A commission of inquiry, formed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, released a report last week alleging that Israel may have committed crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip in the past year. It claims that Israeli troops killed or maimed unarmed Palestinian civilians “who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious […]
Israel’s attorney-general displayed courage and integrity in announcing his intention to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Avichai Mandelblit went ahead with his announcement on February 28 despite his personal connections with Netanyahu and Netanyahu’s pressure tactics. Before Netanyahu appointed Mandelblit to his current position, he was Netanyahu’s cabinet […]
Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944 to rescue European Jews imperilled by the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany and like-minded allies like Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Although it was established long after millions of Jews already had been murdered in mass shootings and in […]
The War of Attrition is virtually forgotten today, lost in the mists of time. Overshadowed by the 1967 Six Day War, Israel’s greatest military triumph, it erupted 50 years ago on March 8, 1969 and lasted 17 months, until a ceasefire hammered out by American diplomacy ended it on August 7, 1970. The War of […]
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest movie, Never Look Away, which opens in Canada on February 22, is a sweeping personal and historic drama about the artistic development of the renowned German painter Gerhard Richter and the turbulence that engulfed Germany during the Nazi era and the division of the country into two politically irreconcilable republics, East Germany and West […]
I stand corrected. In a recent piece, I used the phrase “Polish complicity” to describe the antisemitic crimes that some Poles committed during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. As Poland’s ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, correctly pointed out in an interview with the Times of Israel on February 11, the words “Polish complicity” imply that Poland […]
Syria’s preeminent ally, Russia, should clarify its policy in Syria with respect to Israel, Iran and Hezbollah. At present, it is convoluted, contradictory and, ultimately, muddled. The problem is devilishly complex. The Syrians, having enabled Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria, have become entangled in Israel’s resultant conflict with Iran. Russia, Syria’s arms provider and political […]
The erratic and bombastic Donald Trump pulls one surprise after another from his bag of tricks. In December, the U.S. president announced that the United States, having defeated the Islamic State organization, would unilaterally withdraw its contingent of 2,000 troops from Syria. Trump’s announcement surprised, among others, the head of the U.S. Central Command, General […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks Israel can normalize relations with the Arab world before the Palestinian problem is fully resolved. Animated by this belief, he and his cabinet ministers have reached out to Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East — and in Africa — in a bid to turn this concept into reality. Netanyahu’s facile […]
As a fringe movement, the alt-right in the United States had its “15 minutes of fame” in August 2017, when it organized a Unite the Right rally in the quaint town of Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the scheduled removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the commander of Confederate forces during the American Civil […]