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“Émigré,” a new oratorio about Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai in the late 1930s, begins with a song by two brothers, Josef and Otto, as their steamship approaches a Chinese harbor. “Shanghai, beacon of light on a silent shore,” they sing. “Shanghai, answer these desperate cries.” The emigration of thousands of Central European and Eastern European Jews to China in the late 1930s and early 1940s — and their survival of the Holocaust — is one of World War II’s most dramatic but little-known chapters. In “Émigré,”…
Pacific Rim leaders have shown divisions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza after a two-day summit of the Apec forum, while pledging support for reform of the World Trade Organization. The 21 economies that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum – among them Russia, China, the US and Australia – did not mention either conflict in their final joint communique. Instead an accompanying chair’s statement noted the bloc had “exchanged views on the ongoing crisis in Gaza”. Days of meetings involving Apec ministers and leaders were dominated by…
The artist Ai Weiwei has defended the importance of free speech after a London gallery put his show on hold over a tweet about the Israel-Hamas war. The exhibition of new works by the Chinese dissident, which was due to open at the Lisson gallery this week, was indefinitely put on hold after a tweet posted in response to a follower’s question on X which has since been deleted. It read: “The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the…
After the Saudi and Iranian leaders finished their speeches, they left the main conference hall for a bilateral meeting. Prince Mohammed’s welcoming of Mr. Raisi amounted to a remarkable departure for the Saudi leader, who once bluntly warned Iran not to pursue expansionist policies in the region. “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia,” he said in a televised interview in 2017. “Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.” He also once likened Iran’s supreme leader,…
In the occupied Palestinian territories, there are cameras everywhere. In Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem, residents say cameras were installed by Israeli police up and down their streets, peering into their homes. One resident named Sara said she and her family “could be detected as if the cameras were just in our house … we couldn’t feel at home in our own house and had to be fully dressed all the time.” Surveillance cameras now cover the Damascus Gate, the main entrance into the old city of Jerusalem and one…
For some countries, the rekindled conflict over the Palestinian issue has also inflamed old beliefs that the United States is anti-Muslim, or at least too biased toward Israel. After years of watching Washington avoid confronting the often harsh mistreatment of Palestinians by both the Israeli government and extremist Israeli settlers, some no longer trust the United States to be a fair broker. When Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, gets to Indonesia, he is likely to face an angry public, if not anti-U.S. protests, despite his efforts to advise Israel’s military…
China was an early proponent of a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for wider talks on resolving the Palestinian question. But analysts say the situation is complicated, and it’s not clear what Beijing expects to achieve, and how it can get there. Beijing has been a supporter of the Palestinians since the Mao era and long called for a two-state solution, but it is increasingly close to Israel, and is presenting itself as a neutral party that holds steadfast to a noninterference principle. Beijing is also trying to build…
Some U.S. officials believe that, as a practical matter, Mr. Biden could reopen the office over Israeli objections. Pressed on the consulate’s fate in February, the State Department spokesman at the time, Ned Price, said: “These things take time. Obviously there are various parties that are involved in a process like this.” Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Jerusalem in the George W. Bush administration, called the years before Oct. 7 a missed opportunity. “The question can be asked, ‘Why didn’t Biden act to undo what Trump had…
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, working to maintain his second-place status in the Republican primary, said Friday that as president he would “reorient” U.S. foreign policy to give clear priority to China while downplaying national security risks posed by conflicts such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. In a speech laying out his approach, Mr. DeSantis cast Beijing as a greater threat to the United States than the Axis powers and the Soviet Union ever were because of its economic might. As commander in chief, he said, he would “prioritize the…