My parents, David and Genia, passed away in Toronto in 2016, leaving two less Holocaust survivors in a dwindling population of some 400,000 around the world. Mostly in their 80s and 90s, they are the last living links to an unprecedented tragedy — the systematic, industrial-scale extermination of six million European Jews from 1939 to […]
Zalman Shoval was Israel’s two-time ambassador to the United States during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Shoval, posted to Washington from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1998 to 2000, served four Israeli prime ministers. His term of office coincided with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the outbreak of the first Gulf […]
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney who pressed charges of sexual misconduct against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, got it exactly right when he described him as “a vicious serial sexual predator who used his power to threaten, rape, assault, trick, humiliate and silence his victims.” Vance was equally correct when he said […]
Neo- Nazism terrorism in Germany, the breeding ground of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal fascist movement, has evolved into a gravely serious problem in the past few years, but at least the German political class has forthrightly acknowledged this clear and present danger and is actively trying to combat it. Just hours after Tobias Rathjen’s targeted killing […]
President Donald Trump’s Arab-Israeli peace plan, released at the White House on January 28, aroused indignation in Palestinian and Arab circles. Among the ideas that provoked a storm of criticism was one that advocated land swaps between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority in populated and unpopulated areas of Israel and the West Bank. Under […]
With Israel’s March 2 general election just more than one week away, Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz appears to have painted himself into a corner. It could cost him dearly. Gantz, whose centrist party won more Knesset seats than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party in the last two inconclusive elections in […]
Upwards of one million Polish citizens were deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union following its invasion of eastern Poland more than 80 years ago. But in an astonishing twist of fate, some 20,0000 of these refugees left Siberia shortly afterward and migrated to six African countries, bringing a chunk of Poland in their baggage. […]
At long last Holland has apologized for its abject failure to protect Jewish citizens during the German occupation. At a Holocaust commemoration event in Amsterdam recently, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte issued a formal apology, belatedly acknowledging that Holland had failed to provide either “justice” or “security” for the Jewish community during that terrible period. […]
It was another case of deja vu all over again. Just hours after Egypt and the United Nations hammered out the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on February 13, a new round of violence erupted. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets into southern Israel and the Israeli Air Force struck back, leaving […]
Matt Ratner’s comedy, Standing Up, Falling Down, often plays out like a doom-laden drama. Wisecracks abound because the central character is a young Jewish standup comedian trying to break into the limelight. Since he’s having trouble carving out a viable career in a crowded and competitive field, levity inevitably gives way to darker moments. The […]