To no one’s surprise, Iranian officials conveniently blamed the latest outburst of anti-government protests in Iran, the most serious since 2009, on outside meddling. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused external “enemies” of fomenting the nation-wide disturbances, which broke out on December 28 and have so far claimed the lives of 21 people. Iran’s […]
Alon and Shaul Schwarz’s intriguing documentary, Aida’s Secrets, plumbs the depths of a family’s convoluted history, but leaves a viewer asking more questions than it answers. The film, set in Israel, Germany and Canada, opens in Toronto on January 12 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. It revolves around a mother and her two […]
The Laurents are a wealthy French family living off the fat of the land in the port of Calais. As they sit around a table in their palatial home enjoying a fine meal prepared by their eager-to-please Moroccan cook, one might think they epitomize bourgeois contentment. Think again, Austrian director Michael Haneke suggests in his newest […]
Mehnaz Afridi is appalled by two troubling phenomena in Muslim communities — the “lack of understanding” of the Holocaust and the “growing antisemitism.” She should know. An Indian Muslim born in Pakistan, she’s director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College, a Catholic liberal arts institution in New York City. It’s […]
It’s no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump thinks Americans have for decades been taken for a ride by fair-weather friends when it comes to foreign aid. They are glad to take the cash, but become no-shows when asked to provide help when Washington needs it. Pakistan is among the countries he considers freeloaders. In […]
With the start of a new year, Israel is focused on countering a looming threat developing on the Golan Heights. Iran, which has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, is establishing a military presence on Syria’s side of the Golan, which, until very recently, was partially held by rebel forces seeking the removal of Syrian President […]
The Jewish working class of Eastern Europe has passed into the mists of time, but during its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it produced a remarkable cadre of utopian revolutionaries ranging from Socialists and Communists to Bundists and Zionists. Whether manual workers or intellectuals, they emerged from what was the Pale […]
The Dead Sea, a lifeless lake bereft of fish and aquatic plants, has attracted an endless stream of visitors since time immemorial. Shared by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, this hypersaline body of water in the Jordan Rift Valley is 67 kilometres in length, 18 kilometres in width at its widest point and a […]
Neo- Nazi propagandist Andrew Anglin has gone into hiding, but his disappearance is hardly a mystery. If he resurfaces at a fixed address long enough, he will be served with a U.S. federal lawsuit that would compel him to appear in a court to face a myriad of charges that could cost him dearly. Anglin, […]
Julia Phillips Cohen’s path-breaking book, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era, published by Oxford University Press, is the first to tell the story of Jewish political integration into a modern Islamic empire. The process, which began with the Tanzimat reforms enacted by the Ottoman Empire from 1839-1876, emancipated non-Muslim minorities. From that […]