News

The Tucson January 8th Memorial Foundation is launching a national search for a design team to create a permanent memorial to the January 8, 2011, mass shooting that wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, killed six people and injured 13 others. A Request for Qualifications (RFQ) was released today to select a… Read more »

Israelis attend the funeral of Israeli soldier and Texas native Sean Carmeli, who was killed in Gaza, at a military cemetery in Haifa, July 21, 2014. (Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The soldiers walk past us, two single-file lines between the gravestones, their blank, sunken faces barely visible in the darkness. The coffin appears, hoisted on their arms and wrapped in an Israeli flag. We follow in its wake. Within minutes, some 20,000 people have massed… Read more »

On July 23, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona reported, the IDF discovered a massive terror tunnel extending from Gaza into the Israeli town of Netiv HaAsara. Netiv HaAsara is part of Tucson’s Partnership2Gether region of Kiryat Malachi/Hof Ashkelon. Tucson and the region have a longstanding relationship, and several families… Read more »

Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, attends a panel discussion during the 50th Munich Security Conference in Germany, Feb. 2, 2014. (Joerg Koch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The issue of Iranian uranium enrichment remains as stubborn an obstacle to a nuclear deal as it was at the launch of the talks six months ago. Iran and the major powers, led by the United States, agreed July 18 to extend the talks another four… Read more »

Fares Alhozael, 55, says the Israeli government has failed to provide a bomb shelter near his home on the outskirts of the Bedouin city of Rahat. (Ben Sales)

RAHAT, Israel (JTA) — Fares Alhozael doesn’t want much from the Israeli government. The roads in his neighborhood aren’t paved, and earlier this year Israel destroyed his cousin’s house for having been built illegally. Slumped on a faded bed in the bare, beige, tin-roofed house he shares with his six children… Read more »

BALTIMORE (JTA) — Sean Carmeli, a sergeant in the Israeli army, was stationed in Israel’s South awaiting possible orders to enter Gaza. He was exchanging Facebook messages with his friend Ian Benisti, a U.S. Marine reservist who was visiting Israel from California. The two had planned to get together,… Read more »

In the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, pro-Palestinian rioters broke shop windows and set fires on July 20, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

SARCELLES, France (JTA) – Shortly before their synagogue became shrouded by tear gas and smoke, 100 Jews wielding baseball bats and clubs were singing the French national anthem in front of the synagogue’s heavy metal gate. They had gathered outside the main synagogue in this Paris suburb Sunday to defend it against a… Read more »

The wife and young daughter of Sergeant Major Bayhesain Kshaun cry at his gravesite during the funeral ceremony at the Netivot military cemetery, July 22, 2014. Kshaun, 39, was killed by an anti-tank missile fired at the force responding to a terrorist infiltration incident on July 21. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The air war has become a ground war. The Israeli population, always on edge, has become a nation in mourning. And a military operation that nearly ended after eight days has become a bloody invasion of Gaza that could last weeks and has Israeli officials divided over how it ought to end.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Federal Aviation Administration prohibited all U.S. airlines from flying to Israel for at least 24 hours. All three U.S. carriers with nonstop flights to Israel – United, U.S. Airways and Delta Airlines — canceled their flights to Tel Aviv on Tuesday. El Al, which is not bound by the FAA… Read more »

sraeli paratroopers inspecting the entrance of a tunnel they discovered in the northern Gaza Strip, July 18, 2014. (IDF Spokesperson/Flash 90)

(JTA) — Until this latest war, if you asked most Israelis about the threat from Gaza, they would probably start talking about Hamas rockets. But that has changed over the last few days of fighting, for two reasons. One, the much-heralded success of the Iron Dome missile defense system… Read more »

The Saint Petersburg company Tzar Caviar used molecular engineering to produce a kosher caviar substitute now available in New York and Paris. (Courtesy Tzar Caviar)

PARIS (JTA) — In a penthouse office with a view of the Eiffel Tower, Olivier Kassabi uses a ceramic spoon to extract a small scoop from a jar labeled as Russian caviar. Placing a clutch of black globules on the base of his thumb, Kassabi licks it off, savoring… Read more »

Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz hangs out the porch of the Chilmark General Store in the Martha's Vineyard town of Chilmark, Mass. (Anthony Weiss/JTA)

  CHILMARK, Mass. (JTA) — Alan Dershowitz’s house is a bit of a mess.Most of the rooms in his Martha’s Vineyard home are cluttered with half-unpacked boxes filled with items from his Cambridge house, which he and his wife emptied recently and sold after he retired from his Harvard… Read more »

Israeli President Shimon Peres visited bereaved families who lost loved ones during Operation Protective Edge. At the beginning of the visits Peres addressed the current situation and said, “We have only option, to be victorious and avoid a massacre of in the communities around Gaza through the terror tunnels. Through… Read more »

Liam Ferguson, center, who is moving to Israel with his parents, hiking along Alaska’s Kesugi Ridge with his sister, Zoey, left, and a family friend. (Courtesy of Stewart Ferguson)

(JTA) — Rebecca Scoggin lived in a lot of places growing up: Juneau, Nome, Fairbanks, Homer, Anchorage. But except for the two years she lived in Seattle after high school, she never lived outside Alaska. At least she hadn’t until a few months ago. Inspired by a Birthright trip… Read more »

Ludmila Lazaurenko, right, with her son Anatoly and mother Nadezhda Belovol at their temporary housing near Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, July 14, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine (JTA) — Anatoly Lazaurenko’s face betrays no emotion as he watches footage of an old woman he used to know lying in the rubble of what once was his home in the war-torn city of Slavyansk. Oblivious to her mangled face, Anatoly, 8, points to a corner… Read more »

The July 13 riot outside the Synagogue de la Roquette in a Paris suburb was notable not only for the terror it inspired among those inside the shul, but for the fierce and unusual response by young Jewish men who pushed back the pro-Palestinian rioters.

  (JTA) — For the past 14 years, French Jews have grown accustomed to coming under attack during periods of conflict in the Middle East from hostile elements within their country’s large Arab and Muslim communities. One recent incident, however, stood out: the July 13 riot by Palestinian sympathizers outside the… Read more »

An Israeli tank crossing through a field in southern Israel near the border with Gaza, the day after Israel began its invasion of Gaza, July 18, 2014. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For the first time in years, Israeli ground troops crossed into Gaza. Rather than just return to the status quo before the conflict of “quiet for quiet” — no Hamas missiles and no Israeli airstrikes — Israel’s stated objectives are to bring a sustained cessation… Read more »

Children playing at an impromptu day camp set up for the children of hospital workers in Beersheva. (Ben Sales)

BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA) — During Israel’s conflict with Hamas in 2009, Eli Nachmani, already using a wheelchair, injured his leg when a rocket hit this southern Israeli city. In the last clash in 2012, Nachmani sustained a head injury when the blast from a rocket knocked him out of… Read more »

Palestinians walking among the rubble of a destroyed house following an Israeli missile strike, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, July 14, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90)

(JTA) — Israel and Hamas are fighting their third major conflict in six years, and while some things have stayed the same, the battle lines have also shifted in a few notable ways. Here are eight things you need to know about the current conflagration: • Iron Dome has been a… Read more »

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with the central committee of the Fatah movement in Ramallah, West Bank, July 13, 2014. (Thaer Ghanaim/Palestinian Press Office via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Mahmoud Abbas has been sitting on the sidelines of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, with little influence over its outcome. But it hasn’t stopped U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry from consulting closely with the Palestinian Authority president throughout the crisis. A U.S. official who… Read more »