Categories
Arts

Netanyahu At War

Michael Kirk’s Frontline documentary on the dysfunctional relationship between U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Netanyahu at War, will be aired by the PBS network on January 5 at 9 p.m. (check local listings). It’s a timely, hard-hitting and important film about two leaders whose personal philosophies and world views diverge […]

Categories
Guest Voices

Malaysia Unfriendly To Israel and Jews

  On Dec. 25, the Malaysian government announced it had accepted the withdrawal of two Israeli windsurfers from the International Sailing Federation world youth sailing championships, which was due to begin on Dec. 27. Malaysia’s Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told the Malay Mail Online website that Malaysia, which does not have diplomatic relations […]

Categories
Middle East

Treat Jewish Terrorists Like Terrorists

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon has disclosed that Israel’s security services have adopted stringent measures to ensure that a despicable incident like last summer’s firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma will never happen again. “We have taken draconian steps to prevent another terror attack,” he said on December 26 […]

Categories
Middle East

Syrian Peace Plan Can Easily Unravel

Is war-torn Syria finally on the cusp of peace? That’s the burning question following the unanimous passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution supporting a political solution of the nearly five-year-old civil war in Syria, which has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 civilians and soldiers. The resolution, adopted by a 15-0 margin […]

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Arts

A Cornucopia Of Books …

It’s the end of another year and the dawn before a new one. You’re off from work and you’ve got some spare time on your hands. What better way to relax than to immerse yourself in some books. Here are a few newly-published books you may enjoy over the holiday season. On my first trip […]

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Guest Voices

BDS Movement Gains Traction On U.S. Campuses

Like a snowball rolling downhill, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement aimed at Israel keeps growing — especially among those who teach at universities. That doesn’t bode well for future support for the Jewish state, since a whole generation of students — tomorrow’s politically-active citizens and voters — are increasingly exposed to the dogma of […]

Categories
Arts

The Liberation Of Bergen-Belsen

When I received a copy of Mark Celinscak’s book, Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp (University of Toronto Press), I was eager to read it. My parents, you see, are Holocaust survivors who were transported to Bergen-Belsen in the waning months of World War II and […]

Categories
Travel

Cuba Si!

I knew I was flying south, toward blissfully warm weather, when I looked out of the airplane window and saw cotton-candy cloud formations, the kind you see in Canada during the summer months. My wife and I were heading to Varadero, Cuba, having booked a one-week all-inclusive package at the Melia Marina Hotel. The fluffy […]

Categories
Arts

The Greatest Jewish Builder Of All Time

Herod the Great, the Jewish ruler of Roman-occupied Judea for 32 years, is considered the greatest builder in Jewish history. He expanded the Second Temple, built the Temple Mount and the walls surrounding it and constructed the fortresses of Masada and Herodium. Marvels of engineering, these structures were among the most magnificent of their time. […]

Categories
Arts

Son Of Saul

Amid the unspeakable inferno of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi extermination camp in Poland, a Hungarian Jewish forced laborer named Saul watches impassively as a new transport of Jews from Hungary rumbles in ominously. It’s the spring of 1944 and the Holocaust is in full swing. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary have been singled […]