Americans For Peace Now, a dovish pro-Israel organization affiliated with the Peace Now movement in Israel, issued an unrealistic and naive statement on January 8 that unintentionally plays into the hands of Hamas. Calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in the Israel-Hamas war, it urged the Biden administration “to push” Israel to adopt and implement a […]
They are a minority-within-a-minority. Regardless of where they live, Hasidic Jews dwell on the periphery of societies, hewing to changeless values and norms and uncompromisingly refusing to blend into their surroundings. Hasidim are the subject of A Life Apart, an intriguing documentary by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. […]
Leopold Tyrmand (1920-1985), the scion of an assimilated Polish Jewish family, escaped into Germany, the lion’s den, as the Nazis carried out the mass murder of Jews in Poland during the Holocaust. After the war, he went back home and earned a living as a journalist. Stymied by the totalitarian nature of the postwar communist […]
To put it plainly, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is out of touch with reality. In recent days, he has called for the emigration of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents and the rebuilding of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew unilaterally in 2005. Smotrich’s foolhardy recommendations have been seconded by his sidekick, […]
From the moment that Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7, Hamas leaders and field commanders in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere were on notice that their days were numbered. The assassination of Hamas’ deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri, on January 2 lends credence to this assessment. Arouri, 57, and several of his […]
Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia, has been embroiled in a low-intensity war with Israel in support of Hamas since October 8, the day after some 3,000 Hamas terrorists broke through Israel’s fortified border fence and ransacked communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and kidnapping 240 civilians and soldiers. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, […]
With Mexico poised to elect its first Jewish president, Vincente Fox has shamelessly exploited his position as its former president to sow antisemitism. The target of his vile attacks, Claudia Sheinbaum, is the 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City — the first Jewish woman to hold this post. Sheinbaum, a member of the left-of-center National […]
The International Court of Justice in The Hague should categorically reject a baseless claim by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The South African government of President Cyril Ramaphosa submitted a case to the court on December 29, alleging that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is “genocidal in character” […]
Akira Kitade tells two interlocking stories in Emerging Heroes: World War II-Era Diplomats, Jewish Refugees, And Escape To Japan, published by Academic Studies Press. First, he introduces readers to Tatsuo Osaka, an official in the Japan Tourist Bureau — later known as the Japan National Tourist Organization — who helped Jewish refugees travel from the […]
You’ve probably never heard of Henry Mandel. Neither had I until I read Without Permission: Conversations, Letters, And Memoirs Of Henry Mandel, published by Cherry Orchard Books, distributed by Academic Studies Press, and edited by Mandel’s grandson, Samuel Flaks. A machinist who died in New York City in 2015, Mandel was an ardent American Zionist […]