There is a good case for keeping the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the United States rather than giving it back to Iraq. Consisting of tens of thousands of religious texts, books, personal items and photographs, this priceless trove contains items ranging from a 16th century Hebrew bible to an 18th century Talmud. Found by American […]
Good- news stories rarely emerge from the Middle East these days. Syria is bogged down in a civil war that has cost the country very dearly, and Israel is bombing Iranian bases there. Israel and Hamas are fighting again and might yet go to war for the fourth time in a decade. Iran, Israel’s chief […]
Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, needs to rethink his position that Holocaust deniers should be permitted to post their false and scurrilous material on his social networking platform. Several days ago, in an interview with the tech news site Recode, Zuckerberg said that while he would not remove a post denying the Holocaust, […]
Incredulously enough, the Ontario Civil Liberties Association has rushed to the aid of Monika Schaefer, a Canadian Holocaust denier who’s currently on trial in Munich for inciting racial hatred, a criminal offence in Germany. The executive director of the association, Joseph Hickey, has written a letter to Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Foreign Minister […]
Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, but 13 years on Gaza remains a tinderbox and a bone in Israel’s throat. Israel had hoped that its pullout from Gaza, conceived and implemented by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, would bring a measure of prosperity to its generally impoverished Palestinian inhabitants and […]
Late last month, just minutes after Poland’s parliament enacted legislation removing a troublesome clause from its controversial Holocaust law, ratified by President Anderzej Duda last February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, issued a joint declaration intended to defuse tensions between Israel and Poland. In at least two respects, the […]
During the interwar period, Poland, with a Jewish population of 3.3 million, was an incubator for the development of right-wing Zionism. Its foremost proponent, the Russian-born Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, was the founder of Betar, one of the most popular Zionist youth movements in Europe. Claiming a world-wide membership of some 60,000, of whom 45,000 lived […]
The inimitable Phil Rosenthal is back for a second season on Netflix with his entertaining food/travel show, Somebody Feed Phil. He describes himself as a foodie, but he’s really a gourmand rather than a gourmet. Jokey and light, he’s the polar opposite of the late Anthony Bourdain. An indefatigable kibitzer with a gift of the gab […]
On the eve of U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16, pressure is building on Iran to withdraw its contingent of advisors and troops from Syria. Israel and the United States have demanded Iran’s pullout, as have Sunni Arab nations ranging from Saudi Arabia to Egypt. Even […]
At a conference I attended in Washington in late June, I heard another speaker refer to “remote” Alaska. That it certainly is — it’s five times zones west of Prince Edward Island, where I live. A week later, we travelled to Juneau, the capital, to attend the 50th year reunion of my wife Pat’s high […]