(Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — As the folks on the next season of “Game of Thrones” might say, “Winter is here.” That means it’s time to get under the covers and engage in the national pastime of binge-watching TV shows. Since Netflix pioneered the streaming model in the late 2000s, other… Read more »
Jerusalem resident Alexandra Benjamin and her son at his bris in 2016. (Yitz Woolf)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Alexandra Benjamin was pregnant recently with her son, she went shopping for appliances for her new apartment in Jerusalem. At the store, the religious salesman asked about her husband. Benjamin explained that she was having the baby on her own. “That’s so great!” she… Read more »
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely
(GPO)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, current and former foreign ministry officials said Thursday that Sunday’s “peace” conference in Paris would do little but demonize Israel and push off the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu called the conference “rigged by the Palestinians under… Read more »
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, right, meets with B'Noam director Rabbi Yisroel Meir Riani in Modiin, Israel, October 2016.
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Many Israelis feel alienated by the marriage process in their country, fed up with the bureaucracy and strict religious requirements. Some seek to reform the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate while creating alternatives to its monopoly on marriage and other personal status issues in Israel. But haredi Rabbi Yisroel Meir… Read more »
President Barack Obama delivering his farewell speech in Chicago, Jan. 10, 2017. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Barack Obama got his kishkes back. The president, whose alleged aloofness was the signature flaw cited by his rivals, his critics and at times his friends, ended his presidency with an impassioned appeal for the preservation of democracy — his lower lip trembling, a tear streaking his… Read more »
Officer Yaara Bareket oversees stretches at the Wingate army base in Netanya, Israel, Dec. 13, 2016. (Andrew Tobin)
NETANYA, Israel (JTA) – One fit young soldier scales a rope. Two others practice hand-to-hand combat. A large group marches across the sand. But those were just the inspirational photographs on the walls. The actual soldiers crowded in the one-room building here on the Orde Wingate army base were… Read more »
The West Bank security fence running near Jerusalem, April 17, 2016. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israel’s leading security think tank has published a plan to redraw the map of the West Bank in a bid to consolidate major settlements and prevent the spread of others. The plan, presented Monday to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as part of the Institute for National Security Studies’ yearly strategic… Read more »
Rep. Ed Royce participates in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – There’s a striking difference between competing bids in Congress addressing last month’s U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. It’s not that they differ on the United Nations – the two nonbinding congressional resolutions under consideration condemn the Security Council, as well as the outgoing Obama… Read more »
Joseph Waks, fourth from the right, poses with Jewish visitors and soldiers at the Oz Vegaon tent outpost in the West Bank, Jan. 2, 2017. (Courtesy of Avi Hyman Communications)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – About 200 Jews from around the world toured the West Bank in response to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech warning of the dangers of settlement expansion. The group, organized on short notice by Miami-based fashion designer Joseph Waks, visited Jewish communities and met… Read more »
A view of a portion of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) –There was little new in the dueling speeches of John Kerry and Benjamin Netanyahu. In remarks from the State Department on Wednesday, the secretary of state reiterated the vehement opposition of the United States to Israeli settlement construction and its belief that the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace are dying.… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrivies at his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Dec. 25, 2016. (Dan Balilty/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Emotions are running high following the Obama administration’s decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Here are seven questions aimed at making sense of what went down and what it could mean moving forward. 1. Did Obama… Read more »
Samantha Power, center, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at the Security Council meeting in New York, Dec. 23, 2016. (Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ahead of the unknowns a Trump administration will bring to American Middle East policy, the Obama administration allowed a bracing reminderon Friday that the international community does not recognize the validity of Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security Council… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second from right, chairs the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Dec. 25, 2016. (Dan Balilty/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expects a “new era” when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He said as much at a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony Saturday, where he addressed the United Nations Security Council resolution passed a day earlier against Israeli settlements in the… Read more »
UN passes anti-settlement resolution, US abstains (JTA) — The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, with the United States abstaining. The resolution was adopted Friday afternoon with 14 votes in favor and only the U.S. abstention. It called Israeli settlements “a flagrant violation of international law”… Read more »
Trees aflame in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, Nov. 25, 2016. (Gili Yaari /Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Over the past few weeks, more than 1,700 brush fires across Israel have destroyed homes, vehicles and countless irreplaceable personal possessions. As a nation, we have also suffered severe damage to more than 32,000 acres of precious natural resources – woodlands, grasslands and protected parklands,… Read more »
Randy Odgen, right, who retired Dec. 5 from Mt. Lemmon Fire District, where he served as fire chief for six and a half years, helps battle a five-story apartment fire in Jerusalem on Nov. 29. All residents were evacuated safely and the fire was contained. Ogden, who retired from the Tucson Fire Department in June 2010 after 33 years of service, says of his Israel deployment, “I am privileged to end my career as I began it, running calls and hauling hoses as a firefighter.” (Arik Abouloff)
As soon as she heard about the hundreds of fires raging through Israel late last month, Marcela Donovan Hammond expected a call. Having just completed her Emergency Volunteer Project training in Israel in September the Nogales firefighter, arson investigator and mother of six was prepared to drop everything at… Read more »
Anti-Israel students at Columbia University erected a mock "apartheid wall" in front of the iconic Low Library steps during Israel Apartheid Week, March 3, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) — When Northwestern University’s student Senate passed a resolution in February 2015 asking the university to divest from six corporations they said contributed to the violation of Palestinians’ human rights, freshman Ross Krasner was hurt and surprised. The rhetoric of the measure, portraying Israel as an oppressor,… Read more »
An Israeli firefighting airplane tries to extinguish a blaze raging in Haifa, Nov. 24, 2016. (Meir Vaknin/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – As wildfires threatened Israel last week, rhetoric linking arson to terrorism heated up. For about a week, fires across the country burned huge swaths of land, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee. Dozens were injured, though few… Read more »
The Israeli government launches several initiatives to promote Israel as a destination for tourists from India and China. (Itamar Grinberg, Israeli Ministry of Tourism)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Bollywood star and Indian fashion icon Sonam Kapoor appeared on the cover of the June-July issue of Harper’s Bazaar Bride, India, she did so wearing a sheer pink confection and a radiant smile. Behind her sprawled the Old City of Jerusalem. It wasn’t happenstance.… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the scene of a fire in Zichron Yaakov, in northern Israel, Nov. 23, 2016. (Emil Salman/Pool)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – As the wildfires that raged across this country for nearly a week were subdued Sunday, Israelis surveyed the devastation in search of answers. The fires, which continued to flare Sunday evening, consumed as many as 32,000 acres of forest and brush across the country – an area more… Read more »
