Israeli President Shimon Peres visited bereaved families who lost loved ones during Operation Protective Edge. At the beginning of the visits Peres addressed the current situation and said, “We have only option, to be victorious and avoid a massacre of in the communities around Gaza through the terror tunnels. Through… Read more »
Liam Ferguson, center, who is moving to Israel with his parents, hiking along Alaska’s Kesugi Ridge with his sister, Zoey, left, and a family friend. (Courtesy of Stewart Ferguson) (JTA) — Rebecca Scoggin lived in a lot of places growing up: Juneau, Nome, Fairbanks, Homer, Anchorage. But except for the two years she lived in Seattle after high school, she never lived outside Alaska. At least she hadn’t until a few months ago. Inspired by a Birthright trip… Read more »
Ludmila Lazaurenko, right, with her son Anatoly and mother Nadezhda Belovol at their temporary housing near Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, July 14, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz) DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine (JTA) — Anatoly Lazaurenko’s face betrays no emotion as he watches footage of an old woman he used to know lying in the rubble of what once was his home in the war-torn city of Slavyansk. Oblivious to her mangled face, Anatoly, 8, points to a corner… Read more »
The July 13 riot outside the Synagogue de la Roquette in a Paris suburb was notable not only for the terror it inspired among those inside the shul, but for the fierce and unusual response by young Jewish men who pushed back the pro-Palestinian rioters. (JTA) — For the past 14 years, French Jews have grown accustomed to coming under attack during periods of conflict in the Middle East from hostile elements within their country’s large Arab and Muslim communities. One recent incident, however, stood out: the July 13 riot by Palestinian sympathizers outside the… Read more »
An Israeli tank crossing through a field in southern Israel near the border with Gaza, the day after Israel began its invasion of Gaza, July 18, 2014. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — For the first time in years, Israeli ground troops crossed into Gaza. Rather than just return to the status quo before the conflict of “quiet for quiet” — no Hamas missiles and no Israeli airstrikes — Israel’s stated objectives are to bring a sustained cessation… Read more »
Children playing at an impromptu day camp set up for the children of hospital workers in Beersheva. (Ben Sales)
BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA) — During Israel’s conflict with Hamas in 2009, Eli Nachmani, already using a wheelchair, injured his leg when a rocket hit this southern Israeli city. In the last clash in 2012, Nachmani sustained a head injury when the blast from a rocket knocked him out of… Read more »
Palestinians walking among the rubble of a destroyed house following an Israeli missile strike, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, July 14, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90) (JTA) — Israel and Hamas are fighting their third major conflict in six years, and while some things have stayed the same, the battle lines have also shifted in a few notable ways. Here are eight things you need to know about the current conflagration: • Iron Dome has been a… Read more »
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with the central committee of the Fatah movement in Ramallah, West Bank, July 13, 2014. (Thaer Ghanaim/Palestinian Press Office via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Mahmoud Abbas has been sitting on the sidelines of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, with little influence over its outcome. But it hasn’t stopped U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry from consulting closely with the Palestinian Authority president throughout the crisis. A U.S. official who… Read more »
An Iron Dome missile defense battery set up near the southern Israeli town of Ashdod fires an interceptor missile, July 14, 2014. (David Buimovitch/Flash 90)
SDEROT, Israel (JTA) — In the past week, Israel has endured a thousand rockets. Yet not a single Israeli has died so far from a rocket strike during the week-long conflict. In many ways, Israel’s Operation Protective Edge — its third Gaza operation in six years — is much like… Read more »
An Iron Dome missile defense battery set up near the southern Israeli town of Ashdod fires an interceptor missile, July 14, 2014. (David Buimovitch/Flash 90)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel is ready to accept an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, multiple media reports said, although it is unclear whether Hamas also has agreed. The cease-fire that would end the eight-day Gaza conflict was first posted Monday on Twitter by Yossi Melman, a veteran Israeli journalist, who cited Palestinian… Read more »
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, left, with the organization's head of French operations, Ariel Kandel, at a Paris synagogue, July 2, 2014. (Alain Azria)
PARIS (JTA) — On their 40th wedding anniversary, Avital and Natan Sharansky went sightseeing in the City of Lights. But the Sharanskys didn’t follow the trail of countless couples who come here to kiss at the Eiffel Tower or slip so-called love locks on bridges over the River Seine. Theirs… Read more »
Andrew Goldstein, a member of Israel’s national lacrosse team, says “the landscape has really changed” for gay athletes since he came out in 2005. (Larry Palumbo) BALTIMORE (JTA) — In the years after coming out as gay, lacrosse player Andrew Goldstein recalls being asked on panel discussions whether major American professional sports leagues would include openly gay athletes. It’s a question, Goldstein said, that is no longer relevant with Jason Collins in the National Basketball… Read more »
U.S. citizen Tariq Abu Khdeir being brought to the Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem after he was beaten by Israeli police amid clashes over the murder of his Palestinian cousin, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, July 6, 2014. (Flash 90) (JTA) – For Israelis, the enduring image of the past few weeks may be the montage of the three Israeli teens murdered last month after being abducted from a hitchhiking post in the West Bank. But another enduring image has emerged in the last few days that is unlikely to… Read more »
Birthright participants visiting Masada during a more peaceful time, in summer 2012. (Taglit-Birthright)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When the siren rang out in Jerusalem last week, the 41 teenage participants in a five-week summer Israel trip were already asleep, exhausted from a day that had begun with a flight from New York. Within minutes, they were awake, out of their rooms and in… Read more »
Michael Savlov, left, an attendant at a Tel Aviv gas station, went back to work not long after a shrapnel from a Gaza rocket landed at the site on July 10, 2014. (Ben Sales / JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Had the shrapnel fallen a foot to the right, gas station attendant Michael Savlov would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Dor Alon gas station in southern Tel Aviv. Savlov was with a customer in the station’s office Thursday morning when a… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon being briefed in the South Front Command on Operation Protective Edge, July 9, 2014. (Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Get used to conflict. That’s the message Israeli officials and security experts are relaying as the Israel Defense Forces conducts its third operation in six years against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s missile defense capabilities have grown significantly since previous rounds of fighting in… Read more »
Participants in an anti-racism rally in Jerusalem holding signs that say, "Enough violence.Yes to co-existence," July 7, 2014. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash 90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — For many Israelis, eyes are turning south watching yet another conflict unfold with Hamas. Yet thoughts are also turned inward, contemplating the sense of national solidarity occasioned by the abduction and murder of three teenagers and then shattered by the murder of a fourth. The Israeli… Read more »
Black smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza International Airport in Rafah, July 7, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Escalations between Hamas and Israel are nothing new. What’s missing this time, analysts say, is the alignment of outside interests that has resolved such fights in the past.Egypt’s government lacks the influence over Hamas of its predecessors and the United States is in hand-washing mode… Read more »
Jeff Haskell Invisible Theatre will kick off its Sizzling Summer Sounds cabaret series at Skyline Country Club with “Borscht Belt Boys and Girl,” featuring Jeffrey Haskell, Jack Neubeck and Katherine Byrnes, July 9 and 10 at 8 p.m. Susan Claassen, director of Sizzling Summer Sounds and creator… Read more »
An Israeli border policeman patrols the area of the Judean desert near the Jordan border. (Nati Shohat/Flash90) Emerging from the chaos of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has gained the world’s attention for its brutal medieval-style Islamic justice and its swift victories in Iraq, threatening to overrun the weak U.S.-backed government there. Now ISIS is also… Read more »
