Persecuted Jews have found a safe haven in the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, Turkey, for centuries now. This is easily overlooked, or even forgotten, as political tensions continue to flare between Turkey and Israel. Victoria Barrett’s documentary, Desperate Hours, makes this point crystal clear. Although it was made more than a decade ago, […]
Ayman, Odeh, the leader of the newly-formed Arab List, seems confident his political bloc will fare reasonably well in Israel’s March 17 general election. “By forming a single list, we hope to win more seats and weigh in more heavily on decisions taken in this country, ” he said shortly after four Israeli Arab political parties […]
Addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on March 3, an appearance arranged without the prior knowledge of the Obama administration, Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted the emerging nuclear agreement between the major powers and Iran. Calling it a “very bad deal” that would pave the way for an Iranian nuclear arsenal, he urged […]
About a month after the Arab Spring rebellions washed up on the shores of Tunisia and Egypt, Syria’s cocky president, Bashar al-Assad, bragged that a popular uprising would never break out in Syria, a police state where dissent is strictly forbidden. Four years on, Assad’s arrogant boast rings hollow. What began in March 2011 as […]
Damian Szifron’s Spanish-language film from Argentina, Wild Tales, is dark and uproarious. An Academy Awards finalist for best foreign movie, it’s composed of six stand-alone vignettes turning on the dark side of human nature. The unifying theme is vengeance, but sub-themes revolve around rage, greed, despair, corruption, passion and infidelity. Quite a combustible mix. Scheduled […]
France’s encounter with multiculturalism has not been a roaring success of late, judging by the Charlie Hebdo incident, the radicalization of some French Muslim youth and the spate of antisemitism that has prompted thousands of Jews to emigrate. It’s evident that the forces of xenophobia and racism are corroding French society, and that the spirit of […]
You don’t have to be Irish to like Irish films, so enjoy the forthcoming Irish Film Festival, which runs from Friday, March 6 to Sunday, March 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Bell Lightbox. The festival gets under way with the Toronto premiere of Standby, directed by the brothers Rob and Ronan Burke. A romantic […]
Iran’s film industry is subjected to censorship and hobbled by a poor global distribution system, but it has chalked up stellar achievements nonetheless. It has produced internationally-recognized directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf and films like A Separation (the first Iranian movie to win the best foreign language film award at the Academy Awards) and […]
On Aug. 25, 1938, Der Angriff — a Nazi newspaper published in Berlin under the auspices of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels — described Henry Morgenthau Jr., the U.S. secretary of the treasury, as “the real chief of a wide Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy” against Germany. The antipathy was mutual. Morgenthau, the sole Jew in President Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet, hated […]
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has unveiled a new counter-terrorism strategy that other Western countries should emulate. It seems like an effective method of curtailing the spread of radical Islam. Under his proposals, announced on February 23, a senior government official will oversee counter-terrorism measures and be placed in charge of efforts to achieve better […]