RAMAT GAN, Israel (JTA) — In Israel, an estimated 15,000 individuals are involved in prostitution, including 5,000 under the age of 18, according to reports shared with the Task Force on Human Trafficking by Knesset member Orit Zuaretz of the Kadima Party, as well as other experts and activists. The reports say that the average [...]
Read More »When news outlets began reporting last Friday that the owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times had published an opinion column seemingly suggesting that Israel might be wise to assassinate President Obama, the response from prominent American Jews was fast and furious. Here was a Jewish newspaper publisher providing fodder for something the Anti-Defamation League regularly [...]
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The Muslim Brotherhood did not initiate the current upheavals in the Middle East, but the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, have been the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of longstanding authoritarian repressive regimes across North Africa. In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups — the Brotherhood and the Salafists — [...]
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About a year and half ago, I participated in a fact-finding mission to Israel sponsored by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arabs (IATF). Established in 2006 as a consortium of some of the major organizations in American Jewish life — including the Joint Distribution Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Jewish [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — It is virtually impossible to imagine anything more reprehensible than the recent spectacle of haredi Orthodox Jewish boys wearing yellow stars of David and simulated striped black-and-white concentration camp uniforms at a demonstration in Jerusalem. Offended by the Israeli authorities’ efforts to curtail the verbal and physical abuse of women and [...]
Read More »BEIT SHEMESH (JTA) — It’s raining as I write — a rare, cold, hard rain that is welcomed by Jerusalemites who know that it’s good for them and the country. Water, like patience, is a treasured commodity here in Israel: temporarily inconvenient, but better for you in the long run. Rain is a blessing. We [...]
Read More »The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the United States and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The United States is the guarantor of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it [...]
Read More »I am hoping you have heard about the plight of my friend Alan Gross. Alan is from the Washington, D.C. area and his situation has received a lot of coverage in the news. Alan went to Cuba to bring laptop computers and cell phones to the Jewish community on the island. On his last trip, [...]
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David Ben Gurion, who later became the founding prime minister of Israel, was the leader of the Labor Zionist movement that led the pre-state Jewish Palestine community and provided the core values to the emerging state. It was not a coincidence that when it was necessary to establish communities to define and protect the [...]
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The State of Israel has always prided itself on being not only a home to its native citizens but a haven for Jews from across the globe. For years the Ministry of Immigration Absorption has successfully focused on attracting Jews from around the world to make aliyah and reconnect with their homeland. [...]
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