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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 post The only Jew in remote Greenland sometimes feels like ‘the last person on earth’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Colorado Attack Suspect Charged with Assault, Use of Explosives

FILE PHOTO: Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman poses for a jail booking photograph after his arrest in Boulder, Colorado, U.S. June 2, 2025. Photo: Boulder Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
A suspect in an attack on a pro-Israeli rally in Colorado that injured eight people was being held on Monday on an array of charges, including assault and the use of explosives, in lieu of a $10-million bail, according to Boulder County records.
The posted list of felony charges against suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, in the attack on Sunday also includes charges of murder in the first degree, although police in the city of Boulder have said on social media that no victims died in the attack. Authorities could not be reached immediately to clarify.
Witnesses reported the suspect used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd. He was heard to yell “Free Palestine” during the attack, according to the FBI, in what the agency called a “targeted terror attack.”
Four women and four men between 52 and 88 years of age were transported to hospitals after the attack, Boulder Police said.
The attack took place on the Pearl Street Mall, a popular pedestrian shopping district near the University of Colorado, during an event organized by Run for Their Lives, an organization devoted to drawing attention to the hostages seized in the aftermath of Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel.
Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm, the Chabad director at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told CBS Colorado that the 88-year-old victim was a Holocaust refugee who fled Europe.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Soliman had entered the country in August 2022 on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022. “The suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” the spokesperson said.
The FBI raided and searched Soliman’s home in El Paso County, Colorado, the agency said on social media. “As this is an ongoing investigation, no additional information is available at this time.”
The attack in Boulder was the latest act of violence aimed at Jewish Americans linked to outrage over Israel’s escalating military offensive in Gaza. It followed the fatal shooting of two Israel Embassy aides that took place outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum last month.
Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said after the shooting there was a question of how far security perimeters outside Jewish institutions should extend.
Boulder Police said they would hold a press conference later on Monday to discuss details of the Colorado attack.
The Denver office of the FBI, which is handling the case, did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls seeking clarification on the homicide charges or other details in the case.
Officials from the Boulder County Jail, Boulder Police and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to inquiries.
The post Colorado Attack Suspect Charged with Assault, Use of Explosives first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Poised to Dismiss US Nuclear Proposal, Iranian Diplomat Says

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iran is poised to reject a US proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests or soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment.
“Iran is drafting a negative response to the US proposal, which could be interpreted as a rejection of the US offer,” the senior diplomat, who is close to Iran’s negotiating team, told Reuters.
The US proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who was on a short visit to Tehran and has been mediating talks between Tehran and Washington.
After five rounds of discussions between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, several obstacles remain.
Among them are Iran’s rejection of a US demand that it commit to scrapping uranium enrichment and its refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium – possible raw material for nuclear bombs.
Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
“In this proposal, the US stance on enrichment on Iranian soil remains unchanged, and there is no clear explanation regarding the lifting of sanctions,” said the diplomat, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Araqchi said Tehran would formally respond to the proposal soon.
Tehran demands the immediate removal of all US-imposed curbs that impair its oil-based economy. But the US says nuclear-related sanctions should be removed in phases.
Dozens of institutions vital to Iran’s economy, including its central bank and national oil company, have been blacklisted since 2018 for, according to Washington, “supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation.”
Trump’s revival of “maximum pressure” against Tehran since his return to the White House in January has included tightening sanctions and threatening to bomb Iran if the negotiations yield no deal.
During his first term in 2018, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Iran responded by escalating enrichment far beyond the pact’s limits.
Under the deal, Iran had until 2018 curbed its sensitive nuclear work in return for relief from US, EU and U.N. economic sanctions.
The diplomat said the assessment of “Iran’s nuclear negotiations committee,” under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was that the US proposal was “completely one-sided” and could not serve Tehran’s interests.
Therefore, the diplomat said, Tehran considers this proposal a “non-starter” and believes it unilaterally attempts to impose a “bad deal” on Iran through excessive demands.
NUCLEAR STANDOFF RAISES MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS
The stakes are high for both sides. Trump wants to curtail Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race and perhaps threaten Israel. Iran’s clerical establishment, for its part, wants to be rid of the devastating sanctions.
Iran says it is ready to accept some limits on enrichment, but needs watertight guarantees that Washington would not renege on a future nuclear accord.
Two Iranian officials told Reuters last week that Iran could pause uranium enrichment if the US released frozen Iranian funds and recognized Tehran’s right to refine uranium for civilian use under a “political deal” that could lead to a broader nuclear accord.
Iran’s arch-foe Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat and says it would never allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Araqchi, in a joint news conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo, said: “I do not think Israel will commit such a mistake as to attack Iran.”
Tehran’s regional influence has meanwhile been diminished by military setbacks suffered by its forces and those of its allies in the Shi’ite-dominated “Axis of Resistance,” which include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iraqi militias.
In April, Saudi Arabia’s defence minister delivered a blunt message to Iranian officials to take Trump’s offer of a new deal seriously as a way to avoid the risk of war with Israel.
The post Iran Poised to Dismiss US Nuclear Proposal, Iranian Diplomat Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Islamist Crescent: A New Syrian Danger

