown novelist who achieved celebrity with her first and only book, Gone With the Wind, is the subject of a fascinating documentary due to be broadcast by the PBS network on September 11 and 18 (check local listings). Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel, an American Masters production, charts her ascent from obscurity to fame in a […]
The strategic relationship between the “mosque” and the “market” is explored by Aisha Ahmad in her bracingly original book, Jihad & Co.: Black Markets and Islamist Power, published by Oxford University Press. Ahmad, an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Toronto, focuses her attention on unstable and ungovernable parts […]
The United States has altered its view of the Palestinian refugee problem, which goes to the core of Israel’s protracted, often bloody conflict with the Palestinians. The shift marks a significant break with U.S. policy and may yet affect ordinary Palestinians and the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to engage in peace talks with Israel. […]
Stocked on the shelves of souvenir shops throughout Poland are wooden or plastic figurines of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Some, evoking the long lost shtetl, exude a certain nostalgic charm. Still others, portraying stereotypical Jews clasping a coin in one hand and clutching a bag of coins in another hand, pander to deeply-entrenched notions of money-grubbing Polish […]
Toronto Island Park is so near, yet so far from the hustle and bustle of Canada’s largest city. An archipelago of small, partially wooded islands connected by footbridges, the park is a few kilometres from the downtown core and one of the finest recreational areas in Ontario. Once you’re in the thick of it, […]
Thirty one years ago, on a bright sunny afternoon in Tel Aviv during the first week of December and only days before the first Palestinian uprising broke out, I found myself in the presence of one of Israel’s most iconoclastic and idealistic figures, Uri Avnery. Avnery, who died on August 20 at the age of […]
One of the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust was finally brought to justice on August 21 when Jakiw Palij, a former guard at the Trawniki labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, was deported to Germany from his home in New York City. It was a unique event in post-Holocaust annals because Palij, 95, was the […]
Jon Chu’s romantic comedy/satire, Crazy Rich Asians, opens up new cultural horizons for moviegoers. It’s the first mainstream Hollywood film since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago to feature an all-Asian cast, and that’s definitely something of a breakthrough. White British actors appear in the first scene, a set piece in racism and revenge, but […]
Iraq has only now begun to recover from one of the most unstable periods in its turbulent modern history. From almost the moment the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, a nation-wide insurrection, spearheaded by Islamists and nationalists, broke out. American forces eventually crushed the rebellion, which consumed countless lives. With the withdrawal of U.S. […]