Israel is plagued by the curse of extremist Orthodox rabbis who reject the authority of the government and egg on their malleable followers to disobey the law and take matters into their own hands. This disturbing phenomenon is mostly associated with far right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank who fervently support Israel’s occupation and […]
Amos Hochstein, the U.S. mediator who brokered last week’s landmark maritime boundary agreement between Israel and Lebanon, claims that both sides attained “95 percent to 98 percent” of their respective objectives. Lebanon’s chief negotiator, Elias Bou Saab, the deputy Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, hailed it as “a historic event” and a “game changer” for […]
In a bold tweet that probably unsettled the Israeli government, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, Nachman Shai, has come out in favor of sending Israeli military assistance to Ukraine, which has been embroiled in a gruelling war with Russia since its unjustified invasion last February. “There is no longer any doubt where Israel should stand […]
Historically, the Middle East has not been a priority for Canadian foreign and defence policy, yet this turbulent region still matters to Canada. Although Canada, as compared to the United States, plays a relatively minor role there, Canada has been affected by events in the Mideast, from Israel’s struggle with the Palestinians to the West’s […]
Seventy five years ago this month, amid the burgeoning Cold War pitting Western capitalist democracies against the communist Soviet Union and its allies, the Hollywood blacklist emerged, upending and ruining the careers of scores of movie directors, producers, actors and screenwriters, many of whom were Jewish. As Larry Ceplair writes in The Hollywood Motion Picture […]
Israel’s maritime boundary agreement with Lebanon, approved by both sides on October 11 and ratified by the Israeli security and full cabinet on the following day, is expected to stabilize relations between warring neighbors. “This is a historic achievement that will strengthen Israel’s security, bring billions into Israel’s economy, and ensure stability on the northern […]
Pierre Anctil’s History of the Jews in Quebec (University of Ottawa Press) is, as he notes in the preface, a “response to a sustained and growing interest” among French Canadians for “a better understanding of a religious minority that had previously received very little attention from Quebecois historians despite the fact that it had played […]
Israeli women whose recalcitrant husbands refuse to grant them a divorce, or gett, are known in Hebrew as agunot. Tragically, they are figuratively chained to their husbands, unable to live normally, or restart their lives. This egregious and unjust system, presided over by Orthodox rabbis and tolerated by the Israeli government, has been in existence […]
Recently, The Jewish Journal in Los Angeles published an op-ed piece that ignited a “firestorm of controversy,” as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency succinctly noted. The article, titled “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones,” was written by Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. He rightly condemned the University of California’s […]
Only a few days ago, Israel’s proposed maritime border agreement with Lebanon seemed like a sure thing, a beacon of hope in Israel’s adversarial relationship with its northern Arab neighbor. But on October 6, a day after Yom Kippur, a sense of gloom set in following Lebanon’s sudden demand that significant modifications needed to be […]