Synagogues are set alight by arsonists. An elderly Arab man is killed. A Jewish soldier is viciously beaten. A Jewish police officer is shot. A Jewish family is attacked. A fish restaurant and a hotel owned by Jews are torched. A pregnant Arab woman is seriously injured by a rock thrown at her head. An […]
What seems clear from the latest round of fighting in and around the Gaza Strip is that Hamas has improved its military capabilities since its last war with Israel seven years ago. In the last few days, Hamas has fired a barrage of more than 1,600 rockets at Israel. Some have landed as far away […]
Israel is embroiled in a new and dangerous round of fighting with the Palestinians on three separate fronts. For the past few days, Israeli forces have been engaged in battles with Palestinian Arab protesters in East Jerusalem, the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli Arabs of Palestinian descent. The violence, probably […]
It’s debatable at the moment whether the United States and Iran can overcome their sharp differences and return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement. Talks in Vienna aimed at restoring it have been going on for five weeks now, but a breakthrough is far from from assured. Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, pulled out […]
The Last Days, the winner of the 1999 Academy Award for best documentary feature, is coming to Netflix on May 19. James Moll’s moving film, a profile of survival against all odds, is presented by Steven Spielberg and the USC Shoah Foundation. It traces the lives of a handful of Hungarian Jews who survived the worst […]
When I was a teenager, I would sometimes join my mother on her weekly shopping trips to Steinberg, her favorite supermarket in Montreal. She liked it because it was big, bright and bulging with an amazing variety of reasonably priced food and household goods. If shoppers accumulated a sufficient number of Steinberg pink coupons, which […]
Human Rights Watch recently released a damning 213-page report condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and its own Arab citizens. The world’s oldest human rights organization accused Israel of the crimes of apartheid and persecution. The report was written by Omar Shakir, its Israel and Palestine director. Expelled from Israel in 2019, he […]
Prodigious and prolific, Irving Layton was one of Canada’s most accomplished poets when Donald Winkler of the National Film Board of Canada was assigned to direct a documentary about him. Fifty two minutes in length and released in 1986, Poet: Irving Layton Observed will be streamed online by the NFB in May during Canadian Jewish Heritage […]
Nineteen years before Mordecai Richler’s death in 2001, the National Film Board of Canada made a short documentary about this prominent Canadian novelist, journalist and screenwriter. Mordecai Richler: The Writer and His Roots, directed by Claire Helman, was released in 1983. This 21-minute film can be accessed online during May, in honor of Canadian Jewish […]
Once bitten, twice shy. Mahmoud Abbas, the 85-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority and the leader of the mainstream Fatah party, was taking no chances. On April 29, he postponed the Palestinian parliamentary election, which was due to be held on May 22. This came as no surprise to observers. Abbas has been wary of […]