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The only Jew in remote Greenland sometimes feels like ‘the last person on earth’
NARSAQ, Greenland (JTA) — This picturesque village on the southwestern coast of Greenland where famed Viking Erik the Red first arrived more than 1,000 years ago is about as off-the-beaten-path as one can get.
Sheep outnumber the town’s population 20-1 and the only way to reach an airport is via helicopter or ship.
Yet for Paul Cohen, an American Jew who has lived here with his wife Monika for 22 years, Narsaq’s remoteness is more than offset by its stunning landscapes, clean air and laidback lifestyle.
“It’s the Garden of Eden in many ways,” said Cohen, who is 61. “I feel like I’m living in the heart of a national park. There’s this little spot of civilization surrounded by pristine wilderness and I have the unique privilege of being able to live and work here.”
Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is the world’s largest island. Located between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans, it’s three times the size of Texas. But its population is only 56,000, most of whom are Inuit, making Greenland the least densely populated territory in the world. About 80% of the island’s surface is covered by an ice sheet.
The story of how Cohen ended up living in Greenland — as likely the territory’s only resident Jew — has nearly as many undulations as the icebergs floating in nearby Tunulliarfik Fjord.
Describing himself as “non-observant but culturally Jewish,” Cohen grew up in Wisconsin and graduated with a degree in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1991, he moved to Germany, where he met Monika. The two have been married 32 years and live alone in Narsaq with their Japanese Spitz dog they named Mikisoq (“little one” in Greenlandic).
A sample of the dramatic scenery in southern Greenland. (Dan Fellner)
Fluent in four languages — English, German, French and Danish — Cohen worked for nearly a decade as a translator and producer at DW-TV in Berlin. He and Monika first visited Greenland in 1993 as tourists.
“I was just blown away by the warmth of the sun,” he said. “Endless summer days. We were just amazed at what we saw, but we had it in our heads that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We thought we’d never come back.”
They did come back three years later and decided then that it was a place that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives, despite the skepticism of their friends and family.
“I think they thought it was some sort of phase,” Cohen recalled. “They didn’t think it would work out. It’s so off-the-charts in terms of a place to live.”
They bought a “fixer-upper” house and returned in subsequent years to renovate it before making a permanent move to Narsaq in 2001.
“You could say that Greenland infected us, like a virus, and we simply couldn’t get it out of our system,” Cohen said. “Why fight it?”
Initially, the plan was for Cohen to work remotely as a translator. However, the internet in Narsaq at the time was “glacial in terms of its speed,” so the couple made a living painting houses instead.
As internet speed improved, Cohen started to get more translating projects. He formed a business called Tuluttut Translations (tuluttut is the Greenlandic word for “English”). On a website for translators to promote their services, he jokingly wrote that he “will work for blubber.”
“What was unique about me as a translator was that I was the only translator people knew who lived in Greenland,” he says. “I just thought it would make a fun tongue-in-cheek tagline.”
Cohen has translated hundreds of articles from German to English for the English website of the news publication Der Spiegel as well as numerous academic books, including a 2014 book by German professor Marc Buggeln titled “Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps,” published by Oxford University Press. Most of his translation work is German to English, but increasingly Danish to English.
Cohen, seen translating an academic article from Danish into English, works remotely as a translator. (Dan Fellner)
Additionally, Cohen and his wife run a business in Narsaq renting properties to travelers. The couple currently owns two summer cottages that can sleep a total of eight people. They do most of the renovations and repairs themselves.
When asked if he misses any of the creature comforts he took for granted in the United States and Western Europe, he pondered for a few seconds before saying he has pretty much everything in Narsaq he wants, other than some of his favorite fruits and vegetables —such as eggplant — that can be hard to come by at the local supermarket.
Perhaps his biggest challenge is getting home to visit his 85-year-old mother in Wisconsin, which he manages to do every couple of years. But it’s an arduous journey, involving either a helicopter ride or ferry trip from Narsaq to the nearest airport in Narsarsuaq, about 30 miles away — since there are no roads in Greenland that connect towns and settlements.
From Narsarsuaq, Cohen flies to Iceland or Denmark as there are no flights from anywhere in Greenland to North America. Due to flight delays and bad weather, his last trip home from Wisconsin in February took 12 days.
Narsaq’s economy is built on sheep farming and fishing. There is some tourism but the number of visitors is low compared to some other towns in western Greenland like Nuuk, Illulissat and Qaqortoqall, all of which attract more cruise ships. While Narsaq’s population is only about 1,300, that still makes it Greenland’s ninth-largest town.
As for Cohen’s neighbors, most of whom live in pastel-colored wooden homes that are a trademark of Greenland, he said he enjoys their go-with-the-flow outlook on life.
