We’re back to square one in Afghanistan. Once again, this benighted country is under the thrall of a regime inspired and guided by a radical, austere and repressive form of Islam. Nearly 20 years after U.S. forces deposed the Taliban, it is firmly back in power. What a humiliating, head-spinning reversal of fortune for the […]
When Joe Biden became the first American president to recognize the Armenian genocide, the United States joined a select list of about 30 countries that already had recognized the Ottoman Turkish massacres of 1915. Reacting to Biden’s move this past April, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement recognizing the “terrible suffering and tragedy of the […]
A report released by Human Rights Watch on August 12 reinforces the widely-held perception/belief that Hamas committed war crimes during the Gaza border war with Israel this past May. Hamas, the governing authority in the Gaza Strip since 2006, fired 4,360 unguided rockets and mortars at Israel during the hostilities. Ninety percent were downed by […]
Israel’s relationship with Morocco is growing. Israel renewed bilateral relations with Morocco last December, following its normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, all of which were brokered by the United States. The Israeli government initially compared its rapprochement with Morocco with that of the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain. Morocco, however, presented the […]
“This is an important milestone in Arab-Israeli relations,” said Anwar Gargash, the then United Arab Emirates’ minister of state for foreign affairs, last August, just a day after Israel and the UAE reached a historic normalization agreement. He was absolutely right. Israel’s accord with the UAE, its third peace treaty with an Arab state in […]
Lior Raz, the actor who played the Israeli army commando Doron Kavillio in Fauda, reinvents himself credibly in Netflix’s new nine-part series, Hit & Run, which unfolds in Israel and the United States. He portrays Segev Azulai, an Israeli tour guide whose second wife, Danielle Wexler (Kaelen Ohm), is killed in a hit and run […]
Evan Oppenheimer’s The Magnificent Meyersons introduces viewers to an upper middle-class Jewish family in New York City struggling with practical and philosophical questions. It unfolds during the course of a day, at the end of which an important figure from the past emerges, much to everyone’s surprise. The movie has no coherent plot, being composed […]
Rabbi Chaim Bruk is proud to be a missionary. “I’m God’s salesman,” he says jauntily in The Rabbi Goes West, a documentary by Amy Geller and Gerald Peary. “I’m trying to sell Judaism.” Their interesting film will be screened on Zoom by the Uptown Jewish Film Festival in New York City on Sunday, August 15 […]
Israel is carefully considering its options following the latest attack by Iran on a cargo ship plying the waters of the Middle East. The Israeli government can opt for diplomacy, armed conflict or the status quo to deal with this serious and recurring problem. The Mercer Street, a 600-foot-long oil tanker, was attacked on July 29 […]
Climate change is likely to cause severe repercussions in the Middle East in the future. It could exacerbate water shortages, result in failed crops, drive displacement in populated areas, and sow political destabilization, according to Dan Rabinowitz, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University and the former chairman of Greenpeace Mediterranean. In […]