Mohammed Dajani, a professor at Al Quds University in eastern Jerusalem, is the kind of Palestinian the Palestinians need more of. Once a flaming radical, he’s now a pragmatist who supports a two-state solution to defuse the Arab-Israeli conflict and espouses such eternal and precious values as reconciliation and dialogue. Driven by these laudable ideas, […]
Jan Karski, born a century ago this month, was a member of the Polish resistance movement during World War II and wrote a searing expose of Nazi crimes in German-occupied Poland. Published in the United States in 1944, when the Jewish community in Poland had already been virtually decimated, Courier from Poland: The Story of a […]
Viktor Bout claimed he was a “legitimate businessman,” but in reality, he brazenly violated United Nations arms embargoes and grew wealthy as a merchant of death in Africa. Some even claimed that Bout, a Russian, was an Al Qaeda and Taliban arms supplier. The Notorious Mr. Bout, which will be screened at the Canadian International […]
Holland presents its prettiest face to the world in April and May, when it’s ablaze with a spectacular profusion of flowers. After a long and dreary winter, spring finally arrives as Holland’s pancake-flat fields release beautiful blooms in hues ranging from red and yellow to violet and white. This enchanting annual rite of nature is […]
Buttenheim, population 3,000, is a speck of a town in southern Germany. Normally, you would drive through without paying it the slightest heed. Set amid the green pastoral countryside of the Regnitz Valley in Upper Franconia, between the historic cities of Bamberg and Nuremberg, it’s quiet, rustic and almost quaint. Despite its obscurity, Buttenheim has carved […]
This year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival runs from May 1-11 and has a roster of eclectic movies from different countries. A sampler: Yoav Halevy, in Bureau 06, profiles the Israeli organization that gathered the evidence and the witnesses in preparation for the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who supervized the […]
On August 22, 1939, when planning the invasion of Poland and contemplating the destruction of European Jewry, Adolf Hitler was reported as having said to his Wehrmacht commanders, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Well, people certainly remember it now, despite continued denials or rationalizations by Turkish authorities. The slaughter of […]
Russia, and perhaps Ukraine, have cynically manipulated antisemitism for opportunistic political ends. It’s a disgusting practice, enough to make one’s stomach turn, and it should cease immediately. Antisemitism, an age-old phenomenon deeply ingrained in Russia and Ukraine, reared its ugly head as an issue after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was driven out of office […]
Syria has crumbled into the maelstrom of civil war, but its descent into violence, anarchy and despair doesn’t deter two young Syrian activists from striving to create a secular democratic republic out of the smouldering rubble. Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and Razan Shalab al-Sham, his assistant, are consumed […]
Canada’s first Jewish federal cabinet minister, Herb Gray, has died at the age of 82. In a way, his career is the story of the coming of age of the Canadian Jewish community in the political life of the country. Many Jewish politicians have been more exciting and flamboyant – David Lewis, the long time […]