Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem, June 28, 2013.(Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — We don’t know. That’s the operative phrase of the new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks announced Friday and ostensibly set to begin in the coming days in Washington. We don’t know their parameters, or if Israel will freeze settlements, release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners or agree to… Read more »
U.S. Olympic gymnast and gold medalist Aly Raisman lights the torch during the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games at Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium, July 19, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — U.S. Olympian Aly Raisman lit the torch at the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games, which features a record number of nearly 9,000 athletes. Thursday night’s ceremony at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem featured pyrotechnics and performances with hundreds of dancers and popular Israeli singers, as… Read more »
Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Demers embraces his one-time goalie Patrick Roy at Roy's 2008 retirement ceremony at the Bell Centre in Montreal. (Photo by Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Of all the compelling stories of athletic achievement and challenges overcome that could be told by the 9,000 participants gathering in Israel for the 19th Maccabiah Games, it might be hard to find one to top Jacques Demers. He’s a coaching legend, having led the iconic… Read more »
Israeli Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, left, sampling some halvah at a factory in the West Bank Jewish settlement city of Ariel, June 4, 2013. (Assaf Shilo/Israel Sun/Flash 90/JTA) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — The intensity with which Israel reacted this week to new European guidelines prohibiting support for projects based in disputed territories surprised not only EU diplomats, but also their Israeli counterparts. The guidelines, which preclude already nonexistent EU grants to Israeli entities in the West… Read more »
Egyptian protesters hold an anti-Morsi poster in Tahrir Square in Cairo shortly before the military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, July 3, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty) TEL AVIV (JTA) – For the second time in less than three years, Egypt is erupting in chaos, with a popular protest movement leading to a swift change in the country’s leadership. For Israelis, the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency last week is a cause… Read more »
BALTIMORE (JTA) — The first arrows Roxana and Rafael Gonzalez launch at the upcoming 19th Maccabiah Games will take flight from their fingertips, but also from Jeffrey Sudikoff’s imagination. Roxana, 25, and Rafael, 24, are part of the first Cuban delegation to participate in the Maccabiah, a quadrennial sports… Read more »
A wall of pashkvilim, or posters bearing communal announcements, in the Jerusalem haredi neighborhood of Mea She'arim. (Ben Sales)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The large white poster is topped by a screaming headline written in large black letters: “Hell.” Posted on a wall in Jerusalem’s haredi Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood, the sign describes a development that threatens the community with “extinction” and “makes all living hearts tremble.” Known as… Read more »
L-R: Reps. Ed Royce, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Pete Roskam at a meeting with Dani Dayan, a leader of Israel's settlers movement, in Washington, June 27, 2013. (House Republican Conference) WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s almost boilerplate: The American Jewish community asks a foreign leader with whom it has cultivated a close relationship to kindly tell firebrands in the leader’s government to pipe down and fall in with an established policy that happens to be embraced by the U.S. government.… Read more »
Dror Hazan, right, one of the managers of the Ben-Gurion University Formula project, pushing Rani Dekel, who is driving the race car during the Jerusalem Formula event, June 14, 2013. (Raz Schweitzer/Ben Gurion Racing)
BEERSHEVA, Israel (JTA) — Last week, Rani Dekel was doing doing donuts on the streets of Jerusalem in a blue and orange Formula race car with hundreds of thousands cheering him on. On Sunday, the car’s skeleton sat in a bare laboratory at Ben-Gurion University in the southern city… Read more »
Barbra Streisand hugs Israeli President Shimon Peres after performing at his 90th birthday celebration in Jerusalem, June 18, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90) JERUSALEM (JTA) — World leaders praised and serenaded Israeli President Shimon Peres in honor of his upcoming 90th birthday. The prime-time birthday celebration Tuesday night marked the start of the fifth annual Israeli Presidential Conference. Two of every three Israeli television viewers tuned in to the ceremony, which was… Read more »
Left to right, Geulah Elementary School classmates Avraham Siton, Ora Bogomolny and Mashiach Moshe Shem-Tov meet for lunch in Florida months before their 60th reunion in Israel. Siton would die two days before the June 12 reunion.(Courtesy Ora Bogomolny) The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Ora Bogomolny sounded subdued, as if the phone call to her Israel apartment had disturbed her sleep. Indeed, she had experienced a nightmare just hours before receiving the call from “Seeking Kin” on June… Read more »
Protester standing on top of a barricade during a demonstration near Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, June 11, 2013. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty) TEL AVIV (JTA) – As the budding protest movement in Turkey against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan struggles to gain a foothold, Israel is watching the developments with some measure of ambivalence. On the one hand, Erdogan has led Turkey away from a close alliance with Israel, using his… Read more »
More than a dozen Americans and Israelis met recently in Israel to strategize plans for the TIPS (Tucson, Israel, Phoenix, Seattle) Partnership2Gether project for the coming year. Tucson volunteer Gail Ben-Jamin (known to her Israeli friends as Gila) and Oshrat Barel, the future shlicha or Israeli emissary to Tucson,… Read more »
Israeli couple hopes for change in U.S. immigration policy (Courtesy Immigration Equality Action Fund) A same-sex Israeli couple struggling against U.S. immigration laws are set to become the faces of the fight to extend one of the foundations of immigration policy to gays and lesbians. Adi Lavy and Tzila Levy have been caught in the bureaucratic red tape of the American immigration system… Read more »
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz (with binoculars) tours the Israeli border with Syria on May 21.
(Tal Manor/IDF Spokesperson/Flash 90/JTA) For much of the past two years, Israel has taken a singular approach to the Syrian civil war: Stay as far away as possible. But with a recent string of victories by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the crumbling of the U.N. peacekeeping force that has kept… Read more »
A Better Place customer charging his electronic vehicle in the company's headquarters in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, February 2010. (Roni Schutzer/Flash 90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — It was supposed to be the car of the future, a near-silent, battery-powered vehicle that would wean the West off its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and save the environment in the process. And an Israeli company seemed destined to build it. Better Place, founded… Read more »
Mimi Gold, an Israeli Reform rabbi who won a Supreme Court case entitling her to a state salary, has yet to receive a paycheck a year later. (Facebook) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s plans to move ahead with the funding of non-Orthodox rabbis appeared to be a landmark achievement for Reform and Conservative leaders, who have long chafed at their second-class treatment by the Israeli government. But even as they welcomed last week’s news that the Ministry… Read more »
Demonstrators in Berlin protesting the deaths of pro-Palestinian activists in a clash with Israeli commandos aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, June 2010. (Sean Gallup/Getty) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel’s settlement building is increasingly isolating the country in Europe, leading to European Union policies that could reinforce Israel’s delegitimization, according to the top EU representative to the peace process. Andreas Reinicke, the EU’s special envoy for the Middle East peace process, said increasing frustration with… Read more »
Samantha Power, recently nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, listens to President Obama as he announces the nomination of Susan Rice to be the next National Security Advisor at the White House, June 5, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Samantha Power brings to foreign policy an activist impulse that many in the pro-Israel community wish was more prevalent among American diplomats. Except Power, a former White House national security council staffer nominated this week by President Obama to represent the United States at the United… Read more »
Adam Green with fellow British fans of the English soccer club Chelsea on their way to a match in Amsterdam, May 15, 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA) (JTA) — Itzik Shanan and Abbas Suan watched last week as 100,000 English soccer fans sang along to a live performance by a multiracial quartet at London’s Wembley Stadium. Shanan, who started a campaign to eliminate racism from Israeli soccer, and Suan, a well-known Arab-Israeli player, were in Britain… Read more »
