Syria’s current offensive to recapture Daraa province from anti-regime rebels is giving Israel cause for concern. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began sending reinforcements to southwestern Syria in mid-May in a bid to stamp out the last embers of the rebellion there. On June 19, the Syrian army, assisted by Russian airpower, Iranian advisers, Hezbollah ground troops […]
When Bobby Shafran began his first semester at an upstate New York community college nearly 40 years ago, he was greeted effusively by some students. The warm reception puzzled him, since he had never set foot on the campus. He soon learned he had been mistaken for another student, Edward (Eddy) Galland, who looked almost […]
As the acclaimed author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the first science fiction novelist. Her transition from cloistered young woman to acclaimed writer is the subject of Haifaa Al Mansour’s appealing feature film, Mary Shelley, which opens in Canada on July 13. A period piece in terms of atmosphere and language, this evocative movie […]
In one of the most iconic photographs of World War I, printed by the mass-circulation Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung in August 1914, a young German soldier mounted on a horse reaches down to two civilians to bid farewell as his cavalry battalion makes its way to the front from Berlin’s elegant Unter den Linden thoroughfare. Unbeknownst to readers […]
Shana Feste’s Boundaries, which opens in Canada on July 6, falls back on an old Hollywood cliche to fairly good effect. She places three people in a car and sends them off on a road trip from Seattle to Los Angeles. The travellers are Laura (Vera Farmiga), a single mother struggling with financial problems; Henry […]
Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country whose very existence is challenged. Given its array of enemies, ranging from Iran and Hezbollah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israel has devised a policy of assassinating its foes. Since its founding 70 years ago, Israel has assassinated more people than any other Western nation. […]
El Al, the Israeli flagship carrier, struck a blow for gender equality a few days ago when it announced it will no longer accommodate unjust and unreasonable demands by ultra-Orthodox Jews not to be seated next to women on flights. “Any discrimination by passengers is absolutely forbidden,” El Al chief executive officer Gonen Usishkin said […]
The Alberto Nisman case in Argentina remains shrouded in mystery. Three and a half years after Nisman’s untimely death, the Argentine government is still grappling with its fallout, with no end in sight. Nisman, a 51-year-old special prosecutor appointed in 2004 to investigate the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, […]
Conspiracy theories in the Muslim world are as common and as popular as vanilla ice cream and apple pie in the United States. Arabs and Turks, in particular, have an insatiable appetite for this variant of fake news. As Abd al-Hamid al-Majjali wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour last year, “The Arabs seem to believe […]
Whether Islamic State was merely a flash in the pan or an organization still capable of regenerating itself after devastating battlefield defeats, it has already cast a dark shadow. Spreading fear and terrorism throughout the Middle East and Europe following its extensive territorial conquests in Iraq and Syria, IS established a caliphate in 2014, the […]