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(Washington, D.C.) – In July, 1988, a 41-year-old Jewish Women International member in Gaithersburg, Md., was gunned down by her estranged husband in the parking lot of her place of employment. This shocking murder gave the 100-year-old Jewish women’s organization a new mission—to protect all women and girls from… Read more »

Amid national publicity on Central American migrants – from pro/con protests to faith-based assistance — the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona stands firm. JCRC has long been involved in border issues, says director Bryan Davis, noting that Jews were once strangers dealing with… Read more »

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer addresses Jewish leaders at the National Press Club in Washington, July 28, 2014. (Ron Sachs)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The dramatic developments in the war between Hamas and Israel have been accompanied by sharp ups and downs in U.S.-Israel relations. On Monday, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, made nice with the U.S. national security adviser, Susan Rice, before an audience of… Read more »

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest across the street from a pro-Israel really in Chicago, July 28, 2014. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — In Europe, the fight over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has prompted violent street battles, firebombs thrown at synagogues and even a mid-game attack against a visiting Israeli soccer team by protesters in Austria. In America, it has been more a battle of commentary,… Read more »

Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands Haim Divon, right, with Christian volunteers Timo Erkelens and Eveline Hagoort in the pro-Israel situation room near Amsterdam, July 24, 2014. (Canaan Liphshiz)

(JTA) — Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands Haim Divon nodded approvingly as he surveyed the small army of 50 men and women fighting for Israel. Around a conference table in an office in the Amsterdam suburb of Buitenveldert, 30 volunteers were writing and collecting pro-Israel materials and transferring them… Read more »

Palestinian man seen in front of a fire raging at Gaza's main power plant following an overnight Israeli airstrike, south of Gaza City, July 29, 2014. (Emad Nassar/Flash90)

RAMLE, Israel (JTA) — In her living room in the Israeli town of Ramle, Sarah says she wants a peaceful life. At 79, she deserves one. A Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, Sarah was sent to a Nazi concentration camp in Serbia as a child, arriving in Israel at age 17.… Read more »

Outgoing Israel President Shimon Peres speaks at the swearing in ceremony for his successor, Reuven Rivlin, July 24, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — In the midst of a grinding war in Gaza, a sometimes near-empty Knesset gallery was packed last week for an uplifting moment: what probably was the final political act of Israel’s elder statesman. Shimon Peres — former Israeli prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister and now… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Behind the feud between John Kerry and Israel over the secretary of state’s efforts to broker a Gaza cease-fire is a larger tension concerning the role of Turkey and Qatar in Palestinian affairs. Israeli officials rejected the proposal for a cease-fire advanced by Kerry in part… Read more »

(Sean Hayford O’Leary via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Talk at the annual meeting between Democratic senators and Jewish groups kept coming back to anti-Semitism in Europe. The recurring theme, which the 24 senators who attended and the Jewish leaders both raised, was a measure of the anxiety aroused by recent reports of attacks on… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A few hours before he departed Amsterdam for Australia on July 17, Ithamar Avnon was praying for peace with his parents at their home in the Netherlands. That evening, pro-Russian separatists shot down Avnon’s flight, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s cease-fire proposal. “We are not announcing that it has been achieved tonight,” Kerry said in Cairo on Friday night. “The world is watching tragic moment after tragic moment unfold and wondering when both sides are going to come… Read more »

Ira Forman, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, speaks at the Hungarian parliament in Budapest, October 2013. (Tom Lantos Institute)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration’s anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office’s portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe. Circumcision has become a top focus for Ira Forman, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. He has been using the pulpit his office provides to… Read more »

Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar putting teffilin on 102-year old David Barulya, a World War II veteran and Crimean Holocaust survivor, at a Holocaust commemoration ceremony in Sevastopol, July 10, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (JTA) — Until recently, Holocaust commemorations in this port city were generally low-key gatherings of a few dozen people reciting the Kaddish prayer for victims of the near-annihilation of Crimean Jewry in 1942. But on July 10, a memorial service at the Sevastopol Holocaust monument attracted hundreds of visitors, including a delegation of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its ban on flights to Israel after reviewing Israeli measures to keep flights safe from rockets. “Before making this decision, the FAA worked with its U.S. government counterparts to assess the security situation in Israel and carefully reviewed both significant new… Read more »

caption: A sign pointing to a bomb shelter on the runway at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. Air France was among the many carriers that canceled flights to and from Israel after a rocket fired from Gaza struck near the airport on July 22, 2014. (Tsahi Ben Ami / Flash90 / JTA)

LOD, Israel (JTA) — Natali Cohen and Snir Shahar discovered via email around midnight that their flight from Tel Aviv to Barcelona was canceled. They’d been looking forward to two weeks exploring the Catalan city and getting a break from the conflict in Israel. Shahar, 23, had just taken… Read more »

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on July 23, 2014, a day when many foreign carriers still had flight bans to Tel Aviv. (Haim Zach/GPO)

(JTA) — When the Federal Aviation Administration announced a ban Tuesday on U.S. carriers flying to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, prompting a slew of similar decisions by European carriers, the flight cancellations were more than just a major inconvenience to thousands of passengers on 160-plus canceled flights. They were a… Read more »

  Over 30,000 people paid their respects to lone soldier Sgt. Max Steinberg at his funeral on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem this morning (see video). Steinberg was killed battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, July 20 and was among the 13 IDF soldiers who were killed when a Hamas anti-tank rocket… Read more »

The Tucson January 8th Memorial Foundation is launching a national search for a design team to create a permanent memorial to the January 8, 2011, mass shooting that wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, killed six people and injured 13 others. A Request for Qualifications (RFQ) was released today to select a… Read more »

Israelis attend the funeral of Israeli soldier and Texas native Sean Carmeli, who was killed in Gaza, at a military cemetery in Haifa, July 21, 2014. (Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The soldiers walk past us, two single-file lines between the gravestones, their blank, sunken faces barely visible in the darkness. The coffin appears, hoisted on their arms and wrapped in an Israeli flag. We follow in its wake. Within minutes, some 20,000 people have massed… Read more »

On July 23, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona reported, the IDF discovered a massive terror tunnel extending from Gaza into the Israeli town of Netiv HaAsara. Netiv HaAsara is part of Tucson’s Partnership2Gether region of Kiryat Malachi/Hof Ashkelon. Tucson and the region have a longstanding relationship, and several families… Read more »