Port-au-Prince following the January 12 earthquake

It is truly a wonder to observe how the world has opened its purse to the people of Haiti following the devastating January 12 earthquake that killed up to 200,000 people and has left hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute. What… Read full post »

 
The epicenter of European Jew-hatred?
Malmö, Sweden

The recent annual report by the Jewish Agency of Israel on global anti-Semitism contains few surprises. However, one country stands out as being particularly wicked: Sweden. What?, you might ask. How has neutral Sweden, the land of/… Read full post »

 
Children are the first victims in Haiti - and everywhere else
(Source: World Food Program)

The ongoing humanitarian disaster in Haiti has confronted international aid organizations with an insoluble task: providing millions of people with food and other supplies in a country with a shat… Read full post »

 
Emanise Joseph and her month-old son Emerson
(Source: Carin Wint for UNFPA)

It should be obvious to everyone by now that children are suffering the most in the current earthquake disaster in Haiti. But one section of the population is facing a special set of challenges: some 63,000 pre… Read full post »

  
The remains of the town of Léogane, at the
epicenter of the Haitian earthquake

Most people usually think of Africa solely as a recipient of foreign aid, but several African nations have reached deep into their pockets and pledged contributions to the ongoing relief eff… Read full post »

 
A healthy Haitian baby boy named "Israel" is born in an
IDF field hospital in Port-au-Prince on January 17, 2010

Call it fate, call it a virtue born of necessity, but Jews have always been experts in spontaneously banding together and helping people out in times of trouble. The disastrou… Read full post »

 
Haitian mud pies

It sounds like a bad joke, but the stories you’ve been hearing are true: poor Haitians actually do eat pies made of dirt. This staple food is not made from ordinary street mud, but rather from a yellowish soil taken from the country’s central highlands. In g… Read full post »

Mauritanian women have other problems to deal with as well,
including a literacy rate of just 43.4%

There’s finally some more good news in the struggle against female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa: Just weeks after Uganda banned the procedure, the thirty-four member Forum for Is… Read full post »

 
Ugandan men wait in line to be circumcised

(source: Science Guardian) 

Routine male circumcision goes at least as far back as Abraham and simply refuses to die. In fact, a World Health Organization report from 2007 urging “that male circumcision now be recognized as an… Read full post »

 
Peshawar: Afghan refugee family in UNHCR camp
(source: afghan-web.com)

Ever since they planted their first "boots on the ground" in the fall of 2001, the US and NATO have been selling their occupation of Afghanistan on a foundation of hope ("Operation Enduring Freedom"). But the farther y… Read full post »

News stories last fall about a proposed law threatening Ugandan gays with life imprisonment and even execution have cast a sinister shadow across this troubled East African nation. Under the proposed "Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009," family members and friends of gay people could be impr/… Read full post »

 
Liya Kebede plays Somali model
and FGM activist Waris Dirie in Desert Flower

Some stories are too terrible to tell. But sometimes the terror they relate makes the telling all the more urgent.

Waris Dirie's memoir Desert Flower is just such a story. It became a runaway bestseller after it/… Read full post »

Congolese rape victim Honorata Barinjibanwa (18)
(Source: NYT)

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the biggest war you've never heard about. With at least six million dead and up to 1,500 new victims added each day, along with untold millions of injured and displaced, it rep… Read full post »

This has been a bad summer for women in Africa – particularly for those who demand the right to dress the way they want. Back in July, journalist and UN employee Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was arrested at a Khartoum cafe along with twelve other women and charged with wearing pants, a… Read full post »

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

Irving Kristol, one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals for the past six decades, died on September 18 from complications due to lung cancer at age eighty-nine. Among his many contributions to political thought and social policy, he may be b… Read full post »

You don't have to be Jewish to know that every once in a while you need to make some changes in your life. The only difference is that we've actually got a day when we make these changes happen.

In America, people usually refer to the festival of Rosh… Read full post »

They certainly took their time about it. On September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally issued a formal apology on behalf of his government to scientist Alan Turing, who had been convicted of “gross indecency” and publicly shunned more than fifty year… Read full post »