Israel and Syria, the bitterest of enemies, have been locked in a state of war for more than seven decades now, notwithstanding several diplomatic attempts by the United States and Turkey in recent years to broker a peace agreement. The last such effort, initiated by the U.S., took place secretly from April 2009 to March […]
Israel’s undeclared war against Iran is intensifying. In the past month, Israel has carried out a series of attacks against Iran and Iranian interests in Syria, Iran’s chief Arab ally. Iran, in turn, has threatened a harsh armed response. On May 22, Israel assassinated a top-ranking officer of the Quds Force, an arm of the […]
Israel has been condemned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council yet again. On June 13, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, chaired by Navi Pillay, presented its 18-page report to the Human Rights Council, a body consisting of 47 countries. The commission, set up after last year’s Gaza war, […]
Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, was a man of peace and war. In his six years and three months in office, from 1977 to 1983, he signed a peace treaty with Egypt, for which he won a Nobel Prize, and ordered the invasion of Lebanon, for which he was widely condemned. Levi Zini’s absorbing […]
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006, entered office as a hardliner and left as something of a dove. His astonishing transformation is chronicled in Dror Moreh’s biopic, Sharon, which will be available on the ChaiFlicks streaming service from June 15 onward. Sharon is one of the films in its new series, The […]
Ehud Olmert was Israel’s prime minister for a relatively short time during a consequential era in its turbulent history. A hawk who reinvented himself into a dove on key security issues, he was in office from 2006 to 2009. His predecessor was Ariel Sharon. His successor was Benjamin Netanyahu. During these eventful years, Israel fought […]
David Hoffert’s cinematic tribute to the late musician and composer Leo Spellman, The Rhapsody, is a reminder that adversity need not be an obstacle to creativity. His uplifting documentary will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started on June 9 and runs until June 26. A Polish Jew from the town […]
Starring a talented all-Arab cast, Eran Kolirin’s subtle satire, Let It Be Morning, unfolds in a remote Israeli Arab village before and after a wedding. Based on a novel by Sayed Kashua, it draws a portrait of the current Arab condition in Israel. It will be presented at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started […]
Klara Trencsényi was transfixed by Sarah Cohen. “Sarah’s image wouldn’t let me rest,” she says in her documentary, The Missing Tale, which will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Cohen, one of the last Jews of Cochin, a town in south-west India, reminded Trencsényi of her Catholic […]
Jews in Eastern Europe once inhabited remote villages known as shtetls. There they lived in splendid isolation for hundreds of years, observing the customs and folkways of their ancestors and speaking Yiddish and the languages of the local region. The Nazis all but destroyed this vibrant and unique culture in just a few short years. […]