The latest wave of Palestinian violence in the West Bank raises two salient questions. Is it yet another transitory manifestation of Arab anger at and frustration with Israel’s deeply-entrenched occupation? Or does it represent something far more serious — the first stirrings of a third uprising? No one can divine the future, but the recurring […]
Two estranged sisters strive to reconcile in Dorit Hakim’s spare and moody movie, Moon in the 12th House, which is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. It unfolds over several weeks at two locales in Israel — a nightclub in Tel Aviv and a pastoral moshav. Lenny (Yaara Pelzig) has become her father’s primary […]
Israel seems resigned to a renewed Iran nuclear agreement, but insists it will not be bound by it and will be free to continue its covert campaign of sabotage against Iran’s nuclear program and its personnel. Ever since its chief ally, the United States, announced its intention to return to the 2015 accord, or the […]
Until it was unceremoniously closed in 2009, the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia, Ontario, was essentially a grim warehouse for developmentally disabled youth. Barri Cohen’s half-brothers, Alfred and Louis, lived and died there under abysmal conditions. Her heart-wrenching documentary, Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children, which opens in Toronto on September 16, sheds light on an institution […]
With Israel’s November 1 general election drawing closer, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is cynically courting Israeli Arabs once again. In recent weeks, the former prime minister has opened new accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok to bring his message to Muslim and Christian Arab voters. “This is an opportunity to begin a new […]
Giles Alderson’s British thriller, Wolves of War, is thoroughly formulaic. Scheduled to be released on VOD and digital platforms on September 13, it takes place in Germany in 1945 during the dying days of World War II. The plot could not be more straightforward. British commandos are parachuted over Bavaria to rescue an American scientist […]
From 1933 until 1945, a momentous 12-year period encompassing the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and the onset of the Holocaust, the United States admitted 225,000 European Jewish refugees. This was more than any other country, but only a fraction of the Jews in jeopardy who clamored to find a safe haven in […]
September 11, 2001 was one of those glorious September days when the air felt almost autumnal and the sun was piercingly bright. I was in my cubicle on that morning writing a story about an Israeli movie director I had interviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival, an annual event I covered for the newspaper […]
Ido and Yael Zand’s “fish-out-of-water” documentary, Gut Shabbes Vietnam, is captivatingly intriguing and appealing. Now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform, which specializes in Jewish and Israeli topics, it is mostly set in Ho Chi Minh City, which, until Vietnam’s unification in 1975, was known as Saigon. The film opens in 2006 in Jerusalem as […]
The displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel, an event known as the nakba, has been a topic of international concern for more than seven decades now. During and after this upheaval, close to 850,000 Jews in the Arab world and Iran left or were compelled to leave their homes. […]