Picture this. The conservative prime minister of a major country in Europe calls a general election, confident he will win another term. Much to his chagrin, pollsters inform him he’s fallen behind his main competitor and may yet lose. In desperation, he issues an appeal to his core constituents. He says, “Right-wing rule is in […]
He’s clawed his way back to power, and that’s bad news for Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, having scored a decisive come-from-behind victory over Isaac Herzog in the March 17 general election, is poised to surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-reigning prime minister. Netanyahu is no doubt chortling, having upended pundits’ predictions that he would go down […]
Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders — which opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on March 27 — is as naturalistic as the sweet, liquidity product its main characters harvest daily. This film, set in rural Italy, is broadly about an eccentric Italian-German family of beekeepers. Beyond this, it’s a coming-of-age movie about a young woman from […]
When International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked around the world on January 27, Turkey responded by sending high-ranking government officials to a ceremony in Istanbul and its foreign minister to a commemorative event in the former Auschwitz extermination camp. Turkey’s formal interest in the Holocaust may have come as a surprise to some, but Turkey has […]
The Toronto International Film Festival, in conjunction with Human Rights Watch, is presenting the Human Rights Watch Film Festival from March 24 to April 2 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. There are eight films on the program, three of which I preview here. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is broadly the theme of The Wanted […]
Lacey Schwartz comes from a long line of New York Jews whose ancestors immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Raised in a white milieu, she had no reason to think she was anything but a caucasian. But with the disclosure that her biological father was an African American, she was thrown into an […]
Say hello to Seymour Bernstein, a man of many parts. A former concert pianist whose recitals garnered rave reviews in The New York Times, he gave up celebrity at the age of 50 to dedicate himself exclusively to teaching. Now, at 87, he continues to give private and master classes. Yet Bernstein is more than […]
Like many East European immigrants of his generation, Ivan Yuriiv arrived in Canada after World War II and made a life for himself and his family in Toronto. He died in obscurity in 1970. If he had he lived longer, Yuriiv might not have enjoyed such a quiet and uneventful life as a new Canadian. […]
The six major powers are working day and night to draft the outline of an acceptable nuclear agreement with Iran before the March 24 deadline. In President Barack Obama’s estimation, the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany have offered Iran an “extraordinarily reasonable deal,” contrary to claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
Islamic State, the jihadist organization bent on conquering Iraq and Syria and establishing a caliphate in the Middle East, has sunk to a new despicable low following disclosures that its fighters vandalized priceless archeological treasures in the Iraqi city of Mosul and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian cities of Nimrud and Hatra. These barbarian desecrations, which […]