The 20,000 demonstrators who rallied in Washington last weekend to end the killing in Darfur might not have broken any attendance records, but they did create something more important: the beginnings of a new language and a new calculus in American foreign policy-making. No longer will it be possible for this nation’s leaders to say…
It was a glorious day as the Circle Line boat looped past the Statue of Liberty and docked at Ellis Island for the April 19 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards 2006 ceremony. “This is a symbolic journey into the past,” said Cynthia Garrett, superintendent of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island. “Since…
A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned this week that any strike against his country by the United States would be met with a severe missile attack against Israel. History suggests, however, that Tehran’s most menacing threat is its vow to carry out retaliatory terrorist strikes against American interests around the world. In…
Once again, our genial genius, Stanley Siegelman, returns to Der Vinkl with his incomparable ability to unearth a rare bit of news and then make his poetic commentary on the event in both English and Yiddish. This time the news is about an Asiatic elephant that had been conceived through artificial insemination at Jerusalem’s Biblical…
WASHINGTON — American-led efforts to block aid to the Hamas-led Plaestinian government are forcing the Islamic fundamentalist movement to backtrack on several fronts, but international support for the financial siege appears to be waning. With the Palestinian Authority facing bankruptcy and unable to pay salaries to government employees, Hamas is quietly seeking ways to form…
“We are traveling to a distant land, Our father has the best plan. To answer the age-old question: Where can Jews live without trouble? Past Siberia, next to China: Birobidzhan.” I wrote these lyrics after my first trek to the Jewish Autonomous Region in 2000. I had gone to film this fascinating but little-known piece…
The decade-long feud between two sons of the Satmar grand rebbe has long been cast as a battle from which one brother will emerge as the movement’s new spiritual leader. But since the rebbe’s death last week, it has become increasingly clear that neither brother plans to back down, paving the way for a likely…
In a historic photo that serves as an icon of Orthodox settlers’ political clout, Menachem Felix is held aloft by supporters, his face staring at the camera in amazed joy next to an oversized Israeli flag. Thirty years after that picture was taken, Felix decided not to put a flag on his house in the…
Efraim Halevy is no dove. The bluntly speaking former Mossad chief, a key adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon who supported harsh retaliation against Palestinian terror, is a supporter of the Iraq War who issues dark warnings about the dramatic increase in Europe’s Muslim population. So, there were more than a few puzzled looks…
WASHINGTON — Among the tens of thousands of people who gathered in Washington Sunday to press for greater intervention in Darfur, there were a number of speakers known for garnering accolades, including Oscar-winner George Clooney, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Olympic speed-skating gold medalist Joey Cheek. Then there was Ruth Messinger, a woman who is…
As American Jewish leaders were publicly calling on the Bush administration this week to do more to end the killing in Darfur, behind the scenes they were quietly pressing the Israeli government about its treatment of 160 imprisoned Sudanese refugees. Over the past year, dozens of Sudanese asylum-seekers have crossed into Israel illegally, particularly after…
