Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A new left-wing alliance including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has formed to take on Benjamin Netanyahu and the right wing that backs him in Israel’s September elections. The united slate announced Thursday has the far-left Meretz party running with Barak’s new Israel Democratic Party and… Read more »

(JTA) — Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, reiterated statements about terminating his government’s dealings with Israel. Abbas’ announcement Thursday followed an emergency meeting after Israel razed Palestinian buildings built without permit on the edge of Jerusalem, near the security barrier that Israel built in the West… Read more »

(JTA) — Following protests, authorities in eastern France rescinded a ban they had issued forbidding soccer fans from Israel from flying their country’s flag in the streets of Strasbourg. The prohibitions, which are unusual and provoked vociferous criticism, came in a four-page order Thursday from the head of the Bas-Rhin… Read more »

(JTA) — Norway and six EU countries voted at the United Nations in favor of two resolutions that singled out Israel for criticism as a violator of women’s and human rights. Israel was the only country named Tuesday as a violator or trouble spot by the 54-nation UN Economic… Read more »

(JTA) — Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz walked back his recent statement that intermarriage is “like a second Holocaust,” writing that the phrase was “probably not an appropriate term to use.” Jewish leaders in Israel and the United States had criticized the analogy made at a July 1 Cabinet… Read more »

Danielle Levy and Shay Friedwald, both 18, are Tucson’s teen Israeli ambassadors, or shinshinim, for the new year. They have just graduated high school and are among the 10 percent of students accepted out of about 2,000 who apply for this Jewish Agency for Israel global outreach program. “I… Read more »

Shelley Ann Lipowich, Ph.D., says she’s taught “for 150 years … everything from pre-kindergarten to post-doctoral, and I’ve had a ball.” She got her first taste of the Old Pueblo when it truly was a little village. She attended Sam Hughes Elementary as a child, “when Plumer Avenue was… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israeli society has been gripped over the past week by the killing of Solomon Tekah, an unarmed 19-year-old Ethiopian Israeli. On June 30, an off-duty Israeli police officer shot and killed Tekah under highly contested circumstances. While emerging evidence seems to indicate that the policeman was not… Read more »

Twenty-first century technology can go a long way toward bridging distances between people thousands of miles apart, but there is no replacement for personal and cross-community connections, says Inbal Shtivi. Shtivi, 43, who will be Tucson’s new shlicha (Israeli emissary) and director of the Weintraub Israel Center, will arrive… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Tel Aviv suburb has approved operating public transportation on Shabbat. The City Council of Ramat Gan, a municipality in central Israel, approved the measure on Tuesday by a vote of 15-6. In a harbinger of the religious freedom debate that will infuse the campaign for… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a point of reminding a conference of Christian Zionists that Israel permits conversions to Christianity, just weeks after his department reported on the difficulties converts face there. Pompeo, speaking Monday to the annual Washington summit of Christians United For Israel,… Read more »

(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has come under fire in recent years for allegedly failing to confront anti-Semitism and revisionism in Central and Eastern Europe, met Wednesday with the head of a European political party whose membership includes ultranationalists and neo-Nazis. Oleh Lyashko of the Ukrainian… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The central Israel city of Petah Tikvah inaugurated a city square in honor of President Donald Trump. Donald Trump Square was inaugurated on Wednesday to thank Trump for his support of Israel, especially the president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The square is… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A leading religious-Zionist rabbi in Israel rejected the possibility of asking former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked to head the Union of Right Wing Parties because “politics is not for women.” Rabbi Shlomo Aviner was one of dozens of rabbis who signed a letter objecting to seeing… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Protests by the Ethiopian-Israeli community and their supporters entered a third day on Wednesday in Israel in the wake of the killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli teen by an off-duty police officer. While the protests are tied to the death of Solomon Tekah, 19, on Sunday night… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Thousands of Ethiopian Israelis and their supporters demonstrated in cities across Israel on Tuesday night to protest the killing two nights earlier of an Ethiopian teen by an off-duty police officer. At least 60 protesters were arrested and at least 47 police officers were injured as… Read more »

Visiting Israel or other parts of the Middle East this summer? The University of Arizona Center for Middle Eastern Studies is seeking photo submissions for its 29th annual exhibit, “Ordinary and Extraordinary.” Each year, the UA Center for Middle Eastern Studies organizes a photography exhibit featuring images from the… Read more »

(JTA) — “Raising pigs in Israel? Couldn’t you play golf like everyone else?” That’s a quote that doubles well as the concept behind the movie “Holy Lands,” which stars Hollywood veteran James Caan as a relatively secular American Jew turned Israeli pig farmer. The film, directed by the French… Read more »

(JTA) — Israel’s Meretz party became the first to elect as its leader an openly gay person. The left-wing party picked Nitzan Horowitz as its new head on Thursday in Tel Aviv. Horowitz, a former journalist who served in the Knesset in 2009-2015, defeated incumbent Tamar Zandberg. “Meretz doesn’t… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two months after the Beresheet spacecraft crashed on the surface of the moon, the SpaceIL organization said it will not make a second attempt. Instead, the Israeli non-profit organization announced late on Tuesday in a statement and on social media, “we will seek out another, significant… Read more »