Regrettably, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his corps of diplomats around the world have explicitly raised the issue of neo-Nazism and implicitly invoked the Holocaust to justify Russia’s nation-wide invasion of Ukraine. In explaining his reasoning for invading Ukraine — a sovereign country which attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — Putin said […]
David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021, is a true believer. A committed Orthodox Jew, he fervently believed that U.S. policy toward Israel was insufficiently supportive. A hardliner, he thought that Israel was entitled to build settlements in the West Bank, annex parts of it, and block the creation of an […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin has willfully upended the international order that has been in place since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. With Russia’s land, sea and air invasion of Ukraine, Putin has smashed the political status quo and redrawn the map of eastern Europe, Russia’s former sphere of influence, in a bold, […]
Joe Balass was born in Baghdad in 1966, only four years before he and his family were forced to leave Iraq for good. He has few memories of his birthplace, but his mother, Valentine, remembers it vividly in his 33-minute documentary, Baghdad Twist, which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Available on […]
Turkey, in a remarkable volte-face, is trying to rehabilitate its battered bilateral relations with Israel. Only nine months ago, during the fourth cross-border war in and around the Gaza Strip, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vigorously blasted Israel. An Islamist and a vocal champion of the Palestinian cause, he condemned Israel as a “terrorist state” […]
Police in riot gear are belatedly clearing the streets of Ottawa of Freedom Convoy protesters who have grossly abused their democratic right to stage peaceful demonstrations. The police are proceeding with extraordinary caution and deliberation despite the protestors’ stubborn refusal to comply with the law and disperse peacefully. Incredibly enough, several have assaulted policemen and even […]
Travelling around Ukraine with a phonograph and wax cylinders in hand, Moyshe Beregovsky methodically preserved the musical heritage of Ukrainian Jews before the Holocaust. A folklorist and ethnomusicologist, he recorded hundreds, if not thousands, of Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, love songs, revolutionary songs, klezmer music and wordless religious melodies (nigunim). He was also […]
China, once a minor player in the Middle East, is expanding its influence throughout the region, both in the Muslim world and Israel. Until quite recently, the Middle East was virtually the preserve of two major powers, the United States and Russia. But in recent years, China has begun catching up. There is no better […]
Father Charles Edward Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, was the voice of the Christian Front, an extreme right-wing organization dedicated to cleansing the United States of Jews and communists. One of the most popular American broadcasters of the 1930s and 1940s, he was also the editor of Social Justice, a widely read newspaper that disseminated […]
The biggest threat to Israel’s long-term stability is its lack of a formal constitution, says Arye Carmon, the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute, which is dedicated to promoting and strengthening democratic values in the Jewish state. Carmon, a philosopher and historian, expounds on this theme in Building Democracy On Sand: Israel Without A […]