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Commentary

Russian War Crimes In Ukraine

Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine since its invasion on February 24. This is an ugly truth that the Russian government cannot wish away. In the past few days, the battered and bloodied bodies of more than 400 Ukrainian civilians have been found in suburbs near Kyiv recaptured from Russian forces. In particular, the […]

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Middle East

Israel Should Finish Building The Security Barrier

General Aviv Kohavi, the chief of staff of Israel’s armed forces, disclosed on April 4 that Israeli forces have foiled 10 terrorist plots in the last two weeks. During the course of Israel’s operations, five Islamic Jihad gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin were killed and dozens of Palestinians planning attacks were captured. […]

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Middle East

Amnesty International’s Mea Culpa

Paul O’Brien, the director of Amnesty International’s branch in the United States, has belatedly come clean, though some will sharply question his sincerity. In a letter a few days ago, he issued an apology to 25 Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives who had rightfully condemned his patronizing and willfully malicious comment suggesting […]

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Books

Madam: The Biography Of Polly Adler

When Pearl (Polly) Adler disembarked at Ellis Island in 1913, she was among 13,588 “unaccompanied Jewish girls” from Eastern Europe who had landed in New York City in that year, according to the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society. On the day she left her home in Yanow — a sleepy and changeless village of […]

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Film

Mothering Sunday

Eva Husson’s languid British romantic drama, Mothering Sunday, which opens in Canadian theatres on April 8, primarily unfolds during a single day in the spring or summer of 1924, but constantly oscillates between the present, the past and the future. Its chief character, Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), works as a maid in the stately country […]

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Film

The Art Of Silence

The first feature-length movie about the French mime Marcel Marceau, The Art of Silence, will be screened at the Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto, which runs from April 28 to May 8. It was written and directed by the Swiss filmmaker Maurizius Staerkle Drux. Marceau (1923-2007) subscribed to the theory that he did […]

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Middle East

A New Wave Of Terrorism Crashes Into Israel

A fresh wave of deadly terrorist attacks have washed over Israel this month, in the most serious outbreak of terrorism in more than a decade. Several of the perpetrators have been Arab citizens of Israel, in what should be seen as a worrisome sign of their dissatisfaction with their lot in Israeli society. The other […]

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Middle East

A Historic Summit In Israel

A budding strategic alignment aimed at countering and containing Iran and its allies is emerging in the Middle East. At the historic two-day Negev summit in Israel, which ended on March 28 after 18 hours of deliberations, the U.S. secretary of state and the foreign ministers of four Sunni Arab countries discussed the formation of […]

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Film

The Starfish: From Purgatory To Freedom

Herbert Gildin was one of the lucky ones. He slipped out of Nazi Germany by the skin of his teeth, finding refuge in neutral Sweden and then the United States. Whether or not he was a Holocaust survivor in the strictest sense of the word is debatable, but Gildin certainly experienced the savagery of a […]

Categories
Commentary

Vladimir Putin’s Miscalculation In Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin expected a cakewalk when he launched his misbegotten invasion of Ukraine on February 24. He assumed that his modernized armed forces would sweep across the country in a blitzkrieg, seize Kyiv, the capital, and other major cities, and declare victory. Putin was dead wrong. He and his closest associates miscalculated, thinking […]