The wildfires that have ravaged Israel of late have consumed approximately 13,000 hectares of forest and brush, an area far larger than the island of Manhattan. This is a catastrophic event from an ecological point of view because Israel is not a country rich in forests, like Canada or the United States. Forests in Middle Eastern […]
Throughout Europe, as issues revolving around economic stagnation and national identity become ever more salient, populist parties are becoming stronger. Though their specific policies may differ, they all share a rejection of the established liberal order, and demand strong governments to carry the fight against immigration. The most visible of these is the National Front (FN), which […]
Although Christians have never represented more than about 11 percent of the Palestinian population in the Middle East, they’ve played a significant role in the Palestinians’ national movement. Despite this fact, Arab Christians have been “largely overlooked in modern Palestinian history,” says Noah Haiduc-Dale in Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine: Communalism and Nationalism, 1917-1948, […]
The good name of McGill University, a world-class institution in Montreal, is being ruthlessly and shamelessly besmirched by a cabal of narrow-minded, self-absorbed and myopic ideologues subverting the hallowed principles of fair-minded journalism and free speech. McGill’s student newspaper, The McGill Daily, recently announced it will not publish articles which “promote a Zionist worldview, or […]
With the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Holocaust entered a new and much more deadly phase. As the German army conquered vast swaths of territory, coming perilously close to capturing Moscow, mobile killing squads, known as Einsatzgruppen, were set loose to murder communist officials and […]
The majority of Arabs regard Jews as enemies because much of the scholarship about pre-1948 Muslim-Jewish relations is refracted through the lens of the Arab-Israeli conflict, says an American scholar who specializes in the topic. Typically, such Arabs have never met a Jew, nor can they imagine a time when Jews were an indigenous and […]
Shortly before Ban Ki-moon stepped down as secretary-general of the United Nations recently, he received a remarkably blunt and bitter letter from the UN ambassadors of eleven Arab countries. The envoys — representing the predominantly Sunni Muslim nations of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates […]
I spent my last few hours in Vancouver recently in Granville Island Market, one of the city’s greatest attractions, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I’ve always been attracted to food markets. During my travels abroad, I’ve visited markets in Thailand, Laos, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, France, Morocco and Israel, among other countries. […]
A heavy pall hangs over Kenneth Lonergan’s serious-minded movie, Manchester By The Sea, which opens in Canadian theaters on November 25. A contemporary family drama set mainly in a New England fishing town, it’s invariably earnest. It’s carried on the capable shoulders of Casey Affleck, who plays Lee Chandler, a janitor who’s summoned back to his […]
The Israeli-American relationship, already under strain during the Obama presidency, enters a new period of uncertainty with the election of Donald Trump. Jerusalem’s ties with Europe have also deteriorated. As a consequence, Israel seeks closer bonds with other major powers. One of these is India. Twenty-first century geopolitics are bringing Israel and India closer together. […]