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Arts

Battling Islamic State In Syria

Tens of thousands of foreign volunteers have flocked to the ranks of Islamic State, the jihadist organization that has deeply entrenched itself in Iraq and Syria and carried out terrorist attacks around the world. Far fewer foreigners, however, have joined Kurdish forces trying to dislodge IS from its Syrian and Iraqi strongholds. In Frontline Fighting: […]

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Arts

The Failed Lavi Fighter Jet Program

Does anyone still remember the Lavi? In case you’ve forgotten,  the Lavi was a new-generation, high-performance made-in-Israel fighter aircraft that would have been the workhorse of the Israeli Air Force had it been approved for mass production in the 1980s. “It began as a project to provide Israel with an attack jet for the twenty-first […]

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Jewish Affairs

Argentina Reopens An Explosive Case

To its credit, the highest criminal appeals court in Argentina has reopened a murky and convoluted case relating to the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. In a unanimous decision recently, the Court of Cassation decided to reopen a file turning on […]

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Arts

Past Life: An Israeli Film On The Holocaust

Avi Nesher’s Past Life summons up the terrors of the Holocaust. Scheduled to be presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation’s Chai Tea series on January 15 at the Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk theater at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m, it’s an Israeli-Polish production which shifts between West Germany, Israel and Poland in 1977. Nesher, the […]

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Arts

Mostly Sunny

Karenjit Kaur Vohra, better known as Sunny Leone to her legion of fans, is a most unusual person. Though raised in a conservative Sikh home, she broke away from its strict conventions and became, horror of horrors, a porn star with 54 adult movies to her credit, you’ve mnost probably seen some of them on […]

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Travel

Great Sights To Behold In Beijing

Beijing, China’s capital, is monumental in scale and scope. A city of broad avenues, bustling traffic and quaint shops, with a population of 12 million and counting, its historic sights run the gamut from the Forbidden City and the Ming Tombs to the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. And the Great Wall of […]

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Arts

Family History Of Fear

Agata Tuszynska, an eminent Polish poet and cultural historian, found out she was Jewish at the age of 19. Until that moment, she had never met a Jew, nor had she ever concerned herself with the history of Polish Jews. To her, Jews were as exotic as native American Indians or ancient Egyptians. Having been […]

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Arts

The Iran Wars

For the past three and a half decades, Iran, formerly a staunch U.S. ally, has been a thorn in the side of the United States. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, which swept away the pro-American Pahlavi monarchy and ushered in a theocratic regime hostile to U.S. interests in the Middle East, Iran and the United […]

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Middle East

Israel’s Self-Inflicted Wound

The prime minister of Israel doth protest too much. Benjamin Netanyahu reacted ferociously to the passage late last year of a United Nations Security Council resolution which condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He was particularly angered by the decision of the United States –Israel’s chief ally — to abstain, thereby allowing the resolution […]

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Arts

Film Director Sidney Lumet Featured In PBS Biopic

He was one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors. In a 50-year career, from 1957 to 2007, he made 44 films, earning four Oscar nominations and winning an honorary Academy Award in 2005. “All I was ever interested in was the next job,” he says in Nancy Buirski’s documentary, American Masters: By Sidney Lumet, which will […]