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Middle East

The October 7 Attacks — A Turning Point In The Middle East

October 7, a day of infamy, has been seared into the hearts and minds of Israeli and Diaspora Jews, a catastrophe never to be forgotten. If October 6 seemed like a normal day in Israel, October 7 was radically and tragically different. Preceded by a massive rocket barrage, it was soaked by the blood of […]

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Commentary

A Palestinian Protest Denies Israel’s Right To Statehood

Two days before the first anniversary of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Palestinians and their motley group of supporters gathered in downtown Toronto to celebrate the cause of Palestinian “resistance” to Israel’s very existence. Chanting incendiary slogans such as “Israel will soon be gone, free, free Palestine,” and waving Palestinian and Lebanese […]

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Television

Nobody Wants This

The title of Nobody Wants This, a romantic comedy now streaming on Netflix, is ambiguous. It revolves around a liberal American rabbi who falls head-over-heels in love with a secular woman who happens to be a Christian but who is lukewarm toward organized religion. Given the interfaith nature of their relationship, viewers are bound to […]

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Middle East

The Middle East On The Precipice

The Middle East was on the abyss following two consequential events of immense magnitude — Israel’s incursion into Lebanon on September 30 and Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel less than a day later. In what was described as a limited and targeted operation, Israel invaded Lebanon for the third time in 46 years, following […]

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Middle East

Iran Faces A Moment Of Truth After Nasrallah’s Demise

Iran faces a defining moment of truth following Israel’s audacious assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on September 27. Nasrallah’s untimely death, a major castastrophe for Hezbollah, was an extremely severe blow to Iran. By all accounts, his removal from the scene elicited shock, anger and sorrow in Tehran. In one devastating stroke, […]

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Television

The Forgotten Expulsion

In the wake of Hamas’ October 7 massacre in southern Israel, pro-Hamas Palestinian demonstrators and their supporters condemned Israel as a “colonial settler state.” This false and outrageous claim runs counter to a glaringly inconvenient fact: Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and lived in the Land of Israel long before the emergence of […]

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Middle East

Nasrallah’s Assassination — A Game-Changing Event

With the game-changing death of its long-serving secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah has been dealt a devastating blow in its long-running armed confrontation with Israel. He was killed on September 27 after Israeli aircraft dropped bunker-busting bombs on Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut. Four to six high-rise residential buildings were […]

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Middle East

Pro-Iranian Iraqi Militias Target Israel

Israel is fighting a two-front war along its southern and northern borders, battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are Iranian proxies. But far in the east, in Iraq, Israel faces another enemy in the guise of the Islamic Resistance movement, a member of Iran’s fiercely anti-Israel Axis of […]

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Middle East

A Diplomatic Solution May Be Elusive In Lebanon

Israel and Hezbollah have boxed themselves into a tight corner as the cross-border conflict in Lebanon and the Galilee intensifies and approaches the magnitude of an all-out war. In the past few days, both sides have hammered each other ferociously and relentlessly, with the scale of the fighting having reached the level of the 2006 […]

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Books

Winter Light: The Memoir Of A Child Of Holocaust Survivors

When I learned that Grace Feuerverger had written her memoir, I was intrigued. What could she possibly say? I wondered. Full disclosure: I have known Grace, my oldest friend’s sister, sporadically since 1958, when she was eight years old. Yet in virtually every respect, Grace — a quiet, soft-spoken and reclusive girl — was practically […]