Norman Bethune is Canada’s gift to China. A physician who devoted body and soul to the cause of Chinese independence, Bethune is probably the most famous Canadian ever to set foot in China. A veteran of World War I and the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered his services to China in 1938 as it struggled […]
Israel’s web of settlements in the West Bank, a barrier blocking a much-needed two-state solution, are causing problems for Israel yet again in the international community. Earlier this month, the United States — Israel’s chief ally and benefactor — and the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators condemned the Israeli settlement project. Israel has been […]
It’s a little-known fact. France, next to Israel, has the greatest number of Jews and Muslims living side by side in any country in the world. France is home to four to six million Muslims and 500,000 to 600,000 Jews. Since a significant proportion of its Muslim and Jewish citizens hail from the same countries […]
Arthur Topham, a notorious Canadian antisemite, is playing fast and loose with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s bill of rights. Topham, convicted last November of willfully promoting hatred against Jews through his vile website, RadicalPress.com, is using the Charter to challenge the constitutional legality of Canadian hate crime laws. What a cynical and […]
It’s quite clear that a military solution to the ferocious civil war in Syria — which has claimed the lives of some 400,000 combatants and civilians since 2011– is unattainable. The war has reached a bloody impasse. Nevertheless, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from Iraq […]
Tens of thousands of foreign jihadists have flocked to the Middle East to fight forIslamic State, which also known goes under the name of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. By all estimates, 60 to 150 of its recruits have been Canadian citizens, a somber fact that emerges in Mark Bourrie’s The Killing Game: Martyrdom, […]
I was surprised to read recently that China has cracked down on the minuscule Jewish community of Kaifeng. Historically, China has been a haven for Jews and one of the very few countries that has been free of antisemitism. As part of President Xi Jinping’s campaign against unapproved religious faiths and foreign influence, the Chinese […]
The late Assi Dayan was a chartered member of Israel’s secular cultural elite, but in David Volach’s meloncholic My Father My Lord, he plays David Eidelman, a deeply pious Israeli Orthodox rabbi who’s dealing with the emotional fallout of a personal tragedy. In the first scene of the film, scheduled to be presented by the Toronto […]
With a deafening blast from its foghorn, the R.M.S. Segwun, North America’s oldest operating steamship, set off from its base in Gravenhurst, Ontario, for a serene two-hour cruise of Muskoka Bay and the broader expanses of Lake Muskoka. My wife and I were aboard as it left Gravenhurst’s historic Wharf district on a pleasant sunny […]
Polls suggest that a considerable proportion of Israeli Jews regard Barack Obama as antagonistic to Israel. Last winter, a survey released by Panels Politics in Tel Aviv ranked him as the “worst” U.S. president in 30 years by 63 percent of Jewish Israelis. Do they live in a parallel universe? As the facts suggest, Obama […]