Category: Other

He was my publicist in Manila, a devout Catholic with whom I’d become friends. I was a nominally observant Jew about to visit Israel with a delegation of Philippines-based journalists.

“If you don’t mind,” my Catholic friend asked,…

This war did not start on Purim, but as of this writing there is little reason to believe it will stop before then. But this slight deviation is made up for by the enormous historical resonances of the Purim holiday itself and the current war…

Following the Fall of Assad Regime in December 2024 and the rise of Ahmad al-Sharaa—one of the leading figures of Islamist opposition factions—to power in Damascus, Syria has undergone profound transformations in its political structure…

War, Self-Iconing, and the Eclipse of Discernment in the Days of Lent and Ramadan

We are living through days of fasting.

Christians have entered Great Lent, the slow ascent toward Pascha, toward the trembling proclamation that life persists…

As global attention remains fixated on the fallout of the leadership collapse in Tehran, a quieter but potentially existential shockwave is hitting North Africa. A dramatic transition in Iran does not merely upend the Persian Gulf; it strips…

Trump’s ‘war leader’: coherence or rupture?
What happened in a few weeks
On January 28, Trump announced that «a huge armada is heading towards Iran.» On 13 February, he stated that regime change would be “the best thing that could…

The flaw is that we haven’t armed the dissidents. The regime’s soldiers have guns and the civilians don’t. The boots on the ground we need to overthrow the regime could be Iran’s ethnic groups.

I don’t think that Israel and the US…

Few issues manage to simultaneously inflame passions and bore most Israelis quite like the fight over who controls the Western Wall. Last week, just before the attack on Iran, that fight reached a new low — the Knesset passed a preliminary…

• History rarely arranges itself according to the Jewish calendar. Empires rise and fall without consulting our parshiot. Wars are not scheduled around our festivals. The world’s great powers do not wait for our liturgy before making their…

On Saturday night, the Islamic Republic of Iran confirmed what hours of silence had already telegraphed: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic for 37 years, was killed in a targeted strike on his compound,…