Hollywood’s relationship with Israel is deep and wide-ranging and reaches back to the days when Zionists sought to establish a sovereign state in Palestine. Historians Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman examine this topic in Hollywood and Israel: A History, published by Columbia University Press. Their comprehensive and readable volume touches every conceivable angle. “It is […]
Olive trees, a major component of the Palestinian agrarian economy in the West Bank, have figured prominently in Israel’s perennial conflict with the Palestinians. Since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day War, some 800,000 olive trees have been destroyed and damaged by the Israeli armed forces and Jewish settlers, affecting […]
As eye-catching symbols go, the swastika has been extremely problematic and highly offensive to many people for about a century. An ancient religious and cultural sign of good fortune and prosperity among Hindus, Jains and Zoroastrians, it was brazenly appropriated by the Nazi Party in Germany and willfully converted into a striking symbol of race […]
Years ago, the United Jewish Appeal attempted to popularize the catchy slogan, “We Are One,” by promoting the facile notion that Jews in the United States and Israel share common values and interests and are separated only by physical distance and nothing else. This slogan was superficial and misleading because it ignored the very real […]
China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, believes that the balance of power is changing in its geopolitical favor. Convinced that “time and momentum” are on China’s side and that its rival, the United States, is losing stature and influence, Xi is expanding its footprint in the Middle East, a region still largely under the sway of […]
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 […]