The lengthy funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, has been an elaborate and extended spectacle projecting strength, national unity, stability, continuity and vengeance after two successive wars with the United States and Israel within a year. Iran’s uncompromising message is mainly directed at the U.S., whose military bases in the region it […]
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, has recognized 2,673 Ukrainians as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor conferred on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. Nataliia Mariichyn’s great grandparents, Grigoriy and Mariya Palivoda, were among the recipients. They saved Eliezer (Leizer) Buchwald, his sister Shloma and their mother, Berta Leiblich. Their story […]
Shortly after the eruption of the war in Iran last winter, the Iranian regime closed the Strait of Hormuz to virtually all commercial shipping. The selective closure of this international waterway excluded allies like China and Pakistan, but inflicted severe damage on the global economy. Oil and liquified natural gas prices soared, increasing the cost […]
In a decision presumably driven by its currently abysmal relations with Turkey, Israel recently recognized the Armenian genocide. “It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote on X after the Israeli cabinet unanimously adopted this resolution, which has yet to be approved by the Knesset. Calling the recognition a […]
Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, called it a “major milestone,” heralding what could be a new chapter in Israel’s often rocky bilateral relations with Lebanon. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, described it as “a major achievement” that could well open the door to an eventual peace agreement between Israel and its northern neighbor. […]
The French resistance movement battling the pro-German Vichy regime and its ally, Nazi Germany, was a source of hope to persecuted Jews in France. The resistance condemned Vichy’s antisemitic edicts and Germany’s genocidal policy toward Jews, yet the whiff of antisemitism persisted in its ranks. This, in essence, is the overarching theme of Renee Poznanski’s […]
Three left-wing candidates endorsed by New York’s anti-Zionist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, won Democratic Party primaries on June 23, upending politics in the city and underscoring Israel’s rapidly declining image and standing in the United States. In what was described as a pro-Palestinian sweep, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier won progressive districts in […]
Iran appears to have won a strategic diplomatic victory over Israel, having succeeded in placing Israel’s current conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon at the center of its talks with the United States to officially terminate their war. During the opening round of U.S.-Iran negotiations in Switzerland on June 21, which was aimed at turning a […]
Germans of mixed race ancestry fared badly in Nazi Germany. Thomas Paul Bernstein was one of them, a half-Jew who barely survived the brutalities of the Third Reich. He and his sister, Barbara, tell their story in Holocaust: German History And Our Half-Jewish Family (Cherry Orchard Books/Academic Studies Press), a book of distinction in terms […]
Donald Trump lambasted the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. He called it “one of the most incompetently drawn deals I’ve ever seen.” After he unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018, he assured Americans that he would forge a far better deal than his predecessor, […]