On January 5, an American high-tech entrepreneur named Dave Bateman sent an inflammatory e-mail to 50 friends and acquaintances during which he blasted coronavirus vaccines. An anti-vaxxer, Bateman acknowledged that his message “sounds bonkers.” Little did he realize how crazy and deranged it really was. The pathologically twisted missive would cost him his job. In his […]
A year ago today, a mob stormed Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., violating the seat of American democracy in a brazen, unprecedented attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. President Donald Trump, having falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, had stolen the election from him, exhorted his followers to […]
The foreign ministers of Israel and Iran, Yair Lapid and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, clashed online a few days ago in what can only be described as a futile Twitter exchange. Israel and Iran are the bitterest of enemies due to Iran’s constant calls for Israel’s destruction and its financial and military support of proxies like Hezbollah […]
Otto Preminger’s filmography is well known to cineastes. In a career spanning continents and decades, he directed movies ranging from Laura and Anatomy of a Murder to Exodus and Advise and Consent. Some were extraordinarily good. Still others, such as Skidoo and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, were rubbish. Born in Poland […]
The first day of 2022 in Israel had an awfully familiar ring to it. During the early hours of January 1, two rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. One exploded in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Jaffa. The second landed in the water near Palmachim, south of Rishon Lezion. Israeli […]
German historian Volker Ullrich spent eight years working on his two-volume magisterial biography of Adolf Hitler, whom his colleague, Golo Mann, has rightfully labelled as a “repulsive subject.” In the first book, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, Ullrich meticulously charted his trajectory from Austrian-born demagogue to Germany’s chancellor. The volume under review, Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945 (Alfred A. […]
The Girl From Oslo, an Israeli-Norwegian co-production currently streaming on Netflix, is a topical thriller set in Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip and Oslo. Unfolding in English, Hebrew, Norwegian and Arabic in ten episodes of about 30 minutes each, it is both thoughtful and entertaining, a fairly rare combination in television dramas. Revolving around […]
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are driving in opposite directions, judging by their second direct meeting since the formation of Israel’s new government in June. On December 28, Gantz invited Abbas to his home in Rosh Ha’ayin. It was Abbas’ first meeting with a senior Israeli official in Israel […]
It has been compared to Grunewald and Dahlem, two of the most sedate suburbs in western Berlin. Rehavia, a neighborhood in West Jerusalem near the Mahane Yehuda market and the old city in East Jerusalem, reminds the German writer Thomas Sparr of both cities. To him, Rehavia is new yet familiar. When he lived in […]
Ferenc Andai, a Hungarian Jew, was plunged into purgatory on May 16, 1944, when he was press-ganged into fascist Hungary’s forced labor service. He was only 19 when, along with 6,000 other Hungarians, mostly Jews, he was consigned to a copper mine in Bor, a town in Nazi-occupied Serbia. For the next four months, he was […]