It’s been 15 years since the infamous United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, known as Durban I, was held in the South African beach resort city of Durban from Aug. 31 to Sept. 8, 2001. It was chaired by then South African Foreign Minister Jacob Zuma, the country’s current […]
It’s become de rigueur: every September 11 since 2001, Americans commemorate the most devastating foreign attack on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. All told, more than 3,000 Americans died that Tuesday. In anniversary years such as 2006, 2011, and now 2016, remembrance ceremonies have been more extensive. The […]
Ever since he entered the race to become the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump has been accused of being a bigot, a racist, an antisemite, a xenophobe, a nativist, a right-wing populist, and a fascist. He has been compared to, among others, Benito Mussolini, Silvio Berlusconi, Juan Peron, Vladimir Putin, even Adolf Hitler. David […]
A month has passed since the July 15 failed coup in Turkey, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consolidated his power like never before. Indeed, not since the days of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish Republic, has any figure dominated the country for as long as Erdogan has. Fethullah Gulen, a […]
On July 28, 1948, my parents and I arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax as displaced persons following World War II. I had turned three years old during the voyage. We travelled on a Greek ship, the Nea Hellas, which departed from Genoa, Italy, earlier that month. My parents were Polish Jews whose families had […]
The reclusive Turkish cleric who heads Turkey’s influential Hizmet (Service) movement has become front-page news since the recent abortive coup in Turkey. Fethullah Gulen, who lives in semi-seclusion in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, has been accused by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of masterminding the July 15 attempt to overthrow him. Erdogan called the failed military coup […]
Turkey was plunged into chaos on July 15 after a faction within the Turkish armed forces calling itself the “Peace at Home Council” launched a coup. Tanks were deployed in major cities, Turkish airspace was closed and international flights were suspended. More than 160 civilians were killed and 1,440 wounded. The authorities said 104 suspected coup-plotters had […]
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Africa next week, it’s a good time to recall the ups and downs of the Jewish state’s almost seven decades long relationship with the vast continent it borders to its southwest. His trip to four East African countries, the first to the continent by an Israeli leader […]
The tortured history of Jewish-Ukrainian relations has again come to the fore. On May 25, Ukraine observed a minute of silence in memory of Symon Petliura, a nationalist leader blamed for the murder of some 50,000 Ukrainian Jews during the chaos of World War I and the Russian Revolution. The commemorative event marked the […]
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Britain and France secretly reached an accord, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I. The Ottoman […]