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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
With the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in Germany approaching, German eyes will be fixed on its leading light, the theologian Martin Luther, who was born in 1483 and died in 1546. Luther was a Christian rebel who, in 1517, questioned papal authority and thereby touched off a revolution in Christianity. As revered as […]
Donald Trump, the outspoken, anti-establishment Republican Party presidential candidate, has rightly been denounced for proposing that Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. It’s an offensive proposal that demonizes an entire community, panders to base instincts and runs counter to contemporary American democratic values. Trump, the master of politically incorrect dogma, issued his […]
Henry Kissinger had a finger in virtually every pie when he was U.S. secretary of state, managing the foreign affairs file of the world’s preeminent superpower. “There cannot be a crisis next week,” he once joked in a sardonic moment of levity. “My schedule is already full.” Kissinger was indeed a busy bee. He negotiated […]