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Middle East

Jimmy Carter And Israel

According to news reports from Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have both turned down invitations to meet Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, due to their perception that he’s adopted “anti-Israel positions.” Carter is supposed to arrive in the region within the next 10 days, but it looks […]

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Arts

Censored Voices

The Six Day War produced waves of euphoria in Israel. Within an unbelievable week in June 1967, the Israeli armed forces had crushed several Arab armies, enabling Israel to expand its territory substantially. It was a historical watershed in the history of the Jewish people. Shortly after the last gun fell silent, a group of […]

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Arts

Best Of Enemies

It was 1968 and another U.S. presidential election season was in the offing. With the Republican and Democratic Party conventions coming up, the ABC television network, trailing behind the CBS and NBC networks, needed a compelling media event to increase its audience share. ABC settled on a debate that would pit William F. Buckley, a […]

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Arts

Beyond The Fear

Larisa Trembovler’s name doesn’t exactly ring a bell, not even in Israel. In case you’ve forgotten, she’s the wife of  Yigal Amir, who may be one of the most hated men in Israel. Why on earth would she want to marry a wretched assassin and villain like Amir? If you’re interested in the answer, you should watch […]

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Arts

Drone

The drone, the unmanned airplane with astonishingly precise, deadly capabilities, has taken robotic warfare to new heights, having become the weapon of choice in the United States’ war against terrorism. This has been the case since Sept. 11, 2001, the day Arab terrorists crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City […]

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Arts

Welcome To Leith

When a stranger turns up in Leith, a one-horse town in North Dakota, heads turn and anger flares. Leith’s 24 residents take an intense dislike to newcomer Craig Cobb, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi who hopes to turn Leith into a “white nationalist community.” The showdown between the good people of Leith — which has […]

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Arts

Ex Machina

Alex Garland’s sleek science fiction thriller, Ex Machina, delves into the futuristic world of super-advanced artificial intelligence. Scheduled to open in Canada on April 24, it’s an eerie, compelling film replete with state-of-the-art technology and rife with plot twists. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a hot shot 26-year-old coder employed by an internet search engine company, wins a […]

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Arts

Toronto Jewish Film Festival (6)

The 10-day Toronto Jewish Film Festival, one of the largest of its kind in the world, gets under way on April 30 with a huge selection of movies from all corners of the globe. A preview: Zionism and Israel loom large at the forthcoming festival, judging by three films: The Zionist Idea, An Untold Diplomatic […]

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Arts

Toronto Jewish Film Festival (5)

This year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from April 30 to May 10, offers a terrific selection of films. A preview: Isaac Bashevis Singer, the great Yiddish novelist and short story writer, was an up-and-coming literary figure in Poland before he left the country for good in 1935. He established a […]

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Jewish Affairs

Gunter Grass Should Be Judged Fairly

When the death of Gunter Grass — Germany’s most illustrious postwar novelist — was announced on April 13, some critics were only too eager to seize upon two glaring missteps which dimmed his otherwise stellar reputation. Describing him as a hypocrite and a fraud, they castigated Grass for having concealed his membership in the Waffen-SS […]