Features
Dan Petrenko brings a youthful enthusiasm to his role as the new WJT artistic director
By BERNIE BELLAN At the age of 24, Dan Petrenko became the youngest artistic director of any of the member theaters of the Canadian Professional Association of Canadian Theaters (PACT) when he was hired this past November as the new artistic director of Winnipeg Jewish Theatre.
Dan was actually in London, England, having just moved there two and a half months previously, when he was contacted by a recruiter for the WJT, who asked him whether he might like to meet with the WJT board (via Zoom) to discuss the possibility of his becoming the new WJT artistic director.
The WJT’s previous artistic director, Ari Weinberg, announced in June 2022 that, after seven seasons as WJT artistic director, he would be moving on to a new position in Ontario.
Now in its 35th season the WJT has had only five artistic directors prior to Dan Petrenko: Bev Aronovitch, Kayla Gordon, Mariam Bernstein, Michael Nathanson, and Ari Weinberg. The WJT is the only professional theatre company in Canada dedicated to developing and producing new Jewish works.
Recently, we sat down with Dan Petrenko to discuss the path he took to his present position.
Dan was born in Israel, the son of Jewish parents who had moved from their hometown of Odessa in Ukraine.
A formative influence in his life, he says, was his grandmother, who had been a pianist in Ukraine. She had aspirations early in her life to study in a music conservatory, but the antisemitism that was pervasive in the Soviet Union prevented her from achieving that ambition. Instead, she had to travel all the way to Siberia in order to obtain training to become a pianist.
In 1991, Dan’s parents made two momentous decisions, he says: They got married and they moved to Israel, settling in Givaataim.
As Dan describes it, “For the first time in their lives, my parents felt they could be Jewish.”
Life in Israel was good for the Petrenkos, but things changed for the worse in 2006 when Israel became engaged in a major conflict in Lebanon.
Dan and his sister were enrolled in a kindergarten in Givaataim when, one day after dropping Dan and his sister off, his parents heard on the radio that a bus had exploded right next to their children’s kindergarten.
“They didn’t want to leave Israel,” Dan observes, but, like other Israelis who wanted to find someplace safer in which to raise their children, his parents decided to leave, eventually moving to Toronto.
Arriving to Toronto, however, had a paradoxical effect on the Petrenko family, Dan explains.
“In Israel you didn’t have to be Jewish; everyone was.” But coming to Toronto, with its polyglot ethnic mix, awakened a desire in the Petrenkos to embrace their Jewish heritage.
“It was in Toronto that we celebrated our first Passover seder,” Dan says. “We also started going to synagogue for the first time.”
As well, the Petrenkos started keeping kosher and observing Shabbat, something Dan says he adheres to.
Still, when I asked Dan whether he went to Jewish school in Toronto, he says he didn’t.
His first real immersion in a Jewish milieu in Canada, he explains, came when he went to a Jewish summer sleep-over camp near Toronto, called J Academy.
“It was specifically for kids from Russian-speaking Jewish backgrounds,” he explains.
In time Dan went on from being a camper at J Academy to becoming a counsellor, and eventually a senior staff member.
It was also during his high school years that Dan says he began playwriting and directing. In fact, when he was still in high school, Dan wrote a play called “Train for Two,” which was based on his own family’s experience in the Holocaust. Later, he was able to mount a successful production of that play when he was only 17 and had started his own youth theatre company called JDY Theatre.
I asked Dan from where he derived his artistic sensibility?
He answers that, as a young boy, his grandmother had taken him to the opera and to ballet, so developing an interest in theatre was a natural progression.
Even through his years at the University of Toronto, where he double majored in Theatre and International Relations, Dan remained the artistic director of JDY Theatre.
By the time the Covid epidemic began in 2020, however, Dan had moved on to become artistic director of another theatre company: Olive Branch Theatre, which is described as “a non-profit professional company dedicated to providing opportunities for new-generation artists.”
In 2022 Dan returned to university to obtain his masters degree in Theatre. That same year he directed a production of “A Night on Jewish Broadway” in the newly renovated Leah Posluns Theatre in the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre.
This past fall, Dan decided to move to London to pursue opportunities in the West End theatre district.
While in London, he received that unexpected request from a recruiter for the WJT.
It turns out that Dan already had an extensive knowledge of the WJT, as he explains: “I had written a paper on the WJT while I was in university.”
