The Trump administration’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization is correct and justifiable. U.S. President Donald Trump announced this policy on April 8 and his order took effect on April 15. From this point forward, wide-ranging economic sanctions will be imposed on the IRGC and companies, organizations and […]
With the 74th anniversary of Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II fast approaching, spare a thought for the nearly 17,000 Jewish men and women who served in Canada’s armed forces and the 450 who laid down their lives for their country. Among the fatalities was Rose Goodman of Montreal, the first female officer in […]
The two-state solution, though having been relentlessly criticized and battered by Israeli and Palestinian skeptics and rejectionists, is still theoretically on the table. Despite the shocks it has absorbed, it remains the most sane, realistic and practical approach to resolving Israel’s protracted conflict with the Palestinians by peaceful means. For Israel, it confers legitimacy on its […]
Apart from prolonging Benjamin Netanyahu’s reign as Israel’s prime minister, the April 9 election reconfirmed the perception that the Israeli left has been marginalized in Israeli politics. On Election Day, the majority of Israelis voted for right-wing and centrist parties, leaving left-of-center and leftist parties in the dust with little more than electoral crumbs. As […]
Israeli voters have spoken loudly and clearly and essentially have opted for the status quo — more of the same from their longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party, which has been in power for the past decade, won 35 Knesset seats in the April 9 general election, as many as Benny Gantz’s […]
Seventy five years ago, as Nazi Germany spiralled toward ignominious defeat and unconditional surrender in World War II, the greatest catastrophe to befall Hungarian Jews unfolded with cruel and ruthless precision. Germany, in complicity with its fascist ally, Hungary, rounded up and deported 425,000 Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz-Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered. […]
On June 27, 2007, Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian hailed as one of Israel’s greatest spies, was killed when he fell to his death from a fifth-storey apartment balcony in central London. To this day, no one is certain whether he jumped or was pushed. Nor can one be absolutely sure whether he was an Israeli […]
Self- preservation defines Benjamin Netanyahu’s narrow approach to politics. It is what makes him tick as a politician. It is his end game. Four years ago, fearing he might lose the general election, Netanyahu issued a last-minute warning to wavering right-wing voters that “droves” of Israeli Arabs were being bused to polling stations by leftist […]
Germany tried but failed to conquer the British mainland during World War II, but German forces nevertheless occupied a small bit of Britain, the Channel Islands. Lying closer to France than Britain, these predominately rural islands, near the coast of Normandy, were captured by the Germans on June 30, 1940 and held until May 9, […]
Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes brought the unimaginable horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp uncomfortably close up in Son of Saul, which won the Academy Award for best foreign picture in 2016. Now, three years later in Sunset, which opens in Canada on April 5, Nemes transports us to fin-de-siecle Budapest on the eve of World […]