Shimon Peres, a member of Israel’s founding generation, was one of its most distinguished sons. A wunderkind who was deputy director of the ministry of defence at the age of only 29, he held a succession of ministerial posts from the 1950s onward, the most important of which were the defence, foreign affairs and finance […]
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres performed a valuable public service recently when he urged Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and political party, to cease military activities and disarm. As well, he called upon Lebanon and the Lebanese armed forces to prohibit Hezbollah from acquiring weapons and building a military capacity outside the framework of the […]
It appears that Israel’s concerns about an Iranian military presence in Syria are being seriously addressed by Russia, Syria’s longtime ally. The issue, considered of the utmost importance by Israel, has topped Israel’s agenda for months now. In February, in an unprecedented incident that sent shock waves through the Middle East, Israel shot down an […]
The Israeli thriller Fauda, which started on Netflix in 2015, is back again for a second season, and it’s every bit as good as the first one. Unfolding in Hebrew and Arabic, it focuses on an Israeli army undercover unit charged with flushing out terrorists in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since […]
One of the most enduring antisemitic stereotypes prevalent in the United States was badly dented after it entered World War II. This anti-Jewish calumny claimed that Jews shirked military duty and that Jewish soldiers sought cushy jobs far from the front lines. It was all a lie, of course. More than half a million Jewish men […]
Sixty one years after his untimely death, there is still no consensus among historians and Holocaust survivors whether Rezso Kasztner was a savior or a collaborator. Kasztner, the acting head of a small Jewish rescue committee in German-occupied Hungary, certainly tried to save Hungarian Jews from the jaws of death, his admirers claim. But to […]
On May 28, Syria assumed the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament, a non-governmental organization which, among other achievements, was instrumental in the promulgation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms-control treaty that prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons. The presidency is rotated among its 65 members, and now it is Syria’s turn […]
French actress Juliette Binoche plays a lovelorn divorcee in Claire Denis’ middling film, Let the Sunshine In, which opens in Canada on June 1. Isabelle, Binoche’s character, is a Parisian painter in her late 40s who’s unlucky in love. Her lovers are either married or temperamentally unsuitable. The first two scenes are indicative of her predicament. […]
A few days ago, Reiko Fuentes, the principal of Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, a Toronto high school with a considerable number of Jewish students, took it upon herself to remove a Jewish Heritage Month banner from the main foyer of the mid-town school. She did this without bothering to consult the students who had been […]
The United States has always taken pride in being a democratic haven for the oppressed, a place where persecuted minorities like Jews could begin life anew. But for centuries, American society was racist to the core. A case in point is The Chinese Exclusion Act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. […]