On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport after more than 14 years in exile. And the world changed forever. An Iranian monarchy that had seemed so secure had now crumbled into dust and the country’s ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, had already fled the country. A few months […]
Perhaps you’ve been to New York City many times and think you’ve “seen it all” — but you haven’t really, not if you’ve never been to The Cloisters. Officially known as The Met Cloisters, this wonderful museum is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. It is devoted to the art and architecture […]
When long-time friends begin to desert you, while your enemies grow stronger, you have little choice, especially if the fate of a country is in your hands, but to make new ones. Israel was once the darling of Europe’s liberal political regimes, but how long ago that now seems. It has been all but abandoned […]
The death of Stan Lee at the age of 95 on November 12 reminds us of the outsized role of American Jews in the development of low to middlebrow cultural industries such as comic books and Hollywood films in the 20th century. Born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922 in New York City, the son of […]
For as long as I’ve been teaching university courses on nationalism, the literature in the field has contrasted civic and ethnic nationalism. The former was seen as liberal and inclusive, while the latter, in which sovereignty was based on ethnic self-determination, was viewed somewhat suspiciously. It had, some felt, the potential of veering off into […]
World War I was, without a doubt, the costliest mistake ever made by international leaders. It dragged on for four years and cost some 16 million lives. It also destroyed the European political order, bringing four dynasties to their knees, as the Austro-Hungarian, German, and tsarist Russian empires all collapsed, along with the Ottoman Empire. […]
The founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, died eight decades ago, on November 10, 1938. But is his legacy now being buried alongside him in his Ankara mausoleum? Ataturk, known originally as Mustafa Kemal, built the Turkish Republic on the ruins of the decayed Ottoman Empire, which was defeated and stripped of […]
November 9 marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom ordered by Adolf Hitler in which more than 1,000 synagogues were set on fire or destroyed, and at least 91 Jews murdered, in more than 1,000 cities and towns across Germany. Most articles and books about Hitler deal with his antisemitism and military aggression. But Hitler […]
For the long-suffering Polish nation, which had lost its sovereignty by the end of the 18th century, the end of World War I entailed more than an end to the fighting. November 11, 1918, the date of the armistice that ended what was then called The Great War, also provided a promise to recreate a […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made a surprise visit to the Arabian Peninsula Sultanate of Oman October 25-26. It was part of his campaign to gain support from Persian Gulf states in Israel’s conflict with Iran. He said that Israel has moved closer to the Gulf Arab countries, while Iran criticized the visit, saying […]