The forthcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival is presenting two documentaries about former Jewish communities in the Arab world. Remember Baghdad and Libya: The Last Exodus will be respectively screened on May 9 and 11 and on May 7, 8 and 9. Iraq, a nation torn by strife and violence, once had one of the most distinguished Jewish […]
President Barack Obama has promised to “systematically degrade” and “ultimately destroy” the Sunni jihadist organization Islamic State, and now he must make good on his ambitious pledge. It’s a tall and complex order and it won’t be easy to fulfill. Indeed, Obama may fail. “This isn’t going to be fireworks over Baghdad,” said Obama in […]
U.S. President Barack Obama finds himself on the sharp horns of a dilemma following the barbaric beheading of James Foley, an American freelance journalist, on Aug. 19. Foley was the second American reporter since Daniel Pearl to be killed by crazed Islamic radicals. Foley was murdered by Islamic State, an extremist, bloodthirsty outfit bent on […]
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is America’s Frankenstein. The United States empowered him, and now it is trying to get rid of him. Plucked from obscurity by Washington in 2006 to succeed Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Iraq’s next prime minister, Maliki, a Shiite, has been a thorn in its side ever since. Volatile and mercurial, Maliki is currently […]
The current crisis in Iraq is yet another replay of the historic power struggle and thinly-veiled animosities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Middle East. When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist Sunni group known as ISIS — invaded western and northern Iraq earlier this month, it enunciated its intentions […]
By the late 1940s, Iraq was home to 180,000 Jews, of whom 90,000 lived in Baghdad, the capital. It was an ancient community whose origins could be traced back two millenniums. But by 1951, Iraq was virtually bereft of Jews, with only 6,000 still remaining in the country. What happened? The simple answer: Israel. The […]
A few days ago, the United Nations released a grim report concerning the escalating sectarian violence in Iraq, an oil-rich Arab state that has know little peace and quiet since the U.S. invasion 11 years ago this month. By its count, 703 Iraqis — 564 civilians and 139 members of the security forces — were […]