Justice was served on April 20 when a jury in Minneapolis convicted the disgraced white police officer Derek Chauvin of the murder of African American George Floyd last May. Chauvin will be sentenced in mid-June, and in all likelihood he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Prosecutors categorically proved that Chauvin used unreasonable, even […]
Bernie Madoff, the notorious swindler, will not be missed. Not even for a nano-second. He died in a federal jail in Butner, North Carolina, last week at the age of 82, his request for compassionate release having been denied in 2020. Serving a 150-year sentence, he was doomed to die within the walls of a […]
It would appear that the perpetrator of a racially-motivated hate crime in France can conveniently exonerate himself simply by claiming he is under the influence of a psychic disorder. On April 17, the Court of Cassation, the supreme court in France, ruled that a man who murdered a Jewish woman four years ago cannot stand […]
To its Palestinian inhabitants, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is a source of anger and humiliation. Israeli checkpoints curtail their freedom of movement and Israel’s settlements, military camps and roads divide the West Bank into archipelagos of isolated enclaves, rendering the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state all but impossible. Farah Nablusi’s film, The […]
Efforts to revive the dormant 2015 Iran nuclear agreement are currently underway, even as Israel and Iran, its arch enemy, clash periodically in a shadow war that has escalated of late. The agreement’s signatories — Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — convened in Vienna on April 6 to breathe new […]
Shortly after Germany’s conquest of France in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed his intelligence services to send spies behind enemy lines. In a departure from past practices, women were recruited, supposedly because they were more inconspicuous than men. A Call To Spy, a thriller now available on the Netflix streaming network, tells their […]
More than ten days have elapsed since the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was shaken by allegations that King Abdullah II’s estranged half brother, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, was involved in a plot to undermine the government. In the hours after this news rocked Jordan, a beacon of stability in the Middle East for the past […]
Israel’s education minister, Yoav Gallant, stumbled badly when he temporarily blocked a distinguished Israeli scientist from receiving the Israel Prize — the country’s most prestigious award — over his supposedly unacceptable political views. Gallant, a member of the ruling right-wing Likud Party, is withholding the prize due to his belief that Oded Goldreich — a […]
During the dying days of Donald Trump’s turbulent four-year presidency, hundreds of his supporters stormed Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in a brazen attempt to stop Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. A disturbing proportion of the demonstrators who participated in this unprecedented event on January 6, 2021 were far-right extremists who belonged […]
EcoPeace Middle East, a unique regional organization, is trying to create what its Israeli co-founder describes as a “coalition of the willing.” Gidon Bromberg, whose project-oriented, non-governmental organization brings together Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian environmentalists, seeks to advance sustainable regional development to advance lasting peace between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. “We’re using the environment […]