No one should be surprised in the least by Iraq’s recent decision to criminalize normalization attempts with Israel, its longtime enemy. On May 27, Iraq’s parliament passed a law criminalizing contacts between Iraqi citizens, institutions and organizations and the state of Israel, or “the Zionist entity,” as it is derisively known in Iraq. The new […]
Israeli filmmaker Michal Weits untangles her grandfather’s complex past as a state builder in Blue Box, a compelling 82-minute documentary that will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Joseph Weitz, the father of Israel’s forests, was the director of both the Jewish National Fund’s Department of Lands […]
By Julia Mintz’s estimation, more than 25,000 Jewish partisans fought German troops in the forests of Eastern Europe during World War II. Usually attached to networks of Russian and Polish partisan groups, they came from all walks of life from Poland and Lithuania. Her stirring documentary, Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and […]
Monticello is one of the finest public buildings in America. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration Independence, lived there periodically until his death in 1826. When he died, he was deeply in debt, compelling his daughter, Martha, to sell the estate, which had fallen into disrepair. […]
Wojciech Smarzowski’s unusually strong and emotive Polish-language movie, The Wedding Day, merges past and present, gliding over a ragged landscape torn by ethnocentrism and violence and healed by humanity. It will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs online and in-person from June 9-26. Shifting seamlessly between modern-day Soviet-and German-occupied Poland, it […]
During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were displaced from their homes and fields in a catastrophe they refer to as the Nakba. Displacements occurred in towns such as Jaffa, Lod and Ramle. Alon Schwartz’s eye-opening movie, Tantura, documents what happened in the Arab fishing village of Tantura, which was […]
With Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu having paid a landmark visit to Israel, Turkey and Israel have begun the arduous and lengthy process of patching up their often contentions bilateral relations. Cavusoglu, the first high-ranking Turkish official to set foot in Israel in more than a decade, arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on May 24, about […]
Six days after Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz vowed to prevent Iran from transferring advanced technology to its Shi’a proxies in the Middle East, Colonel Sayyad Khodaei, a senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, was assassinated in broad daylight in Tehran. The timing was hardly coincidental, given Israel’s under-the-radar battle against […]
Israel’s discriminatory Nation State Law, or Nationality Law, needs to be drastically amended or replaced with equitable legislation that pays due respect to its Arab and Druze citizens, who comprise one-fifth of its population. Passed in July 2018 at the initiation of Israel’s former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this controversial law is weighed heavily in […]
Israeli Public Security Minister Omer Barlev recently announced that the Jerusalem Day Flag March, an event celebrated annually by right-wing secular and religious nationalists marking Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem during the Six Day War, will take place as usual on May 29. In accordance with Barlev’s plan, the marchers will enter the Muslim Quarter […]