The town of Narsaq, located on the southwestern coast of Greenland, is home to about 1,300 people. (Dan Fellner)
“You can generally just drop by and visit people without calling ahead of time and making some kind of arrangement,” he said. “That makes life more spontaneous.”
There has never been an organized Jewish community in Greenland, other than the U.S. military base at Thule in far northwestern Greenland. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, an Icelandic-born historian and former senior researcher at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, wrote a chapter about Jewish life in Greenland in the 2019 book “Antisemitism in the North” that originally appeared in a Danish journal called Rambam.
Vilhjálmsson writes that “there were certainly Jews among the first Dutch whalers in the 16th and 17th centuries.” But there were no definitive reports of Jewish life in Greenland until World War II, when the United States established a military base in Thule, which is just 950 miles from the North Pole.
In the 1950s, there were more than 50 Jewish servicemen stationed in Thule at one time. Passover seders and services were held for Shabbat and high holidays, at the time giving Greenland the distinction, Vilhjálmsson writes, of “having the northernmost minyan in the world.”
But in the rest of Greenland, there are no records of any Jewish services or events. There have been Jewish scientists, journalists, nurses and other professionals working in the territory but most were on short-term assignments.
In the absence of definitive records, it’s highly likely that Cohen has made history as the Jewish person with the longest continuous tenure living in Greenland — 22 years and counting. He chuckled at the notion, saying it makes him feel like “some sort of rare orchid on the tundra.”
“I like the idea,” he said. “There are very few Americans living here. So I’m used to feeling like the oddball.”
A sign welcomes visitors to Narsaq. (Dan Fellner)
Cohen says few Jewish tourists come to Narsaq, but when they do visit, they have a way of finding him. One observant Israeli couple whom he ate dinner with served food on paper plates with plastic cutlery, which they used in lieu of kosher dishes.
“My name just screams ‘Judaism,’” Cohen said. “It’s almost as if there’s an unspoken secret handshake.”
While Cohen isn’t religious, he has a silver mezuzah hanging in his Narsaq home and enjoys late-night Hanukkah candle-lighting Zoom sessions with his family back in America.
He said that he and Monika plan to live the rest of the remainder of their lives in Narsaq, health permitting. For now, the couple has no desire to leave behind the solitude and unspoiled magnificence of Greenland’s southwest coast.
“Sometimes the ice recedes a bit and you find yourself walking on land that hasn’t been exposed for thousands of years,” he said. “There are days when I feel not only like I’m the only Jew in Greenland, but maybe the last person on Earth.”
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‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin. Photo: Screenshot
Sunny Hostin, co-host of the long-running ABC talk show “The View,” on Monday compared the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, prompting widespread backlash for making the comparison.
While discussing the significance of the Jan. 6 anniversary, Hostin argued that Americans need to “find moral clarity,” asserting that they should “never forget” the breach of the US Capitol and claiming that the riot should be remembered as a keystone moment in world history, akin to chattel slavery and the Holocaust.
“You had [former US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, I believe, on this very show, saying, ‘You know, we need to move on from Jan. 6.’ I say, no. You don’t move on, because Jan. 6 was an atrocity. It was one of the worst moments in American history,” Hostin said. “And, when you think about the worst moments in American history, like World War II, like the Holocaust, chattel slavery, we need to never forget, because [the] past becomes prologue if you forget and erase.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of rioters, convinced that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The mob swarmed through the halls of the Capitol building, vandalizing and breaking into private offices. Trump was widely criticized for not doing more to condemn those who breached the Capitol and for fueling the false notion that he lost the election due to widespread fraud.
Hostin’s words set off a firestorm of criticism on social media, with many observers taking offense to her comparison of Jan. 6 to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
“It is disgusting to compare Jan. 6 to the Holocaust,” wrote Samuel Stern, rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas.
“This Holocaust minimization by [Hostin] is so mind-blowingly offensive it’s hard to believe these fools still have a platform,” wrote Chaskel Bennett, a 9/11 first responder and grandchild of Holocaust survivors.
“Look how stupid everything has become,” tweeted Omri Ceren, national security adviser to US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TEX).
“What an insult to every Jewish person on the planet, past and present. Breathtaking minimizing of one of the worst things to happen in human history,” wrote conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings.
The post ‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Houthi Leader Warns Israelis: ‘Those Who Want to Sleep’ Comfortably Should Leave Country
Houthi policemen ride on the back of a patrol pick-up truck during the funeral of Houthi terrorists killed by recent US-led strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
A senior leader of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen has warned Israelis that they should flee to Cyprus or “return to their original country” if they want to sleep comfortably at night.
“Those who want to sleep should go to sleep in Cyprus or return to their original country,” Hazam al-Assad, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, posted on X/Twitter on Sunday in a Hebrew-language message directed at Israelis.
