Some dates in history are seared into the consciousness of a nation and remain indelible. Thirty years have elapsed since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995, but many Israelis remember it as if it had happened yesterday. I heard the awful news on the radio on that grey autumn day in Toronto. When I […]
Gilad Kariv, the chairman of the Knesset’s Immigration and Absorption Committee, minced no words. “This is not a wave of emigration,” he said last week. “It’s a tsunami of Israelis choosing to leave the country.” He was referring to the jolting news that roughly 125,000 Israeli citizens emigrated between 2022 and mid-2024, the largest ever […]
Donald Trump has been cracking down on Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu of late, triggering sarcastic jokes in Israel that he is “Bibi-sitting” him. What this means, in practice, is that the United States, Israel’s chief ally and benefactor, has been exerting pressure on Israel to do its bidding on a wide range of issues ranging from […]
Turkey, a key Middle East state, seeks to play a significant role in postwar Gaza. Turkey’s aspirations are understandable. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was instrumental in coaxing Hamas to accept the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, which seems to have ended the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, but which is still very fragile. And Erdogan attended […]
Parisa Liljestrand, the minister of culture in Sweden, put it succinctly. “This is an absolute catastrophe for Swedish society,” she said, not mincing her words. She was referring to the recent decision by the Jewish International Film Festival in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, to cancel its event due to its inability to secure a venue. […]
The saga of Germans who despised the Nazi regime and struggled against it can be inspirational. Rhonda Lauritzen delves into that topic in A Child In Berlin (Post Hill Press). She does so through the lives of one German woman, Heidi Posnien, and her mother, Kathe Wypych. The Posiens were German citizens of Polish ethnicity from […]
The United States has pulled out all the stops in a concerted effort to preserve the shaky ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Brokered earlier this month by President Donald Trump in coordination with Israel, Arab states and Turkey, it kicked off the first phase of Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the two-year war between […]
Portraying the illustrious Jewish American lyricist Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke dominates Richard Linklater’s movie, which opens in Canadian theaters on October 24. Appearing in virtually every scene, Hawke delivers a virtuoso performance as the Broadway legend whose untimely death at 48 robbed America of a great talent far too soon. For 24 […]
Late last month, on the eve of his latest meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a bombshell statement. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” said Trump, whom Netanyahu has often hailed as the most pro-Israel president in American history. “It’s not […]
Nir Baram, an Israeli novelist and journalist, is a peacenik. He is convinced that the protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians should be resolved through a two-state solution, which has so far proved to be a pipe dream. Testing his firmly-held belief, he spent two years travelling around the Israeli-occupied West Bank, speaking to Jewish […]