Amazon, America’s biggest retail book seller, is grappling with a conundrum it seems incapable of resolving once and for all, leaving it open to justifiable criticism. The multi-billion dollar company has complied with requests to remove Nazi, neo-Nazi and antisemitic books from its bookstore, only to reinstate some of them shortly afterward. Amazon’s contradictory policy […]
Two natural disasters of unimaginable proportions, the 1918 influenza pandemic and the 14th century Black Death plague, come to mind as I try to come to grips with the enormity of the coronavirus, which has upended all our lives. The current outbreak, having started in China this past December, has mutated and crossed international borders […]
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence agency whose mandate is to safeguard German democracy, recently classified a faction of the right-wing Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) as extremist and placed it under official surveillance. In explaining the rationale for taking this drastic but necessary step, Thomas Haldenwang, the president of that […]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a bad habit of mouthing off at his adversaries. Lacking even a modicum of self-restraint or tact, much less diplomacy, he tends to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse at his opponents that bears little or no resemblance to the truth. Erdogan’s angry outbursts invariably mangle the historical record […]
With the coronavirus remorselessly exacting an increasingly terrible toll around the world, Israel has shot to the top of the list of countries dealing with this unprecedented emergency pragmatically and sensibly. The Israeli government was one of the first to call this insidious respiratory illness by its proper name — a “global pandemic.” Since then, […]
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney who pressed charges of sexual misconduct against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, got it exactly right when he described him as “a vicious serial sexual predator who used his power to threaten, rape, assault, trick, humiliate and silence his victims.” Vance was equally correct when he said […]
Neo- Nazism terrorism in Germany, the breeding ground of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal fascist movement, has evolved into a gravely serious problem in the past few years, but at least the German political class has forthrightly acknowledged this clear and present danger and is actively trying to combat it. Just hours after Tobias Rathjen’s targeted killing […]
Two separate stories in the February 11 edition of the Times of Israel speak volumes about the diversity of opinion in Iran regarding its arch enemy, Israel. The headline of the first story was blood-curdling: “Top Iranian official: We’re looking for a pretext to raze Tel Aviv to the ground.” The headline over the second story was […]
Why is Donald Trump’s White House providing press credentials to a website that disseminates blatantly antisemitic tropes? It’s a question that should be answered now. It can’t be dismissed or ignored. TruNews, a staunchly conservative website based in Florida that circulates outlandish conspiracy theories, was granted press passes for five of its employees to cover […]
My daughter’s dearly beloved dog, Rainbow, a Flat-Coated Retriever, died on January 24. She was two months shy of 13. Her death saddened our family immensely. I looked out my bedroom window a day after Rainbow’s passing and saw her paw prints in the snow in the garden, a place she loved. They will melt […]