A three-part series on some of the issues of the day in Israel, titled Into the Land and presented by the Times of Israel website, is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. These concise and probing documentaries deal with the lamentable state of the Dead Sea, the market in ancient archeological artifacts, and the […]
Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government is unequivocally committed to expanding Israel’s web of settlements in the West Bank as much as it is bent on thwarting Palestinian statehood there. This much is evidently clear in the wake of two events in the past few days. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a champion of Israeli settlers in the […]
At a press conference in Kyiv on February 24, the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, took a question from an Israeli reporter about Israel’s cautious position on the war. Israel has adopted a nuanced stance toward the conflict in Ukraine, with many observers having described it as a […]
One year on, the revanchist war that Russian President Vladimir Putin began in Ukraine last February 24 has degenerated into a protracted struggle of epic proportions with no end in sight. Universally regarded as the deadliest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, it has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Russian and […]
Trust is the fuel we run on and the air we breathe, Barry Avrich muses at the start of his fascinating documentary, The Talented Mr. Rosenberg. Yet, as he quickly adds, trust can be misused as a weapon by the unscrupulous. Avrich, a prolific Canadian filmmaker, was thinking of Albert Allan Rosenberg, a notorious resident […]
I first saw Chariots of Fire, the award-winning British movie, at the 1981 Toronto International Film Festival. Having been moved by it, I jumped at the chance of watching it again, this time on the Turner Classic Movies channel. As I tuned in, I wondered whether it would have the same mesmerizing effect on me. […]
Canadian human rights champion Irwin Cotler believes that one man can make a difference. As an example, he cites Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat/humanitarian who saved the lives of approximately 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Cotler — a former McGill University law professor, a onetime federal justice minister, and the Canadian […]
Keren Yedaya’s movie, Jaffa, is stunningly impactful and remarkably realistic. Now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform, this raw, gritty and tragic Israeli drama takes place in Jaffa, a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in greater Tel Aviv. Given its locale, the main characters are Jews and Arabs. Reuven (Moni Moshonov), a middle-aged Jew, employs his two […]
A meandering but satisfying melange of drama, romance, sex, politics, intrigue and violence, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is set in Turkish and British Mandate Palestine from 1917 to 1942. Now available on the Netflix streaming platform, this 20-part Israeli series is based on a novel by Sarit Yishai Levi. It gets off to a slow […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ill-conceived and potentially disastrous scheme to weaken the Supreme Court by means of radical judicial legislation has dominated the news cycle in Israel of late. It has also drowned out his provocative and dangerous plan to tighten Israel’s control of the West Bank at the expense of the Palestinians. In recent […]