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
The dramatic fall of the Assad regime in Syria has undeniably reshaped the Middle East, yet the emerging power dynamics, particularly the alignment between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, warrant profound scrutiny from those committed to American and Israeli security. While superficially presented as a united front against Iranian influence, this new Sunni axis carries a dangerous undercurrent of Islamism and regional ambition that could ultimately undermine, rather than serve, the long-term interests of Washington and Jerusalem.
For too long, Syria under Bashar al-Assad served as a critical conduit for Iran’s destabilizing agenda, facilitating arms transfers to Hezbollah and projecting Tehran’s power across the Levant. The removal of this linchpin is, on the surface, a strategic victory. However, the nature of the new Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa — a figure Israeli officials continue to view with deep suspicion due to his past as a former Al-Qaeda-linked commander — raises immediate red flags. This is not merely a change of guard; it is a shift that introduces a new set of complex challenges, particularly given Turkey’s historical support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization deemed a terror group by Saudi Arabia and many other regional states.
Israel’s strategic calculus in Syria has always been clear: to degrade Iran’s military presence, prevent Hezbollah from acquiring advanced weaponry, and maintain operational freedom in Syrian airspace. Crucially, Israel has historically thought it best to have a decentralized, weak, and fragmented Syria, with reports that it has actively worked against the resurgence of a robust central authority. This preference stems from a pragmatic understanding that a strong, unified Syria, especially one under the tutelage of an ambitious regional power like Turkey, could pose much more of a threat than the Assad regime ever did. Indeed, Israeli defense officials privately express concern at Turkey’s assertive moves, accusing Ankara of attempting to transform post-war Syria into a Turkish protectorate under Islamist tutelage. This concern is not unfounded; Turkey’s ambitious, arguably expansionist, objectives — and its perceived undue dominance in Arab lands — are viewed by Israel as warily as Iran’s previous influence.
The notion that an “Ottoman Crescent” is now replacing the “Shiite Crescent” should not be celebrated as a net positive. While it may diminish Iranian power, it introduces a new form of regional hegemony, one driven by an ideology that has historically been antithetical to Western values and stability. The European Union’s recent imposition of sanctions on Turkish-backed Syrian army commanders for human rights abuses, including arbitrary killings and torture, further underscores the problematic nature of some elements within this new Syrian landscape. The fact that al-Sharaa has allowed such individuals to operate with impunity and even promoted them to high-ranking positions should give Washington pause.
From an American perspective, while the Trump administration has pragmatically engaged with the new Syrian government, lifting sanctions and urging normalization with Israel, this engagement must be tempered with extreme caution. The core American interests in the Middle East — counterterrorism, containment of Iran, and regional stability — are not served by empowering Islamist-leaning factions or by enabling a regional power, like Turkey, whose actions have sometimes undermined the broader fight against ISIS. Washington must demand that Damascus demonstrate a genuine commitment to taking over the counter-ISIS mission and managing detention facilities, and unequivocally insist that Turkey cease actions that risk an ISIS resurgence.
The argument that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite their own complex internal dynamics, are simply pragmatic actors countering Iran overlooks the ideological underpinnings that concern many conservatives. Turkey’s ruling party, rooted in political Islam, and its historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, present a fundamental challenge to the vision of a stable, secular, and pro-Western Middle East. While Saudi Arabia has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, its alignment with Turkey in Syria, and its own internal human rights record, means that this “new front” is far from a clean solution.
The Saudi-Turkey alignment in Syria is a double-edged sword. While it may indeed serve to counter Iran’s immediate regional ambitions, it simultaneously risks empowering actors whose long-term objectives and ideological leanings are deeply problematic for American, Israeli, and Western interests. Washington and Jerusalem must approach this new dynamic with extreme vigilance, prioritizing the containment of all forms of radicalism — whether Shiite or Sunni — and ensuring that any strategic gains against Iran do not inadvertently pave the way for a new, equally dangerous, Islamist crescent to rise in the heart of the Levant.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
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