Most of all, though, the girl in the photos made me long for beauty. All we think we know of Palestine is its ugliness. Palestine is a place of despairing grey broken only by the red of blood and flame. But the girl in Gaza was beautiful in the way all children are beautiful, and more […] More »

I really, really hope it is obvious to everyone that “the Holocaust was a bad thing” is a sentiment we can all agree on (if not, you might be reading the wrong magazine). It is certainly something that Prime Minister Stephen Harper believes in strongly. Strongly enough, apparently, to imply that the Holocaust is enough […] More »

Sitting cross-legged in a circle, a group of about 20 Israeli school children are chatting excitedly under the shade of tall pine trees one sunny afternoon in March. A few meters away, the names of hundreds of Canadians are prominently displayed on row upon row of beige, ceramic plaques. Montreal. Toronto. Winnipeg. Vancouver. Welcome to […] More »

On March 16, 2003, an Israel Defence Forces bulldozer was demolishing houses in the Rafah refugee camp in Palestine. Seven western Palestinian solidarity activists were, through means of non-violent intervention, trying to disrupt the work of the IDF and prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes. What exactly happened that day is unclear (and the subject […] More »

Could surfing really help bring Israelis and Palestinians together? Grant Shilling meets the beach bums, peace activists, and ex-soldiers who believe it’s possible Surf’s up in Ashkelon. So I hop on the train in Tel Aviv bound for the southern Israeli city with my surfboard bag in tow. The bag, stencilled with Boards Not Bombs, […] More »

While most Torontonians know about TIFF—the hugely publicized Toronto International Film Festival—very few have heard about TPFF, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival. Unlike TIFF, the TPFF isn’t attended by Hollywood stars, doesn’t receive much mainstream media coverage and has no paid staff. Despite these challenges, TPFF is an ambitious film fest that features over 40 […] More »

[Editor’s note: This Magazine columns editor Eva Salinas will be reviewing films and rounding up news about the Toronto International Film Festival over the next week. Visit us online next week for more of her dispatches.] And so it begins. This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival kicked-off last night, a little later […] More »

Two elections. Two women. Two killings. One legacy? Not really. One victim became a world icon, while the other barely registered on the books of the international media. Such are the divergent post-mortem fates of Neda Agha Soltan and Zeina al-Miri. The former was shot in the streets of Tehran during post-election disturbances in June. […] More »

The September-October 2009  issue of This Magazine should now be in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on your local newsstand coast-to-coast this week. All the articles in the issue will be made available online in the weeks ahead, though, so keep checking back […] More »