On June 14, 1940, on the very day German troops marched triumphantly into Paris, a freelance journalist named Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck checked into the swankiest hotel in Bucharest, the Athene Palace. She remained there for the next six months, watching events unfold in Rumania, a neutral and deeply divided Balkan country whose natural resources were […]
A place of stark and grandeur beauty, the Sinai Peninsula is one of Egypt`s great travel destinations, as I can personally attest. On my first visit in 1967, shortly after Israel’s conquest of Sinai in the Six Day War, I camped out under a brilliant starry sky illuminated by the Milky Way. On my last visit, […]
Havana, Cuba’s capital, has seen better days. A gleaming, modern, hip city more than 60 years ago, Havana fell on hard times following the 1959 revolution, when the new left-wing government, headed by Fidel Castro, deposed the corrupt pro-American Batista regime. Subjected to a U.S. economic embargo after the Cuban government nationalized private property, Cuba […]
If you think the struggle between the ousted pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and his pro-European opponents has been going on for months, think again. This is actually the second go-around. The first time was during the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, when then Prime Minister Yanukovych faced off in a presidential election against […]
Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi were not destined to meet, bond, cook together and create a budding restaurant empire. Ottolenghi and Tamimi, both born in Jerusalem in 1968, a few kilometres from each other, were raised in separate societies that could accurately be described as two solitudes. An Israeli Jew, Ottolenghi was from western […]
The grainy and seemingly innocuous photograph on the cover of Jan Tomasz Gross’ disturbing book, Golden Harvest, published by Oxford University Press, shows a group of Polish peasants standing together in a group. One of them, a woman, holds a shovel. The photograph in question, which first appeared in Poland’s largest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, on […]
Three years after its authoritarian government fell in a violent popular uprising aided and abetted by foreign intervention, Libya has descended into a state of anarchy that bodes ill for its future as a united nation. Torn by tribal rivalries, infighting among competing armed militias and a spate of assassinations and kidnappings, and weakened by the […]
I admit it: I’m addicted to House of Cards, Netflix’s polished political drama. Now in its second season, this is American television as it should be rather than the dismal wasteland it so often tends to be. I came late to House of Cards, which is smart, literate and brimming with surprising and even shocking […]
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” has issued his annual report, accusing Israel of “inhuman acts” and “apartheid,” and has called on the UN to support a “legitimacy war” against the country. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. First, because the 47-member council, which […]
I‘ve visited Israel numerous times since the summer of 1967, both in a private and professional capacity. As a wag once quipped, Israel has too much history and not enough geography, which is precisely why it’s so interesting and accessible Even seasoned travellers who know what the Jewish state has to offer usually discover something […]