The post came one day after al-Assad vowed that the Houthis will continue to attack Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
“We won’t stop … You must watch the sky, you must not sleep, you must not enjoy life as long as the children of Gaza die from bombs, hunger and cold. We will not abandon Gaza,” he posted.
On Monday, al-Assad celebrated after the Houthis claimed they arrested spies trained and equipped by British and Saudi intelligence services, arguing it was a victory in the Yemeni rebel group’s “holy jihad” and the alleged spies were supporting Israel.
“With the support of God Almighty, the Yemeni security services achieve a new victory in the battle of the holy jihad and the promised victory and in the path of support and victory for our people in Gaza, arresting the British spy cell affiliated with MI6 and Saudi Arabia supporting the Israeli enemy entity,” he wrote.
The Algemeiner could not immediately confirm the veracity of the Houthis’ claim about busting a foreign spy operation.
The Houthis have ramped up their military action against Israel in recent weeks, repeatedly firing missiles from Yemen at Israel. While Israel has intercepted many of the missiles, some have penetrated Israeli air defenses.
Last month, a ballistic missile launched by the Iran-backed group struck a playground in Tel Aviv, injuring at least 16 people and causing damage to nearby homes — the second attack in as many days — after several interception attempts by Israel’s air defense systems failed.
The strike came shortly after the Houthis launched another missile toward the center of Israel, and this time the projectile was only partially intercepted. The warhead crashed into a school in the city of Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv, causing one building to collapse and severe damage to another. Children were due to arrive at the school hours after the missile hit.
In response to the attack, the Israeli Air Force conducted retaliatory strikes targeting Houthi positions in Yemen, including strategic locations such as the port of Hodeidah and the capital city, Sana’a. US forces also conducted multiple airstrikes against Houthi positions with the aim of degrading the Houthis’ offensive capabilities and ensuring the security of vital maritime routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the time that Israel would take forceful action against the Houthis as it had done with Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terrorist organization, in Lebanon.
“Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” he said. “We will act with strength, determination and sophistication. I tell you that even if it takes time, the result will be the same.”
Days later, on Dec. 26, the Israeli Air Force conducted additional strikes on the western coast of and deep inside Yemen, including at Sana’a International Airport in the Houthi-controlled capital.
“These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. This is a further example of the Houthis’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes,” the Israeli military said.
Netanyahu again vowed “to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil” and to “persist in this until we complete the task.”
Amid the constant attacks, Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to push for countries to designate the Houthi as a terrorist organization.
“The Houthis pose a threat not only to Israel but to the region and the entire world,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a statement. “The direct threat to freedom of navigation in one of the busiest maritime routes globally is a challenge to the international community and the world order. The most basic and fundamental step is to designate them as a terrorist organization.”
Several countries — including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.
Sa’ar’s directive followed repeated attacks by the Houthis against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.
The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.
The Yemeni terrorist group began disrupting global trade in a major way with their attacks on shipping in the busy Red Sea corridor after the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, arguing their aggression was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Houthi rebels — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have said they will target all ships heading to Israeli ports, even if they do not pass through the Red Sea.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, which launched the ongoing war in Gaza, Houthi terrorists in Yemen have also routinely launched missiles toward Israel.
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report in July revealing how Iran has been “smuggling weapons and weapons components to the Houthis.” The report noted that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to conduct over 100 land attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and within Yemen, as well as dozens of attacks on merchant shipping.
While the Houthis have increasingly targeted Israeli soil in recent months, they have primarily attacked ships in the Red Sea, a key trade route, raising the cost of shipping and insurance. Shipping firms have been forced in many cases to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa to avoid passing near Yemen, having a major global economic impact.
In September, the Houthis’ so-called “defense minister,” Mohamed al-Atifi, said that the Yemeni rebels were prepared for a “long war” against Israel and its allies.
“The Yemeni Army holds the key to victory, and is prepared for a long war of attrition against the usurping Zionist regime, its sponsors, and allies,” he was quoted as saying by Iranian state-owned media
“Our struggle against the Nazi Zionist entity is deeply rooted in our beliefs. We are well aware of the fact that this campaign is a sacred and religious duty that requires tremendous sacrifices,” added Atifi, who has been sanctioned by the US government.
Beyond Israeli targets, the Houthis have threatened and in some cases actually attacked US and British ships, leading the two Western allies to launch retaliatory strikes multiple times against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The post Houthi Leader Warns Israelis: ‘Those Who Want to Sleep’ Comfortably Should Leave Country first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘I Grew Up Hating Israel, Jews’: Former Antisemite-Turned-Zionist Takes on World’s Oldest Hatred in New Doc
Norwegian student Marie Andersen carries an antisemitic sign at an Oct. 21, 2023, pro-Hamas demonstration in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Screenshot
In a world grappling with a resurgence of antisemitism, a new documentary seeks to confront the issue head-on, positing an unsettling take on the motivations behind the world’s oldest hatred through the insights of Rawan Osman, a Syrian-Lebanese antisemite-turned-Zionist.
“Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred,” directed by Canadian-Israeli filmmaker Raphael Shore, interweaves historical analysis with contemporary events through the voices of clerics, historians, sociologists, and cultural commentators, including the late British Chief Rabbi Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, author Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel’s antisemitism envoy Michal Cotler-Wunsh, and journalists Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray. It argues that antisemitism stems not from a perception of Jewish inferiority, but rather from resentment of Jewish excellence and moral leadership.
Osman — who founded “Arabs Ask,” a forum designed to challenge preconceived notions about Judaism and Israel among Arabs, and who describes herself as an Arab Zionist — narrates the movie.
Born in Damascus, Syria, she was raised in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley and later lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar before eventually settling in Germany. Her first encounter with a Jewish person was when she moved to Strasbourg, France in her twenties. In her words, the encounter prompted her “first and last panic attack.”
But a long process of exploration, including studying Modern Hebrew and Jewish history at a German university, led her to challenge the antisemitic beliefs she had absorbed growing up in the Middle East and ultimately change her perspective.
“Life is strange. I grew up hating Israel and the Jews, just like many Lebanese and Syrians,” Osman told The Algemeiner.
“Living in Europe, especially the decade I spent in Germany, made me one of the most vocal supporters of the Jewish state. Who would have thought?”
After reexamining her beliefs, Osman dedicated herself to soft diplomacy, educating the Arab world about Jewish history and the Holocaust. However, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, she adopted a more direct and assertive approach, despite the personal risks tied to openly supporting Israel. Reflecting on a conversation with her son, she recalled him asking, “Why are you doing this to me?” to which she responded, “I am doing this for you.”
Osman, who has expressed a desire to convert to Judaism and move to Jerusalem, teamed up with Shore and Rabbi Shalom Schwartz, the film’s executive producer and founder of Aseret, an organization dedicated to promoting the universal values of the Ten Commandments.
“I found myself on a quest to try and understand antisemitism. The Jews are blamed for all ills of the world. Why? Antisemitism requires a different type of explanation,” Osman says in the film.
Shore, who released the film alongside his new book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew?, argued that while religious, social, and political reasons may trigger antisemitism, they fail to explain its deeper motives, leaving efforts to combat it ineffective.
“Today, more than ever before since the Nazis were defeated, we are forced to discover ways of finding greater tolerance in our world. We are completely delusional if we think that hatred of the Jews will end with the Jews. We are always the canary in the coal mine — a harbinger of what is to come for the entire civilized world,” Shore told The Algemeiner.
“If we are ever to effectively combat antisemitism, we need to better understand its roots with moral and spiritual courage, which demands unwavering pride in our common Jewish identities,” he continued. “Combating antisemitism requires pushing back at our enemies with clarity, unity, and an appreciation that our traditions and history are what have allowed us to overcome our enemies.”
Osman says at one point in the movie: “Hitler didn’t want to kill the Jews because they were bad; he wanted to kill them because they were good.”
Shore explains that for Hitler, the Jews represented “a spiritual and moral threat” because the ethical foundations of Western civilization — at their core, Jewish ideas — are the antithesis of his Darwinian outlook.
“Hitler believed that there was one great conflict that drives human history, and that was the idea of survival of the fittest,” Shore said. “Hitler believed that if the ideas of humanitarianism, love, equality, democracy were to succeed, that would be the end of humanity.”
After a screening of the movie in Tel Aviv last week, Osman shared her thoughts on the downfall of Iran’s regional axis of proxies, culminating with the recent fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Osman said that the reaction of some Israelis’ apprehension at Assad’s demise “literally broke my heart,” she said.
“I invited my Israeli friends to reach out to the Syrians and congratulate them” on the fall of Assad, who was the “monster of the century,” she said.
“Some of them misunderstood — they thought I’m endorsing Islamists,” she said, referencing the rebels led by a former member of ISIS and al Qaeda, Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Still, she noted, these groups achieved what the world, including the US and Israel, could not, emphasizing that the removal of Assad had to come from within Syria, as an external force taking him down would have turned him into a martyr.
Though Osman approached the recent changes with caution regarding their impact on Israel’s relations with its neighbors, she remained hopeful. “While I watch myself together with Rav Shalom Shwartz and Rav Shore on the big screen, I feel that peace between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria might come in my lifetime after all,” she told The Algemeiner.
The post ‘I Grew Up Hating Israel, Jews’: Former Antisemite-Turned-Zionist Takes on World’s Oldest Hatred in New Doc first appeared on Algemeiner.com.