Israel

RAMALLAH, West Bank (JTA) — The delegation of Israelis who traveled last week to the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, the Mukata in Ramallah, consisted mostly of the usual suspects. There were a few newcomers, such as Israeli tycoon Idan Ofer, but for the most part they… Read more »

Stone-throwing Palestinians clash with Israeli troops near the Kalandiya checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, May 15, 2011. (Nati Shohat/Flash90/JTA)

RAMALLAH, West Bank (JTA) — Clouds of tear gas hovered over hundreds of rioting Palestinian youths on the road to Jerusalem, where demonstrations marking the anniversary of Israel’s founding 63 years ago turned violent. “I want a third intifada,” said Ala Barghouti, a 21-year-old accounting student, his nostrils stuffed… Read more »

Yoel Shalit, brother of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, is led away by security after interrupting an Idependence Day ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — As Israelis celebrated the country’s 63rd Independence Day, they had much more on their minds than barbecues and fireworks. The carefully crafted theme of the day, “Looking after one another — the year of mutual care,” raised the hackles of some Israelis who do not believe… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — In an elegant limestone building in a Jerusalem neighborhood that before 1948 was home to the city’s Palestinian elite, a group of Jewish and Arab Israeli academics recently tried to untangle one of Israel’s most complex and charged questions: the status of its Arab minority. “The… Read more »

In Israel, restituting Holocaust-era assets isn’t just about getting European countries, banks and insurance companies to pay up. It’s also about finding the rightful heirs of thousands of pre-state assets in Israel whose original Jewish owners perished during the Holocaust. These include dormant bank accounts, real estate, bonds and… Read more »

The Kurt Lindenfeld store in Chemnitz, Germany, seen here in the 1920s, was one of thousands of German Jewish businesses that vanished during the Nazi era. (N.Y. Museum of Jewish Heritage)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Israeli government is firing a new salvo in the turf war over Holocaust restitution. Following years of complaints by survivors about opacity and unjust allocation decisions by the Claims Conference, and after two decades of what critics deride as scant tangible successes by the… Read more »

The Federation’s TIPS Partnership incorporates the Regional Council of Hof Ashkelon, a consortium of kibbutzim and moshavim that border Gaza. This update from our partners, written Sunday, April 10, reveals how life is being impacted on a day-to-day basis by the uptick in missiles coming into the region from… Read more »

David Abraham and his mother, Marlene, in Israel

David Abraham, a former Tucsonan who made aliyah in 2008 after graduating from the University of Arizona and spent two years in the Israel Defense Forces, where he was a tank commander, has joined with other “lone soldiers” and native Israelis to launch a website that provides information, in… Read more »

Palestinian teenagers Amjad Mohammad Awad, left, and Hakim Mazen Awad have been arrested and allegedly confessed to murdering five members of the Fogel family in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Itamar, which is near their home in the Awarta village. (GPO/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — They came armed with knives and wire cutters looking for a Jewish target.   It was a Friday night, the Sabbath eve of March 11, and Palestinian teenagers Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad, 18, both from the Palestinian village of Awarta, hurried through the dark… Read more »

Richard Goldstone, left, shown meeting on June 1, 2009 with Ghazi Hamad of Hamas at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, now says his report’s finding that Israel intentionally targeted civilians in the Gaza war was mistaken. (Rahim Khatiz/Flash 90/JTA)

Richard Goldstone’s original U.N. report on the Gaza war of 2008-09 landed like a bombshell in the PR war over Israel, damaging Israel’s reputation around the world with its finding that Israel potentially committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its three-week war against Hamas. Now that Goldstone… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — From the highest elevation in Itamar you can see everything but the future. On a clear day, says Rabbi Moshe Goldsmith, Itamar’s mayor, “We can see the three seas”: the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean and the Kinneret (Galilee). To the west, “We can… Read more »

President Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres at their White House meeting talked about the Washington Post Op-Ed by U.N. investigator Richard Goldstone rescinding his conclusion that Israel had committed war crimes in the 2009 Gaza War, April 5, 2011. (Mark Neyman, Israel Government Press Office)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would launch an international campaign to cancel the Goldstone Report after its author, ex-South African Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that Israel did not intentionally target civilians as a policy during the Gaza War,… Read more »

Medical personnel clean the scene of where a bus exploded from a bomb, injuring 25 people, near the central bus station in Jerusalem, March 23, 2011. (Abir Sultan / Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It happens almost like clockwork: Something happens in the Middle East, and it reverberates across the Atlantic with new letters from the U.S. Congress. With so many relatively new members looking to establish their pro-Israel credentials, the reaction in Congress to the recent violence in Israel… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When David Portowicz was a new immigrant to Israel from Brooklyn in the 1970s, he began research on poverty in Jaffa that would lead to his life’s work: the creation of a nonprofit organization that now serves thousands of disadvantaged children and their families. A… Read more »

ZAKA volunteer holds a body bag containing one of the victims of the terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itama, March 11, 2011. (Courtesy of ZAKA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Demonstrations in solidarity with settlers and a Cabinet committee’s approval for new housing in the West Bank are among the Israeli responses to the suspected terrorist attack that killed five members of a West Bank Jewish family. An estimated 20,000 people attended the March 13 funeral at a cemetery… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — When Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell sat down for an interview before a crowd of nearly 1,000 last year, his interlocutor, New York Times columnist David Brooks, wondered why the political heavyweight had agreed to openly discuss a matter as sensitive as his… Read more »

President Barack Obama meets with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the State Dining Room of the White House, March 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

NEW YORK (JTA) – President Obama reportedly urged Jewish communal leaders to speak to their friends and colleagues in Israel and to “search your souls” over Israel’s seriousness about making peace. In an hourlong meeting Tuesday with about 50 representatives from the Jewish community’s chief foreign policy umbrella group,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — A new campaign for clemency for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard has racked up a series of big name politicos in the last few weeks: former Vice President Dan Quayle, former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and Chicago Rabbi Capers Funnye, a cousin of first lady Michelle… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel changed Gabrielle Giffords’ life when the budding politician first visited the country in 2001 and it drew her close to Judaism. After the Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head a month ago, an Israeli innovation invented by an American immigrant to Israel may have… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — This time there are maps — not that they necessarily will help. After the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, the Israeli and Palestinian sides bickered about who had offered what, and the competing historical narratives were adopted by either side and around the… Read more »