I have fond memories of the Yarkon River. On one of my first dates with the Israeli woman who would become my wife, we sat under a grove of fragrant eucalyptus trees on the bank of the Yarkon in Tel Aviv, talked and admired the lush scenery. It was early April and the weather was […]
I read Gerald Durrell’s autobiographical novel, My Family and Other Animals, long ago, but its masterful portrayal of a British family on the Greek island of Corfu in the second half of the 1930s remained vividly fixed in a corner of my mind. So I was glad to learn that The Durrells in Corfu, a […]
It’s one of the most secretive and repressive societies on the face of the earth. Welcome to Saudi Arabia. The totalitarian nature of the Saudi regime is graphically exposed in Saudi Arabia Uncovered, a British documentary now available on the Netflix streaming network. The footage was shot by Saudi dissidents and British photographers with hidden […]
On July 14, Bastille Day, a terrorist drove a truck into a crowd in Nice, France, killing 84 people. In a particularly notorious incident two weeks later, two men stormed a church in Normandy before slitting the throat of an elderly priest. In the streets of Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, extremists are recruiting […]
Since the collapse of the short-lived ceasefire in Syria two weeks ago, Syria and its ally, Russia, have been mercilessly and indiscriminately pounding the besieged eastern sector of Aleppo, the last major Syrian city still under the partial control of anti-government rebels. The defenceless 275,000 civilians living there have been subjected to constant aerial attacks, with […]
Norman Bethune is Canada’s gift to China. A physician who devoted body and soul to the cause of Chinese independence, Bethune is probably the most famous Canadian ever to set foot in China. A veteran of World War I and the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered his services to China in 1938 as it struggled […]
Israel’s web of settlements in the West Bank, a barrier blocking a much-needed two-state solution, are causing problems for Israel yet again in the international community. Earlier this month, the United States — Israel’s chief ally and benefactor — and the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators condemned the Israeli settlement project. Israel has been […]
The killings in Syria go on, despite efforts to end the carnage. The country’s largest city, Aleppo, lies in ruins. Millions have fled the country. What makes this such an intractable problem? Syria is a very complex country, a kaleidoscope of rival ethnicities and sects. If history is a guide, this is a state that […]
It’s a little-known fact. France, next to Israel, has the greatest number of Jews and Muslims living side by side in any country in the world. France is home to four to six million Muslims and 500,000 to 600,000 Jews. Since a significant proportion of its Muslim and Jewish citizens hail from the same countries […]
It’s amazing to think that it has been 80 years since the famous Battle of Cable Street, which took place on October 4, 1936 in London’s East End, where most of England’s Jews lived at the time. I say this because when I began researching my PhD dissertation on London Jews and British Communism in […]