Categories
Travel

Autumn Colors In Canada

There is a nip in the air as autumn arrives incrementally in Toronto. The days are shorter and cooler and the nights are chilly. The sun shines less strongly, but you can feel its pleasant warmth on your skin. This is the time of the year when the green leaves on deciduous trees gradually turn […]

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Middle East

The Roots Of The Violence

The timing of the latest outburst of Palestinian unrest in the West Bank and Israel is hardly surprising. With the peace process having shuddered to a screeching halt and the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank continuing apace, the probability of a Palestinian reaction was inevitable. I’m frankly surprised it didn’t happen much […]

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Middle East

What The Arab Spring Has Wrought

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was won by the National Dialogue Quartet, a coalition of human rights activists, labor unions, lawyers and businesses which played a significant role in guiding Tunisia to the promised land of democracy after its political upheaval in 2010 and 2011. The uprising in Tunisia spread to the rest of the […]

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Middle East

Iran Is Still A Rapacious Tiger

The nuclear agreement signed by Iran and the six major powers in July has emboldened the Iranian leadership to carry on as usual with its aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East. Under the terms of the accord, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program for 10 to 15 years in exchange for sanctions relief to […]

Categories
Arts

Beeba Boys

Beyond the blindingly white Sikh temples and sleek highrises of Vancouver, voracious gangsters sporting hip clothes, spiffy shoes and menacing revolvers strut their stuff in broad daylight and in the darkness of night. In Deepa Mehta’s bouncy and buoyant new feature film, Beeba Boys, which opens in Canada on October 16, this violent nether world […]

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Arts

The Two-State Delusion

Is the two-state solution dead? One might think so, judging by the latest violence convulsing the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Padraig O’Malley, a professor of peace and reconciliation at the University of Massachusetts, believes that the two-state solution has had its day in the sun and has been overtaken by events on the ground. […]

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Guest Voices

The Niqab — Canadian Election Issue

  This very lengthy Canadian election campaign has revolved around many topics, but it seems that some of the most emotional involve Islam and Muslims. And the way the three main political parties handle these hot-button issues may determine their relative standings on election day on October 19. There have been debates about the intake […]

Categories
Arts

The Films of Deepa Mehta

Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta wades into the quagmire of human emotion and conflict in her atmospheric, multilingual movies. Boldly taking on controversial issues, she sheds light on such topics as sectarian violence and same-sex love. A retrospective of her work, Heaven on Earth: The Films of Deepa Mehta, will be presented by the Toronto International […]

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Middle East

Reuven Rivlin’s Troubling Remarks

Speaking at yesterday’s funeral of Eitam and Naama Henkin, the young Israeli couple fatally shot by Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank on October 1, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin delivered a speech that seriously calls into question yet again Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution. In eulogizing the Henkins, Rivlin made a troubling reference to […]

Categories
Jewish Affairs

American Jews Embrace A Liberal Political Ethos

Jews in the United States have embraced a liberal political ethos since the 18th century, claims an American scholar. This ethos, developed and nurtured by German Jews, was challenged by new immigrants from Eastern Europe after the great migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but their challenge was handily rebuffed, University of […]