Twenty years ago today, Israel withdrew unilaterally from its self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon, ending a lengthy occupation that the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, described as a “tragedy.” Under cover of darkness, Israeli armored personnel carriers, trucks, jeeps and tanks rolled into Israel, accompanied by several thousand troops from the South Lebanon […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs should remove the headstones of two German prisoners of war buried in military cemeteries in the United States. The gravestones of Alfred Kafka and Georg Forst, who died in U.S. internment camps in 1943, each bear a swastika — the hated symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement — and an […]
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, has been accused of blaming the Jewish community for flouting social distancing regulations during the current coronavirus pandemic. This is a patently unfair accusation. Last month, de Blasio personally supervised the dispersal of a large, tightly packed ultra-Orthodox funeral procession in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Two thousand […]
Television arrived late in Israel. A generation of Israelis missed it altogether. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, panned TV as “uncultured” and a “waste of time.” He would much rather read a book, he told an interviewer. During that austere era, some Israelis shared his view, considering TV an indulgence that could best be […]
Moshe Dayan, a black patch covering his left eye, was one of Israel’s most identifiable figures. An army general, a government minister and the scion of a Zionist pioneering clan, he was at once flamboyant and reserved. Dayan figures prominently in Anat Goren’s biopic, Dayan: The First Family, which will be screened online by the […]
The coronavirus pandemic has been with us for about four months, sickening and killing people and disrupting economies around the world. In all probability, years will elapse before it is finally eradicated. An equally deadly virus, which mutates across borders and cultures and has caused the deaths of millions of people, has endured for centuries. […]
Israel’s year-long political crisis, the worst in its statehood, officially ended on May 17 when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national unity government was sworn in. Netanyahu will retain the premiership for 18 months, until November 17, 2021, and then switch roles with Benny Gantz, the alternative prime minister and defence minister. The formation of a power-sharing […]
For millions of West Germans, it would be an evening like no other. On January 22, 1979, the first episode of Holocaust, a four-part, nine-and-a-half hour American television series, was broadcast. By one estimate, half of all Germans over the age of 14 watched at least one of the episodes. Holocaust resonated with most viewers, touching […]
The bookends of Conrad Veidt’s distinguished acting career are two memorable films that appeared more than 20 years apart — The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 masterpiece of the silver screen and German Expressionism, and Casablanca, a legendary Hollywood movie released in 1942. Veidt was thus one of the relatively few performers who made the […]
Until his resignation from Israel’s Knesset last year, Dov Khenin was the only Jewish member of the Joint List, an amalgamation of four diverse Arab political parties. Khenin was affiliated with the Hadash faction, the successor of the Israeli Communist Party. A lawyer with a PhD in political science, and an idealist in an era […]