His meeting with the WJT board via Zoom must have been an impressive one for, as Dan says, “I was offered the job the same day.” (He also says he has no idea how many other people might have been considered for the job as WJT artistic director.)
By the same token, the immediate positive reception Dan received from the WJT board was reciprocated. “After meeting with the board,” he says, “I felt this was an organization I wanted to be a part of…So far I feel I’ve hit the jackpot.”
We also have a story by Myron Love about WJT’s upcoming production of “Summer of Semitism,” but we wanted to ask Dan about the play. Since he was hired after the 2022-23 playbill had been announced, Dan won’t be at the helm of the play. (It will be directed by Winnipeg’s Krista Jackson, a former associate artistic director at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.)
The play was written by Ori Black, a young Torontonian. “It’s been in development for six years,” Dan explains.
“It’s a play about belonging – or not belonging,” he continues. “Is it only in a time of crisis that we think we’re part of the Jewish community?”
The play is set in an overnight summer camp (Camp Mazel), where four friends who grew up together and who are now tasked with running the camp, find they have to deal with an unexpected challenge having to do with antisemitism. (We won’t reveal the exact nature of what that challenge is.)
Tension develops among the four camp leaders stemming from the fact that one of them isn’t Jewish.
As Dan puts it: “They’re all brothers, but the question is: ‘Who belongs…who really fits in in a time of crisis?”
The show is intended to provoke a wider discussion of antisemitism and how we respond to it. Dan notes that following two of the shows – on April 30 and May 4, audience members will be invited to participate in a talk-back session.
Tickets for “The Summer of Semitism” can be obtained from the WJT, either online at https://www.wjt.ca or by calling 204-477-7478.
Features
The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think
By Dan Perry (Posted March 27, 2026)
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
This week, an Israeli Knesset member said something that should have been shocking, horrifying and unanimously condemned.
“I stand behind IDF soldiers in every situation,” said Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of the ultranationalist Otzmah Yehudit Party. Even if the “collateral damage is children or women — it does not matter to me.”
“In Jenin, there are no innocent civilians,” he added. “In Jenin, there are no innocent children.”
Kroizer was referring to a genuine tragedy: The killing of almost an entire Palestinian family by Israel undercover forces on March 15, near the village of Tammun. The forces opened fire on the family’s car as they returned from a shopping trip. Waed Bani Ohde, her husband Ali, and two of their young children Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5, were killed. Two sons survived. The army says the car accelerated toward the forces; Palestinian witnesses say the IDF gave no warning before attacking.
It is tempting to dismiss statements like Kroizer’s as the rhetoric of the extreme. Indeed, I often find myself making that point when talking to people inclined to think the worst of Israel: They do not represent the majority, and not even the immoral government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But that, while true, is becoming a little too pat.
For it is also true that as time goes, as the wars continue and hearts harden, what Kroizer articulated is a moral framework that is steadily taking hold in the Israeli right.
That’s why the statements were not condemned by anyone associated with the government. And, indeed, Israeli far-right activists responded to the deaths with social media posts rejoicing in the death of the unarmed “terrorists.”
No senior Israeli official apologized for the shooting. No one said publicly that even if the soldiers believed they were acting under threat, the killing of two children demands something more than a routine internal review.
No official has even conceded that this type of event might contribute to agitation and instability in the West Bank, and perhaps spark another uprising. Set empathy aside; even enlightened self-interest is beyond the current Israeli government.
Yes, an investigation has been opened. But military investigations almost never lead to concrete action against the troops. A Guardian report this week revealed that no Israeli citizen has been prosecuted for a killing in the West Bank since 2020, despite a radical uptick in violence; settlers and police have already killed 10 Palestinian civilians this month alone.
The undercover soldiers, especially, are something like the real life version of the international hit Fauda, widely admired for their counter-terrorism activity. There is little appetite for throwing the book at them.
So while it’s tempting to chalk this up as just another tragedy in a long list of tragedies on both sides, it is actually much more: a devastating manifestation of something fundamental — not just a personal tragedy but a national one.
That’s a tragedy I’ve seen unfolding slowly, since even before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
I’ve seen it in the rhetoric of far-right leaders like cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But I’ve also seen it firsthand, as when I found myself on wartime television panels where I was besieged by right-wingers enraged at my assertion that innocents have been killed during the war in Gaza. I challenged one of them about whether this idea would include a two-week old baby.
“OK, maybe not the baby!” he conceded, unhappily.
