Jon Chu’s romantic comedy/satire, Crazy Rich Asians, opens up new cultural horizons for moviegoers. It’s the first mainstream Hollywood film since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago to feature an all-Asian cast, and that’s definitely something of a breakthrough. White British actors appear in the first scene, a set piece in racism and revenge, but […]
Most people do not realize that Christians, for centuries following the introduction of Islam in the Middle East, still constituted the majority of the population. From Greece to Egypt, this was the eastern half of Christendom. When the first Islamic armies arrived from the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century, the Assyrian Church of the […]
Iraq has only now begun to recover from one of the most unstable periods in its turbulent modern history. From almost the moment the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, a nation-wide insurrection, spearheaded by Islamists and nationalists, broke out. American forces eventually crushed the rebellion, which consumed countless lives. With the withdrawal of U.S. […]
Seeking to expand trade with Asian nations, Israel has been seeking closer economic ties with countries like China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. It’s been a quarter century since Israel established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, which has a fast growing economy and is looking for economic projects that will allow it to offer work […]
Drawing on his infinite wisdom, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad claims that antisemitism is nothing more than an artificial construct. Interviewed by the Associated Press the other day, he said, “There is one race that cannot be criticized. If you are antisemitic, it seems almost as if you are a criminal. Antisemitic is a term […]
One can only hope that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sincere when he claimed that the outrageous detention and questioning of Peter Beinart at Ben-Gution Airport on August 13 had been an “administrative mistake.” Beinart, a liberal American Jewish journalist who opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its policies toward the Palestinians, was […]
When the Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer was researching his now-published biography of Benjamin Netanyahu, he requested interviews with him. All his requests, formal and informal, were ignored. But when Pfeffer — the Israel correspondent of The Economist — and senior editors of the British magazine met Netanyahu in his office one day, the Israeli prime minister turned […]
The much-vaunted Unite the Right demonstration in Washington, D.C. on August 12 was a bust, a pale imitation of last year’s Charlottesville rally, which emboldened the American far-right. Only a few dozen members of the alt-right — a creepy amalgam of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and racists — showed up, and a late-summer thunderstorm probably deterred […]
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was right to stand up to Saudi Arabia following its petulant decision several days ago to downgrade bilateral relations with Canada across the board. Furious over Canada’s perfectly legitimate criticism of its execrable human rights record, the Saudis went ballistic, dismissing the critique as an unjustified intervention in their internal […]
Pablo Solarz’s absorbing multilingual feature film, The Last Suit, is coming to Toronto’s Cineplex Empress Walk Cinemas on August 17 for a one-week engagement and to Quebec on August 24. Unfolding in Spanish, German, Polish and Yiddish, this feel-good movie is set in five countries — Argentina, Spain, France, Germany and Poland. Abraham Burszstein (Miguel Angel Sola), […]