Sergei Loznitsa’s understated yet compelling movie, Babi Yar: Context, documents the monstrous German occupation of Ukraine, a province of the Soviet Union until its independence in 1991. To be screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation from November 10-13, it puts the Babi Yar massacre of 33,771 Ukrainian Jews in September 1941 into perspective. […]
Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of Israel’s far-right Religious Zionism Party, is an extremist by any reasonable yardstick, yet the incoming prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will likely appoint him to a senior position in his cabinet. Netanyahu, a secular nationalist, could not have reclaimed his old job without the 14 Knesset seats amassed by Smotrich and […]
Shortly after the billionaire rapper Kanye West was exposed as an ignorant, boorish and unrepentant antisemite, forcing the sportswear behemoth Adidas to cancel his lucrative contract, another African American celebrity crashed and burned. Late last month, a day after Brooklyn Nets’ basketball star Kyrie Irving tweeted a link to Ronald Dalton’s film, Hebrew to Negroes: […]
The Lancaster heavy bomber was probably the most feared British airplane during World War II. Swift and responsive, this iconic aircraft bombed military and civilian targets in Nazi Germany, helping the Allies turn the tide of the war and defeat Adolf Hitler’s despicable Nazi regime. Lancaster, a stirring documentary by David Fairhead and Anthony Palmer, […]
Shortly after Germany’s defeat in World War I, a Munich-based Jewish socialist/journalist named Kurt Eisner toppled the venerable Wittelsbach dynasty, formed the short-lived Free State of Bavaria, and became the first Jew ever to govern a German state. On February 21, 1919, three months after his accession to power, he was assassinated by an antisemitic […]
If Israel’s fifth election in a little more than three years was regarded by some Israelis as a kind of referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s fitness to govern the country, this burning question has now been answered definitively. Netanyahu, who is currently on trial on criminal charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, roared back […]
One of Hollywood’s first anti-Nazi feature films, The Mortal Storm was released in June 1940, nine months after the outbreak of World War II. A black-and-white Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production featuring an accomplished cast, it was directed by Frank Borzage and starred James Stewart as a German who opposes Adolf Hitler’s new Nazi regime. Hollywood moguls, many of […]
Michael Mayer, the director of Happy Times, an extremely dark Israeli comedy, hews to an incredibly pessimistic view of mankind. His quirky feature film, now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform, implicitly subscribes to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ grim maxim that human beings are “nasty, brutish and short.” Mayer zeroes in on Israeli expatriates who meet […]
Russia’s burgeoning alliance with Iran is an increasing source of concern to Israel, particularly after the appearance of Iranian kamikaze drones over Kyiv in support of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. The latest development confirms the supposition that Russia and Iran, both of which regard the United States as their foremost foe, have formed a […]
Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Israel recently blasted the second report issued by the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry, which was set up following last year’s cross-border war between Israel and Hamas. Presented to the UN General Assembly on October 27, the 28-page report, with which the Israeli government has refused to cooperate, charged that Israel’s […]