Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Staff. Sgt. Joana Chris Arpon isn’t Israeli, or even Jewish. Her service in the Israel Defense Forces is personal. Arpon, 20, is the daughter of Filipino parents who came to the Israel to find work. She said she enlisted as a combat soldier because an Israeli army  team rescued her… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – To build a Jewish state in the Middle East, Israelis had to be innovators. Some of what they’ve come up with has been used mostly by their fellow citizens — think Hebrew slang, Bamba snacks and the Iron Dome missile defense system — at least so far.… Read more »

  TEL AVIV (JTA) – Gaza is rebuilt. The West Bank is flourishing. And the trains run from Tel Aviv to Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital. This is the peaceful future being pitched by Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz. In recent months, he has been shopping around a pair of ambitious economic… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – At a Shabbat service in Tel Aviv on Friday evening, congregants recited the mourner’s prayer for those killed in Syria’s civil war. Standing before a mural of the Tree of Life, the rabbi of Beit Daniel, the largest Reform synagogue in Israel, delivered a sermon… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – In response to the alleged chemical attack in Syria on Tuesday, Israelis have donated hundreds of thousands of shekels to help children and others caught in the conflict raging on their northern border. With Israel maintaining a policy of noninterference, giving money has been a way for people here to… Read more »

If your heart longs to visit Israel, but time doesn’t allow, consider the opportunity to bring a vibrant piece of Israel to your home. The Shinshinim Young Ambassadors Program sends Israeli high school graduates to communities all over the world to work in Jewish educational and cultural institutions (see… Read more »

Hosting the annual Partnership2Gether leadership mission in Tucson this year was ambitious and quite successful, says Oshrat Barel, director of the Weintraub Israel Center. Six partnership delegates from Israel, Tucson delegates and local community stakeholders spent a week, from Feb. 26-March 5, discussing the program, its strengths and ways… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – “Vamos!” “Pass it!” “Ladrao!” For most of the match on a local field Friday, the Inter Aliyah Club soccer players speak a variety of languages. But when the ball hits the back of the opposing team’s net, they join in soccer’s universal victory cry: “Goooal!” Inter… Read more »

(JTA) — “I thought it was just going to be about falafel and hummus.” That was the perception of Israeli cuisine that filmmaker Roger Sherman had when he reluctantly decided to accompany his friend, the acclaimed Jewish cookbook writer Joan Nathan, on a food tour of Israel in 2010. But the reality exceeded… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Last week, Israelis for the first time saw a black lead character on a homegrown, primetime television show. “Nebsu,” a half-hour comedy, focuses on an Ethiopian man who is married to an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. Misunderstanding ensues. “There is definitely a lot of cultural confusion in the… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — A couple weeks ago, Adam Atkins didn’t know Israel had a baseball team. But since the squad started winning games last week in the World Baseball Classic, he has become a fan. Atkins and his friends wanted team caps, but were frustrated to discover they were… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Wonder Woman, Rosie the Riveter and a female Israeli fighter pilot walked into a bar. They were just a few of the heroines out in Tel Aviv Saturday for the night of Purim. With International Women’s Day falling a day before the holiday weekend this… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Shahaf Ben-Yakov always found it maddening when her ability as a combat soldier was questioned just because of her gender. Nonetheless, she dismissed as nonsense the notion that army service “has driven our girls crazy” — as a rabbi who runs a pre-military academy in the Eli… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Noah Roth likes to recall two moments  from Israeli marathons in which he’s raced: a competitor in Jerusalem breezing by him in 2010 wearing all-black, haredi Orthodox garb but for a white athletic shirt; and a Russian woman on this city’s Allenby Street who last… Read more »

Last November settlement leaders celebrated the victory of Donald Trump over Hilary Clinton for president, expecting the departure of former President Barack Obama from the White House to usher in an unlimited period of Israeli building around Judea and Samaria. More recently, Prime Miniser Binyamin Netanyahu looked more relaxed and… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – One state. Flexibility. Two states. Hold back on settlements. Stop Iran. When President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What a press conference! But wait. In the Age of Trump, every post-event analysis requires a double take. Not so much “did he mean what… Read more »

  TEL AVIV (JTA) – Defending his executive order directing the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, President Donald Trump pointed to Israel as a model, saying “a wall protects.” With another swipe of his pen two days later, on Jan. 27, Trump enacted a… Read more »

(JTA) — The Israeli parliament passed a bill that would retroactively legalize some West Bank settlements built on private Palestinian land. Knesset lawmakers voted 60-52 in favor of the measure late Monday to legalize some 4,000 settler homes. The law, which prevents the government from demolishing the homes, comes less than a… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israeli settlements are no big problem. Wait — maybe they are, after all. The Iran deal is trash. No, the deal is here to stay, despite being “weak.” On Feb. 2, the White House pronounced on Israel’s announced settlement expansion that it “may not help”… Read more »

AMONA, West Bank (JTA) — In a dramatic clash with the settlement movement at this hilltop outpost, the state seemed to have won.  Over two sometimes violent days, Feb. 1 and 2, security forces evacuated the residents of Amona, along with hundreds of protesters, as ordered by Israel’s High Court of Justice. Yet… Read more »