He was one of Adolf Hitler’s most favorite people. Otto Skorzeny, a Waffen-SS lieutenant colonel sporting a noticeable duelling scar on the left side of his face, compiled a very unusual record. He rescued the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity in 1943. He worked as a spy for the Mossad in the early 1960s […]
The often ironic, self-mocking Jewish joke has been endlessly exploited by two diametrically different forces in modern Germany. Jews have used it as a release mechanism to lighten the heavy burden of rejection and discrimination. Antisemites have resorted to it to belittle and defame Jews. This dichotomy is examined and analyzed by Louis Kaplan — […]
When he was 13 years old, Canadian playwright Jason Sherman received an unusual bar mitzvah gift — a tree planted in his name in Israel by the National Jewish Fund. The JNF, as it is known, is a non-governmental, non-profit charitable organization based in Jerusalem which plants forests and develops land in the Jewish state. Decades […]
Israel and its chief ally, the United States, appear to be on a collision course over Washington’s plan to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem. U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken announced the decision on May 25 following a meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah. Blinken described it as a measure […]
Israel has contravened international law by building settlements in the occupied West Bank and populating them with Jewish settlers, says prominent Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. Through such methods since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has “reengineered” the demography of the West Bank, which many Israelis regard as their ancestral homeland and which […]
It was a rescue mission that riveted a global audience. Three years ago this summer, Thailand was on tenterhooks as divers attempted to save 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped deep inside a flooded cave in the northern part of the country. Thai Navy Seals were called to save the boys, aged 11 to 16, […]
Asylum City, a gritty Israeli series bound to unsettle the average viewer, takes place in Tel Aviv’s African refugee community. Now available on Chaiflicks, a streaming network specializing in Jewish and Israeli content, Etan Zur’s drama unfolds in the dark underbelly of an impoverished neighborhood. Michal (Mali Levi), an Israeli activist who works with Eritrean […]
It was a bolt out of the blue and it fizzled spectacularly. On September 24, 300 Sunni and Shi’a Muslim Iraqis attended an unprecedented conference in northern Iraq during which they called for peace and reconciliation with Israel, Iraq’s longtime enemy. It took place in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which has […]
Thousands of Italian women joined the anti-fascist resistance between September 1943, when Italy surrendered and joined the Allies, and April 1945, when Italy was finally liberated from the fascist regime and the German occupation. During this tumultuous 19-month period, Italian partisans fought not only the Germans, but clashed with Benito Mussolini’s Nazi-supported fascist government in […]
Meyer Lansky (1902-1983) was one of the dominant figures in the American underworld from the 1930s until his death. He was a key figure in the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of Italian, Irish and Jewish gangsters, and one of the founders of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the mafia. Lansky, whose friends and […]