JULY 27, 2024
It’s not easy being Jewish. It never was. For good reason, major Jewish holidays, so it goes, follow the same narrative arc: They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat. Yet Jews’ collective subconscious, haunted by historical persecution, may need updating to account for a more accommodating climate. To loosely paraphrase a Zionist proverb, there seem to be plenty of unconditional friends for a people unconditioned to having Continue Reading...
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that extremist government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich continue to put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and are threatening to bring down the government if he agrees to the suggestion for a truce put forward by US President Joe Biden on Friday afternoon, calling it an Israeli proposal. Washington officials are calling it the “last chance” for an agreement. Ben-Gvir Continue Reading...
In her testimony and especially in her cross-examination, writer/director/actor Stormy Daniels became the hero that America needs right now. She was on the stand for the prosecution of Donald Trump, a rapist who is also a former president, for falsifying business records to hide the hush money he paid to Daniels for a sexual encounter in 2006. Over the course of two days, first under questioning from Manhattan prosecutor Susan Continue Reading...
It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12. “These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Continue Reading...
“Biden Biden, Whattaya Say? How Many Kids You Kill Today?” This was one of the militant chants of hundreds of students on May 1 at UCLA. I went to the university after covering the May Day rally in Hollywood, arriving around 4:00 p.m., and this is what I witnessed at the frontlines of the class struggle in Westwood: I made my way on foot across the sprawling campus towards the epicenter of the unfolding action, the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Continue Reading...
"A specter is haunting the world — the specter of American isolation. Signs of a retrenchment start with Congress’ reluctance to authorize additional military assistance for Ukraine to defend it from a revanchist Russia. An aid bill finally made it to Biden’s desk for a signature this week, but it took the GOP-led House months to pass their version of the legislation, with many Republican leaders claiming the U.S. should focus instead on Continue Reading...
"LAST NOVEMBER, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) awarded Donald Trump its highest honor, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion. Nine days later, the former president dined with two of America’s most prominent antisemites, rapper Kanye West and white nationalist provocateur Nick Fuentes. Noting the proximity of the two events, The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner asked ZOA president Morton Klein an uncomfortable Continue Reading...
The US House of Representatives voted $26 billion for Israel on Saturday to reward it for its ongoing war crimes against Palestinians. Some 58 members voted against the measure, including 37 Democrats. It was the House of Representatives’ most decisive vote of confidence in genocide since the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The US national debt is $34.5 trillion, up $2 trillion since last summer, against a gross domestic Continue Reading...
Republican presidential nominee and a shit-filled garbage bag with a bewigged, rotting rump roast on top, Donald Trump, loves to promise that violence and horror is coming unless he is elected. Forget that actual horror and violence happened while he was president. Oh, no. We're supposed to look back at the riots and disease four years ago and nod, like delusional fucks, that, yes, we were better off then than we are now. In every Continue Reading...
"It’s an Oscar tradition: a serious political speech pierces the bubble of glamour and self-congratulation. Warring responses ensue. Some proclaim the speech an example of artists at their culture-shifting best; others an egotistical usurpation of an otherwise celebratory night. Then everyone moves on. Yet I suspect that the impact of Jonathan Glazer’s time-stopping speech at last Sunday’s Academy Awards will be significantly more lasting, with Continue Reading...
"My father was something of a lapsed Jew. An ardent atheist, he thought all religion, including Judaism, was a dangerous anachronism. He couldn’t speak a lick of Yiddish, unlike his Russian-born father, and disliked most Kosher food. Borscht Belt humor was lost on him . . . " Continue Reading...
A Filmic Feast for the Eyes: The Gastronomy of L’Amour Writer/director Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things,a tasty full-course movie meal that serves up spectacular cuisine and rarefied romance, is an acquired taste. For popcorn munching multiplex denizens conditioned by frenetic superhero histrionics and antics, the 135-minute Taste will likely unspool at an excruciatingly slow pace, and requires reading dreaded subtitles, to boot. Likewise, Continue Reading...
The 32nd Pan African Film & Arts Festival, America’s largest Black-themed filmfest, took place Feb. 7 – Feb. 19 in Los Angeles. During Black History Month PAFF annually screens movies ranging from Hollywood studio productions and Hallmark Channel TV-movies to indies, foreign films, documentaries, low budget productions, shorts, animation, etc. Films span the spectrum from Oscar nominees to hard-to-find gems from Africa, the Caribbean, America Continue Reading...
The Biden administration launched 85 air strikes on Friday against small bases of the Party of God Brigades (Kata’ib Hizbullah), an Iraqi Shiite militia active in Iraq and Syria. The organization is likely the culprit in Sunday’s drone strike against the Tower 22 US base in the far north of Jordan on the border with Syria. The communique issued by something calling itself “the Islamic Resistance in Iraq” said that the strike had been in Continue Reading...
It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and that means it's time for the racist dickscabs of the right to trot out that one quote from "I Have a Dream" they use to attempt to colonize King's power and message. And while they are still talking about judging people by "the content of their character" as a way of avoiding how King was actually saying that can happen after you deal with all the bigoted shit woven into the filthy fabric of Continue Reading...
