The Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia was virtually decimated during the Holocaust, with 85 percent of its members having perished during the German occupation. Nitza Gonen’s documentary, The Forgotten Ones, now available on the Izzy streaming platform, is billed as the first film to document this tragedy. The narrator, identified only as Stella, was a […]
Better late than never. This aphorism applies to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. As he now admits, just a few days after two Muslim terrorists killed 15 people at a Chanukah celebration at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach, his government could have been far more proactive in ensuring the safety of Australia’s Jewish community. “It is […]
President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza Strip peace plan, approved by the United Nations Security Council on November 17, has not advanced beyond its first and least difficult phase. Its second and most problematic phase will not be addressed until 2026. The plan is grounded in a ceasefire that ended the two-year Israel-Hamas war, which caused […]
An unusual chapter in Russian history unfolded between 1827 and 1856, when Jewish boys and men were kidnapped and forcibly brought to camps, known as cantons, to be trained as soldiers in the Tzarist army. Often snatched when they were as young as six years old, they were sent to vocational schools, after which they […]
The Festival of Lights was tragically and momentarily dimmed in Sydney, Australia, on December 14 when two gunmen opened fire on a Chanukah festival on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in the bloodiest antisemitic incident in Australian history. One of the victims, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was a Chabad emissary who organized this festive event. Arsen […]
Years ago, I visited Marrakesh, a city in Morocco on the edge of the great Sahara Desert. I found it picturesque and exotic, a pleasant tourist destination of narrow cobblestone streets, gated residential homes, sandstone fortresses, and a central square brimming with snake charmers, hawkers and hustlers. While passing through its old quarter of crumbling […]
A year ago, on December 8, President Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime in Syria fell like a house of cards and was immediately replaced by an Islamist government led by Ahmed al-Shara, a former jihadist affiliated with Al Qaeda. It was a defining moment in Syria, an Arab state misruled by the Assad family for more […]
At its general assembly meeting in Geneva last week, the European Broadcasting Union judiciously came down on the side of fairness and justice. It allowed Israel to continue participating in the Eurovision Song Contest, the next one of which takes place in Vienna in May. Some members, having denounced Israel’s conduct of the war in […]
The Ku Klux Klan, the most powerful far-right American movement during the 1920s, was far more potent than its white supremacist forebearer, which emerged following the U.S. civil war. With a membership of over one million within a few years of its founding, it amassed more political power than any Klan before or since. Its […]
Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays seethes with potentially explosive family secrets. Unfolding in Arabic and Hebrew, and set in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, this subtle feature film explores unsettling corners of relationships and the manner in which Israeli Jews and Arab Israelis try to manage them. It opens in theaters in the United States […]