The descent of part of Israeli society into this unforgivable lack of compassion is, some have argued, an inevitable outcome of indefinite control over the Palestinian territories. For years, warnings that rule over millions of disenfranchised Arabs would mutate Israel’s character were treated as excessive, even hysterical.
Israel was not a colonial power in the classic sense, its defenders argued; it was a democracy under siege, navigating impossible dilemmas. The West Bank may be “occupied” but that was justifiable because of the threat its near proximity posed. Israel’s actions might be harsh, but they were necessary, the argument went. It was said that the country’s moral core, despite pressures, would remain intact.
The initial signs after this latest tragedy are not exactly reassuring. Far from condemning Kroizer, as they rightly should have, the cabinet convened this week to offer his party a great gift: the legalization of 30 illegal settlement outposts, including some in “Area A,” which is supposed to be under full Palestinian control.
Israel did not begin this way. Its founding story was deeply bound up with an acute awareness of the need to maintain morality. The early Zionists envisioned a country that would be a “light unto the nations.”
As occupation has become an entrenched reality, most Israelis have wanted to look away; the problem is too complicated. This position may not be possible for much longer. The moral rot is too extreme. But the good news is that it has not infected everything and everyone. Israel’s public broadcaster devoted a segment to the Palestinian family’s tragedy, characterizing Kroizer’s statements as a disgrace.
The humanistic ideas through which Israel once judged itself have eroded. We must now hope that they won’t entirely vanish.
Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter “Ask Questions Later” at danperry.substack.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email opinion@forward.com.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
Features
The Entebbe Alliance Reborn: Why Uganda Is Ready to Fight Iran Alongside Israel
Fifty years ago, Israeli commandos stormed the terminal at Entebbe Airport under the cover of darkness. They engaged in a deadly firefight with Ugandan troops and Palestinian hijackers to rescue over 100 Jewish and Israeli hostages. The daring 1976 raid astonished the world and reshaped modern counterterrorism, but it cost the life of the assault unit’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu.
Fast forward to March 2026, and the geopolitical script between Jerusalem and Kampala has flipped entirely. The very soil where Ugandan and Israeli forces once exchanged fire is now the foundation of an emerging alliance aimed squarely at countering the Islamic Republic of Iran.
General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the chief of Uganda’s armed forces and the son of President Yoweri Museveni, recently shocked the international community with a blunt declaration.
As regional tensions with Iran boiled over into direct military confrontations, Kainerugaba took to social media to draw a definitive line in the sand. He stated that while the world wanted the war in the Middle East to end, any talk of destroying or defeating Israel would bring Uganda into the war on the side of Israel. To physically cement this dramatic pivot, he previously announced that Uganda would erect a statue of Yoni Netanyahu at the exact spot where he fell at Entebbe Airport, framing the monument as a profound gesture designed to strengthen blood relations with Israel.
While some policymakers in Washington and European capitals are quick to dismiss Kainerugaba’s rhetoric as mere social media bluster, doing so overlooks a profound geostrategic realignment occurring in the Global South. This is not just historical poetry or diplomatic hyperbole. It is the public crystallization of Israel’s new “Circle of Partners” framework, a vital evolution of Jerusalem’s traditional defense strategy tailored for an era of multi-front warfare.
For decades, the Israeli defense and intelligence establishments relied heavily on the “Periphery Doctrine.” This strategy involved cultivating quiet but robust ties with non-Arab states to counterbalance a hostile Arab core.
Today, the threat matrix has completely inverted. The Arab core is increasingly allied with Israel, while the primary existential threat is the Iranian regime. Containing and defeating Tehran’s regional ambitions requires strategic depth far beyond the Levant, necessitating a modernized Periphery Doctrine that extends deep into the African continent. Israel recognizes that securing a “Circle of Partners” is no longer optional; it is a tactical imperative.
By cementing ties with Uganda — a Christian-majority, military heavyweight in East Africa — Israel is effectively anchoring a new southern flank. The strategic utility of this partnership becomes undeniable when looking at a map of Iran’s maritime ambitions. Tehran has spent years attempting to weaponize the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, primarily through its funding of Houthi proxies in Yemen, while simultaneously seeking naval footholds in the Horn of Africa. East Africa serves as the geopolitical backdoor to this critical maritime corridor.
Furthermore, as the conflict with Iran expands across multiple domains, an allied Uganda offers Israel unparalleled intelligence-sharing nodes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Uganda People’s Defense Force possesses deep institutional knowledge of local terror networks and illicit smuggling routes that Iranian proxies frequently exploit. Uganda also provides potential logistical staging grounds that sit safely outside the immediate range of Iran’s conventional ballistic missile umbrella, offering Israel a secure rear base for long-term strategic planning and operational depth.
