Ever since the United States’ precipitous withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has flagrantly violated its terms and forged significant progress in assembling a nuclear arsenal. When Donald Trump, the then U.S. president, announced in 2018 that he was unilaterally pulling out of the JCPOA, which had […]
On a surprise visit to Ukraine a few days ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was greeted at a train station in Kyiv by the deputy foreign minister, Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s former ambassador to Germany. Accompanied by Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian Canadian and Canada’s deputy prime minister, Trudeau arrived in the Ukrainian capital bearing $500 […]
The landmark Iran nuclear agreement signed and sealed in 2015 during Barack Obama’s presidency appears dead and buried and resistant to resuscitation. This assumption, however, is called into question by periodic reports that the United States is trying to revive it, much to Israel’s chagrin. Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, unilaterally withdrew from the […]
Desperate times call for desperate tactics. Vadim Perelman’s skillfully-crafted feature film, Persian Lessons, which opens in Canadian theaters on June 16, explores this theme from a unique perspective. Supposedly inspired by true events, and based on a short story by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, it unfolds in Nazi-occupied Europe and turns on an extremely unusual relationship between […]
Prora, a Nazi resort in northeastern Germany, was intended to be the world’s largest vacation playground. Consisting of eight functional buildings stretching 4.5 kilometers along the sandy shore of the Baltic Sea, it was designed to accommodate 20,000 vacationers. Construction was halted when World War II broke out in September 1939, dooming Prora to oblivion […]
Musical drama Less Than Kosher skillfully charts a young Jewish woman’s awakening to her cultural, artistic and religious roots. Divided into seven short segments, this zesty and exuberant Canadian production is currently available on Highball TV, and can be viewed on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform from June 12 onward. Created by Shaina Silver-Baird and Michael […]
To no one’s surprise, Israel has stepped up its efforts to consolidate its occupation of the West Bank, thereby undercutting the already slim prospect of a two-state solution and thumbing its nose at its chief ally, the United States. Israel has been building settlements and roads in the West Bank, populated in the main by […]
Despite an upsurge of anti-Christian incidents in Israel of late, Israel’s Foreign Ministry reportedly intends to boycott an academic conference on that topic scheduled to take place in Jerusalem on June 16. The conference, to which clerics, foreign diplomats and scholars have been invited, is the brainchild of Yisca Harani, an expert on Christianity who […]
Leon Prudovsky’s My Neighbor Adolf, which was screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, is a dark, corrosive comedy on the lingering effects of Nazism and the Holocaust. It is set mainly in rural Colombia in 1960, the year Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by the Mossad in Buenos Aires and secretly […]
It is a rite of passage for some senior Israeli high school students. In brief trips to Poland designed to heighten their awareness of the Holocaust, they visit museums, open and closed synagogues, and former Nazi concentration camps. Asaf Saban’s The Delegation focuses on a group of Israeli teenagers who participate on such a trip. […]