Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations have been trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but without success so far. In line with its efforts to pacify the usually tense Gaza Strip border region, Egypt has also been striving to persuade the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to reconcile after years of mutual acrimony. […]
A vast and incredibly beautiful preserve of mountains, forests, meadows, lakes and rivers northwest of New York City, the Catskills were the first great vacationland in the United States. Discovered in its pristine form by the British explorer Henry Hudson in 1609 and by tourists in its holiday mode about two centuries later, it was a […]
Canadian scholar Anna Shternshis focuses on the lives of Jews in the Soviet Union before, during and after World War II in her thoroughly-researched and wide-ranging book, When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life Under Stalin (Oxford University Press). A Soviet immigrant herself and the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Center for […]
An American university professor who declined to write a letter of recommendation for a Jewish student intending to study in Israel for a semester acted in a discriminatory manner at odds with the hallowed principles of academic freedom. John Cheney-Lippold, who teaches American culture and digital studies at the University of Michigan, told Abigail Ingber that […]
It’s safe to say that Israel intends to vigorously enforce its “red lines” in Syria, despite a recent upsurge of tension with Russia, Syria’s chief ally and protector. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it crystal clear that Israel will use force if necessary to achieve four overlapping strategic goals in Syria. […]
Long before he was elected president of the United States, Donald Trump said he hoped that Michael Moore, the iconoclastic documentarian, would never make a movie about him. Famous last words. Presumably, Trump understood that Moore would not exactly treat him with kid gloves. He was absolutely right. In his latest documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, which […]
Ashraf Marwan was an enigmatic figure. He was the son-in-law of an Egyptian president, yet he appeared to betray his country by spying for Israel, Egypt’s arch enemy. Nonetheless, the Egyptian government hailed him as a hero after his death. So was Marwan really a double agent? Ariel Vromen, the director of The Angel, a Netflix […]
The American comedian Gilda Radner died prematurely in 1989 at 42 when she succumbed to cancer. What a loss it was to the entertainment industry. She had so much more to contribute. Lisa D’Apolito’s biopic, Gilda, which opens in Toronto on September 21 at the Hot Docs Bloor Cinema, brings her back for an fleeting […]
Twenty five years after it was signed in Washington, D.C. by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, the Oslo peace accord has crumbled and ground to a complete halt. Widely regarded as a diplomatic breakthrough signifying the beginning of the end of Israel’s protracted conflict with the Palestinians, it aroused great […]
Should a genocidal killer be held in esteem? Should a school be named after him? Should a plaque in his honor be permitted to remain in the library of a major educational institution? Of course not! And yet this is precisely what happened in Lithuania when Jonas Noreika — a Nazi collaborator and an arch […]