Spain was supposedly a neutral power during World War II, yet the Spanish government was resolutely in Germany’s camp. In the summer of 1941, Spain dispatched a largely voluntary expeditionary force, known as the Blue Division, to fight alongside Germany in the Soviet Union. Recruited by the Spanish army and the Fascist Party, or the […]
Janina Quint’s informative documentary, Germans & Jews, illustrates the degree to which their relations have radically improved since the Nazi era, yet remain troubled. Seven decades after the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s racist regime, Jews in the Diaspora continue to be suspicious of Germans and often recoil when they hear German, while Germans tend to feel […]
Their stiff body language was unmistakably indicative of their sharp policy differences over the combustible, still unresolved Palestinian issue. As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken extolled the virtues of a two-state solution during his first trip to Israel following the formation last month of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far right-wing government, the Israeli prime minister archly […]
At a fraught moment when racial tensions in the United States are flaring yet again, Netflix is currently offering viewers You People, a romantic comedy set in Los Angeles that addresses this endemic issue. The central characters are not only white and black, but Jewish and Muslim. Quite a combustible combination, one would think. Ezra […]
The fourth season of Fauda is back on Netflix, and that’s good news. Until now, this scintillating Middle Eastern thriller pitted an Israeli special forces team against Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which reject Israel’s existence. The latest installment, which is partially set in […]
The release of Kjell Grede’s feature film, Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg, was unfortunately timed, having come out in the same year as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Which meant, in hindsight, that it was drowned out by the sheer power and popularity of Spielberg’s epic movie, the recipient of seven Academy Awards, including best picture. Both films […]
Sunday, July 23, 1944 was the blackest of days for the Jews of Rhodes, a mountainous island in the Aegean Sea eighteen kilometres off the coast of Turkey. On that catastrophic day, during the final ten months of World War II, the German occupiers set off air raid sirens to keep its residents indoors so […]
From the moment German troops violated Austria’s territorial integrity on March 12, 1938, the prelude to Germany’s annexation of Austria, Austrian Jews were doomed. Three days later, as German Chancellor Adolf Hitler addressed 250,00o delirious Austrians from the balcony of the Hofburg palace in Vienna, a wave of antisemitic violence washed over the city and […]
Reluctantly complying with a Supreme Court ruling last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no alternative but to bite the bullet on January 22 and dismiss Aryeh Deri as a minister in his cabinet. His dismissal took effect on January 24. If he had not fired Deri, who was recently convicted of tax fraud and […]
Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, spent several days in Israel late last week sizing up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, which, after less than a month in office, has already managed to alienate legions of Israelis and Diaspora Jews. Sullivan was the first Biden administration senior official to confer with […]