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Yom Kippur War Memories

Time flies. Incredibly enough, 50 years have elapsed since the eruption of the Yom Kippur War. It broke out on October 6, 1973 and ended 18 days later when Israel, Egypt and Syria agreed to honor a ceasefire. I remember this war vividly, having lived in Israel during this tense and uncertain period, when I […]

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Canada Should Declassify The Entire Deschenes Report

If Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks he can move on seamlessly now that House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota has been replaced, he is egregiously mistaken. On October 3, a Liberal Party member of Parliament who represents the Quebec riding of Hull, Greg Fergus, was chosen as Rota’s replacement. He is the first African […]

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Trudeau’s Belated Apology Does Not Go Far Enough

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waited nearly a week before releasing a belated apology for the horrendous and avoidable mixup that brought shame to Canada, resulted in the resignation of the Speaker of Parliament, and presumably embarrassed Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s first Jewish head of state and a Jew whose relatives were murdered during […]

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A Shameful Incident In Canada’s Parliament

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent visit to Canada was terribly marred by a shameful and embarrassing incident that was clearly avoidable and that should never have taken place. During Zelensky’s appearance in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, introduced a special guest. He was Yaroslav Hunka, a […]

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A Turning Point In The Hunt For Nazi-Looted Art

Nearly 25 years have elapsed since a seminal conference in Washington dealt with the greatest cultural robbery of the 20th century. Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany went on a systematic rampage, looting paintings, drawings, sculptures, books and religious items from their rightful Jewish owners. The Nazis forced them to sell these […]

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Trump’s Dangerous Happy New Year Greeting Card

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States and the current frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, is peddling incendiary and dangerous rhetoric about American Jewish voters. On his Truth Social website on September 17, he posted a Rosh Hashanah greeting that was both self-congratulatory and unsettling. Under his portrait and against the […]

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Germany’s Extreme Right-Wing Party Is Gaining Ground

Ten years after its formation, the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) is a force to be reckoned with in the country that produced Nazism, gave rise to Adolf Hitler, and conceived and implemented the Holocaust. Increasingly popular in eastern Germany — where a Soviet-sponsored Marxist state existed for 40 years until 1989 — […]

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Social Media Platforms Host And Promote Antisemitism

Meta, the U.S. company that owns the social media sites Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), claims it has taken “significant action” to remove “harmful stereotypes about Jewish people” and to eliminate content that distorts or denies the Holocaust. “We’ve made progress in fighting antisemitism on our platforms,” Meta claimed recently while acknowledging that “our […]

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A Historic Turning Point

By any standard, this was not just another humdrum arms deal. It was, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu correctly noted a few days ago, “a historic turning point” in Israel’s bilateral relations with Germany. He was referring to an announcement by Israel’s Ministry of Defence on August 17 disclosing that the United States had approved […]

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Russia’s Assault On The Global Food System

With its unilateral withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative last month, Russia has launched what U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has correctly described as an “assault on the global food system.” The Russian government pulled out of the agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last summer, after Ukraine damaged a vital […]