The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, an annual fixture of the Toronto International Film Festival, opens at the TIFF Lightbox on Feb. 27 with The Square and closes on March 6 with Highway of Tears. In all, eight movies will be screened. Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, which is available on Netflix, charts the zig-zag course of […]
On Feb.7, the Spanish government announced it will offer citizenship to Sephardi Jews around the world whose ancestors were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. Spain’s justice minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, disclosed that legislation enshrining this historic decision will be passed within months, if not weeks. More than 500 years after tens of thousands of Jews […]
The embattled president of Syria, Bashar Assad, claims the uprising destroying his nation is really an existential battle between the forces of secular nationalism and global jihadism. He has a point. The rebellion, which broke out three years ago come March, began as a peaceful protest movement demanding an end to arbitrary one-party Baathist rule, […]
Laura Z. Hobson’s claim to fame is Gentleman’s Agreement, a disturbing novel about antisemitism in postwar America. Serialized in Cosmopolitan in 1946 and published in 1947 in book form, it was a blockbuster, selling 1.6 million copies. Adapted for the screen by the playwright Moss Hart and directed by Elia Kazan, it starred Gregory Peck […]
Hany Abu-Assad’s taut thriller, Omar, gives a viewer a bird’s eye view of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, now in its 47th year, and the Palestinians’ resistance to it. An Academy Award nominee for best foreign picture, Omar unfolds in a Palestinian village that has been divided by a high, ugly concrete wall. Part […]
The future status of the West Bank is a bone of contention in contemporary Israel, dividing friends and families along diametrically opposing lines. Some Israelis would give up all or parts of it in the interests of achieving a peace treaty with the Palestinians, who comprise the vast majority of its population. Still others, a […]
Most Americans would scratch their heads in puzzlement if asked what role the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, plays in the powerhouse American economy. The Fed, as it’s colloquially called, is indeed extremely important — controlling the money supply, setting interest rates, regulating banks and, in general, keeping a watchful eye on things. Formed […]
President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Arab world, next month. Before he leaves Washington, D.C., he should read Karen Elliott House’s substantive book, On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — And Future, published by Alfred A. Knopf. One of the most penetrating works […]
John Kerry should be commended for his herculean efforts to break the Gordian knot of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not since the days of Henry Kissinger and James Baker has a U.S. secretary of state done so much, so quickly, to try to advance the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Since the 1967 […]
The Michigan State University geographer Harm de Blij, in the 2012 edition of his book, Why Geography Matters, writes about an “Islamic Front” in sub-Saharan Africa that stretches from Sudan, bordering the Red Sea in the east, to Sierra Leone on the Atlantic Ocean in the west. And the line cuts many countries, including Nigeria, Africa’s […]