Equally important is the diplomatic and ideological blow this alliance deals to Tehran. The Iranian regime relies heavily on a manufactured narrative that pits the Global South against a supposedly isolated Israel. At a time when international forums are routinely weaponized to turn Israel into a pariah state, unconditional support from a prominent African Union member shatters Iran’s diplomatic framing. When a leading African military commander publicly volunteers his own forces to defend the Jewish state and honors a fallen Israeli hero on African soil, it signals a shared recognition of the threat posed by radicalism that transcends geography.
In 1976, the raid on Entebbe proved to the world that Israel possessed the operational reach to strike its enemies and defend its citizens anywhere on the globe. In 2026, the emerging Entebbe alliance proves that Israel possesses the diplomatic foresight to build a continental strategic firewall against Iranian hegemony.
Uganda’s willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel is a testament to the shifting tides of global alliances. If Tehran continues to escalate its multi-front war, the ayatollahs will rapidly discover that Israel is not fighting alone, and its “Circle of Partners” reaches much further than the Islamic Republic ever anticipated.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx.
Features
Iran Lowers Minimum Age for War Roles to 12, Sparking Outcry Over Child Soldier Use
The Iranian regime has lowered the minimum age for participation in war-related activities to just 12 years old, a move that will likely fuel the concerns of human rights groups, which have condemned Iran’s treatment of children.
In a televised interview with state media, Rahim Nadali, a cultural with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran, announced that the new initiative “For Iran” is recruiting participants to assist with patrols, checkpoints, and logistics.
“Since children are increasingly volunteering to take part, we have lowered the minimum age to 12,” Nadali said, urging young children to join the war effort if they wish.
Rahim Nadali, Cultural Deputy of the IRGC’s Tehran branch (Mar 26, 2026):
“12 and 13-year-old children wanted to participate in Basij checkpoints across the cities. We have lowered the age limit to 12 and above.” pic.twitter.com/lLZy9pU5xm— حافظه تاریخی (@hafezeh_tarikhi) March 26, 2026
Iran International first reported Nadali’s statement, which has since circulated on social media.
As part of the regime’s state media coverage of the US-Israeli war against Iran, this latest announcement has ignited mounting backlash over the use of minors in security‑related roles — a practice that is not new in Iran.
“Recruiting children into military activity is a violation of international laws and the international community must not stay silent,” Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad posted on social media, along with video of Nadali’s comments. “This is the same regime that lectures the world about morality. But when it comes to survival? They’re willing to send children into danger.”
In the past, widely circulated social media images and videos have repeatedly shown children and teenagers in military-style uniforms cracking down on protests, including during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, which erupted nationwide after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in a Tehran police station following her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules.
Under international law, Iran’s move flagrantly violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits the use of children in military activities, marking a dramatic breach of its global obligations.
Human rights groups have also repeatedly accused Iranian security forces of killing child protesters during past crackdowns.
According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, more than 200 children were killed during the nationwide anti‑government protests earlier this year, which security forces violently crushed, leaving thousands of demonstrators tortured or killed.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also documented cases of children being shot, detained, and abused during these latest demonstrations, noting that government forces have repeatedly targeted minors in ways that breach international law.
Iran has a long track record of widespread human rights abuses, including crackdowns on protesters, harassment of activists, threats to minorities, executions of children, violations of women’s rights, and dire prison conditions.
During the January uprising, at least 6,724 protesters, including 236 children, were killed, with another 11,744 cases still under verification, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Multiple other reports have estimated that the overall death toll may exceed 30,000.
As in past years, executions remain one of the starkest manifestations of human rights abuses in Iran, with at least 2,488 people executed last year, including 63 women and two children, 13 of them carried out publicly.
Tehran’s latest controversial move comes as Iran has reportedly slammed a US proposal to end the war as “one‑sided and unfair,” a rebuff that has cast doubt on the prospects for a negotiated ceasefire.
US President Donald Trump has warned the Islamist regime it must reach a deal or face a continued onslaught.
“They now have the chance, that is Iran, to permanently abandon their nuclear ambitions and to join a new path forward,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“We’ll see if they want to do it. If they don’t, we’re their worst nightmare. In the meantime, we’ll just keep blowing them away.”