In February 1840, a dark shadow fell over Damascus. On February 5, Father Thomas, a Capuchin friar who had lived in the city for decades, vanished with his Muslim servant, Ibrahim Amara, after visiting the Jewish quarter. Accusers claimed that Jews had murdered both men for ritual purposes. French consul Ulysse de Ratti-Menton backed the […]
Benjamin Disraeli remains one of the most intriguing figures of Victorian era statecraft. Born into an Italian Jewish family of Sephardic background that, by his own later account, traced its roots through Spain and Venice, he entered the Church of England through baptism at age 12 after his father quarreled with the Bevis Marks synagogue. […]
In 1856, an American merchant named A. H. Gootman received an order to leave La Chaux-de-Fonds, a town in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel where he had done business for 5 years. The authorities gave one reason: Gootman was Jewish. His expulsion notice pulled a forgotten problem back into view. Washington had ratified a […]
In September 2026, Ansar Allah swept across Yemen’s Tihama coastal plain, captured the historic Red Sea port of Al-Makha, and seized Mayyun Island inside the Bab al-Mandab strait—the narrow chokepoint through which roughly 10 percent of world trade passes between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The echoes of that geography run deep […]
Contrary to the celebratory myth that the Civil Rights movement ushered in an era of seamless egalitarian brotherhood, the actual implementation of its ideals exposed bitter, ethnic rivalries even among the very groups that worked to undermine White society. On May 9, 1968, 19 educators received letters from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville governing board telling them […]
Few Reconstruction figures have faded from public memory as completely as Franklin J. Moses Jr. Moses entered South Carolina history under a cloud of scandal and left it in disgrace. As governor, he accepted bribes, traded favors, and misused public funds. His obscurity, however, conceals a more consequential story. Moses ranked among the most outspoken […]
To remember Emanuel Celler only as the congressman behind landmark immigration reform is to miss the wider program he pursued for much of his career. The Jewish congressman was a forceful proponent of foreign intervention, international institutions, refugee admissions, and a more deeply entrenched American commitment to the State of Israel. Those commitments stood behind […]
