Isaac Zablocki is the director of film programs at The JCC in Manhattan. “Five Hours From Paris” is an Israeli film, inspired by classic French New Wave cinema, that tells the story of a taxi driver with a fear of flying and a Russian immigrant who is planning to move to Toronto. When “Five Hours…
The sexism endemic to Israeli corridors of power has finally made it to front-page news. The all-male commission investigating the May 31 Gaza flotilla incident, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Yaakov Turkel, has been ordered by the Supreme Court to add a woman to its ranks. Turkel, however, has thus far responded by refusing…
Earlier this spring Gorillaz, a British “virtual” rock sensation headed by Blur front-man Damon Albarn, canceled a show at Tel Aviv’s Pic.nic festival, along with British dance punk outfit Klaxons and American alt-rock pioneers The Pixies. Albarn never explicitly stated the reason for the cancellation, but it was widely speculated that the decision was linked…
It seems that musical hasbarah — Israel advocacy — is the new in thing, after the flotilla “We Con The World,” an angry — and some say offensive — caricature of the flotilla activists, went viral on YouTube. It’s still online here and has received more than 2 million hits. Now, a composition student at…
Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer, Israeli minister of trade, industry and labor, is the senior leader of the Labor Party’s hawkish wing, a tough-as-nails ex-general and currently the party’s grand old man. Born and raised in Iraq, he was a career soldier from 1954 until 1984, the first Israeli liaison to the South Lebanese Christian militias, military…
If the media firestorm surrounding Israel’s raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla last week didn’t do it for you, online video game developer Kongregate gives you a chance to get in on the action. Kongregate recently released a four-button, overhead-view action game aptly called “Flotilla Raid.” Players of the online game have to navigate an unarmed…
I’m very disappointed in Feministing. One of the leading feminist blogs out there, usually a courageous voice in calling for justice and fairness, has come out on the wrong side of the Helen Thomas story. I would have expected some wisdom and understanding, a bit of passion in the fight against hatred, bigotry, and oppression….
One of the debates simmering just below the surface this week is the question of whether Israel is a strategic asset or burden to the United States. Pro-Israel advocates have maintained for decades that it is an asset, and a darned valuable one. This view has been emphatically restated in the past few days by,…
