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Commentary

Canadian Muslims And Bill 62

Muslims are the fastest growing religious minority in Canada. The arrival of 40,000 Syrian refugees in the past year certainly accentuated this trend. From 600 Muslims in Canada in 1931 to 579,000 in 2001 and to more than one million in 2011, the size of the Muslim community has grown exponentially. Statistics Canada expects the Muslim […]

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A Mixed Message From Poland

Last week, in Warsaw, 60,000 Poles and foreigners participated in an Independence Day march to mark 99 years of Polish nationhood. It should have been an auspicious occasion. Poland, partitioned by Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 18th century, regained its sovereignty in 1918 and has been independent ever since. Unfortunately, some […]

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Prince Charles Should Clarify His Comments

Prince Charles, the heir to the British royal throne, has expressed an opinion about an important facet of the Arab-Israeli conflict that could have been taken straight from the mouth of a pro-Arab British official during the Mandate period in Palestine. In a letter to his friend Laurens van Der Post, he dashed off a […]

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Historical Amnesia In Germany

Deutsche Bahn, the operator of Germany’s state railway, recently announced its intention to name a new high-speed train after Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish diarist who perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the final days of the Holocaust. The news has caused an outcry because Anne Frank and her older sister, Margot, were deported […]

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A Climate of Intolerance At McGill University

To paraphrase William Shakespeare, something is rotten at McGill University in Montreal. McGill, one of the world’s finest institutions of higher learning, is being dragged through the mud by a cabal of toxic students who can’t tolerate free speech and diversity of opinion, the very qualities a university should uphold and encourage. Last week, three students […]

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Weinstein: The Rot That Pervades Hollywood

Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul, has taken an indefinite leave of absence from his film company following a front-page expose in The New York Times claiming he had conducted himself horrendously in encounters with actresses and employees over several decades. Weinstein, one of the most powerful figures in the industry, repeatedly invited women to his hotel room for […]

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Canada Fixing An Egregious Mistake

Astonishingly enough, a plaque affixed to Canada’s newly-inaugurated National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa omitted an extremely important and crucial piece of information — namely that the victims of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe were Jews. If your head is spinning in utter disbelief, so is mine. Tens of millions of non-Jewish civilians were killed during […]

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Valerie Really Messed Up

Yes, Valerie, you really screwed up. Big time. Your profuse apologies, masking stupidity, have been duly noted. What impelled you, a self-styled progressive and supporter of the Democratic Party, to retweet a despicable link that veered into the swamp of antisemitism? The writer whose link you foolishly retweeted accused American Jews of being a driving […]

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The Fate of Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swede who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was officially declared dead by Sweden in 2016. But 72 years after he vanished into thin air, the circumstances of his disappearance and the precise date of his death are still a mystery, much to his family’s anguish and frustration. Wallenberg […]

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The New Right In Germany

The Alternative for Germany, a marginal far right-wing political party founded four years ago, is on the cusp of a historic breakthrough. The AFD, which currently holds 13 seats in German state assemblies and in the European Parliament, is widely expected to win eight to 11 percent of the votes in the September 24 general […]