Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A 21-year-old man became the fourth Israeli civilian to be killed by Gaza rocket fire, after a rocket struck an apartment building in the southern coastal city of Ashdod. The man was in the stairwell of the building when it was struck by a rocket late… Read more »

As Tucson grapples with a continuing influx of Central American migrants seeking asylum, and the community responds with shelter, food, and clothing, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish History Museum focused their annual local leaders’ forum on the immigration issue. The event… Read more »

Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s official Memorial Day dedicated to fallen soldiers and victims of terror, will be observed in Tucson on Tuesday, May 7 with song and remembrances at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, 6:30-8 p.m. Enacted into Israeli law in 1963, Yom Hazikaron traditionally is observed by the sounding… Read more »

(JTA) — The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial published Tuesday that the newspaper’s publishing of “an appalling political cartoon” is “evidence of a profound danger — not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also acknowledged its own historical contributions to… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Mitt Romney returned from a Middle East tour saying that he saw no alternative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict other than the two-state solution. The Utah Republican, his party’s 2012 presidential nominee, has just assumed the chairmanship of the Middle East subcommittee in the Senate. Romney’s conclusion… Read more »

(JTA) — An Israeli girl whose family moved to San Diego to escape rocket attacks in Israel and her uncle also from Israel were among the injured in a shooting attack at a Chabad synagogue near San Diego. Noya Dahan, 8, and her family moved to California from Sderot… Read more »

(JTA) — The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan will be unveiled in June, White House special adviser Jared Kushner said. Kushner, one of the main authors of the plan, told a group of about 100 ambassadors in Washington, D.C., that the plan will be made public after a… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Reuven Rivlin has officially tasked Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, with forming Israel’s next government. Rivlin met Wednesday evening with Netanyahu at the president’s residence in Jerusalem hours after receiving the official results of last week’s national elections. Party leaders representing 65 of the 120… Read more »

(JTA) — This time, don’t be fooled by the rocks that she’s got — Jennifer Lopez is set to perform in Israel for the first time. Concert promoters confirmed the rumor Wednesday. Lopez, 49, will play at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on Aug. 1. The pop star and actress… Read more »

(JTA) — A coalition of more than a dozen conservative groups, most of them Jewish, sent a letter to President Donald Trump tacitly asking him to respect a potential Israeli annexation of West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is almost certainly headed to a fifth term after… Read more »

(JTA) — One week after winning election to a fifth term as Israel’s head of state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. Other Jewish people on the list include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; Jennifer Hyman, whose $1 billion company… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The new Palestinian Authority prime minister said the still-to-be unveiled Trump administration peace plan will be “born dead.” Mohammad Shtayyeh told The Associated Press in a wide-ranging hourlong interview that the international community would join the Palestinians in rejecting the peace plan, whose release date has… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — With elections in the rearview mirror, Israelis are now focusing on the moon. The Israeli spacecraft Beresheet, or Genesis, is scheduled to touch down on the moon’s surface on Thursday night in Israel. And the country has Beresheet mania. Watch parties and celebrations are planned throughout… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The leaders of the Blue and White party conceded defeat to Likud and said they would keep their coalition together in preparation for the next election. Party co-leader Yair Lapid, who brought his Yesh Atid into Blue and White, said in a speech Wednesday night that his… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel’s election on Tuesday was contentious, historic, crazy — and somewhat predictable. With most of the vote counted — some 300,000 votes from soldiers, diplomats and other Israeli officials working abroad have yet to be tallied — Benjamin Netanyahu seems poised to become the longest-serving prime… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Even by Israeli standards, the country’s latest general elections have been exceptionally dirty, rife with personal attacks between candidates and fake news. But in an arid country where the blossoms and mild temperatures of spring are gone within a few weeks, the vote’s timing was… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party finished one seat behind main challenger Blue and White in the first exit poll results released at the close of voting Tuesday. Blue and White, whose head is former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz, took 37 seats… Read more »

(JTA) — Just days before Israel was to hold national elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex parts of the West Bank as Israeli territory. “I’m going to extend sovereignty,” he said in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 on Saturday night, adding that “I don’t differentiate between the… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The final polls before Israel’s national election on Tuesday show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party running either neck and neck or up to five seats behind upstart challenger Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party. The last polls allowed by law were published Friday. Exit polling… Read more »

As if completing a 320-mile race in three days isn’t enough, doing it in 36 hours is an enormous challenge. Included in that are a 6.2-mile swim through chilly mountain waters and cycling 171 miles across a desert at the lowest point on earth, not to mention running a… Read more »