Jerusalem – Just days after long-time Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiators Yitzhak Molcho and Saeb Erekat clashed yet again at a meeting in Jordan, thousands of young people from across the Middle East gathered together online for an event which set a new standard for mutual understanding and partnership. Conferences bringing… Read more »
News
Is Hamas trying to change its stripes?

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Is Hamas trying to change its stripes? Terrorist attacks against Israelis appear to be on pause, and rocket fire from Gaza is down significantly. The Hamas leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshaal, is trying to distance himself from the Assad regime and align Hamas with the forces… Read more »
Our defenders at the CIA
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — News flash: Top-secret intelligence memos written during the last years of the Bush administration describe covert activities — in intelligence parlance, a “false flag” operation — by Israeli Mossad officers, posing as American CIA agents, who recruited assassins from Jundallah, an obscure Pakistan-based Sunni Muslim… Read more »
Birth control fights return to campaign, with Jews in key posts
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Birth control is rapidly gaining steam as an election-year wedge issue, with Jewish advocates lobbying out front and behind the scenes in what is shaping up as a clash between calls for individual freedom and religious liberty. Several Jewish groups and lawmakers played a behind-the-scenes role… Read more »
News Analyses: Alexander Levin’s got a name (and cash), but does he have a plan?
NEW YORK (JTA) — Ukrainian Jewish leader and real estate mogul Alexander L. Levin came to New York last month to launch the latest international Jewish organization with a grandiose name. Called the World Forum for Russian Jewry, this one aims to harness the power of Russian-speaking Jews the… Read more »
New book frames debate on conversion
NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The issue of who can become a Jew through conversion is controversial and critical to determining the essence of the Jewish character, and as timely as the current headlines from Jerusalem. But as two rabbinic scholars — one Reform and one Conservative —… Read more »
In Israel, composting and recycling programs in new ecology push
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The still-new recycling center in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem is fairly quiet on a crisp winter afternoon. Several people drive in to drop off their recycling — from old printers and batteries to aluminum pans, plastic containers and cardboard — in bins clearly labeled… Read more »
Silicon Wadi: Israeli high-tech explored at California conference
SAN FRANCISCO (j weekly) — Ronni Zehavi got quite a Chanukah present in December. On Dec. 11, he sold Contendo, a Web services company he co-founded in Israel four years ago, to Akamai, a major global high-tech player. Sale price: $268 million. Score one for the startup nation. Contendo… Read more »
In Shimon Peres’ book on Ben-Gurion, a longing for leadership absent in Israel today
JERUSALEM (JTA) – David Ben-Gurion must be spinning in his grave. The handful of haredi Orthodox Jews to whom he gave indemnity from military service has become a million. Israeli presidents and Cabinet ministers have landed themselves in jail for rape, corruption and nepotism. The Knesset and the Supreme… Read more »
New technology points to missing Holocaust-era mass graves at Treblinka

(JTA) — Scientists using ground-probing electronics may have discovered the missing mass graves at the site of Treblinka, one of the Nazis’ most notorious death camps. No actual bodies were found and the graves were not excavated, in keeping with Jewish law, but bones and bone fragments were discovered… Read more »
After string of foiled plots, concerns mount over Iranian-backed terror
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When America’s top intelligence official said that Iran’s regime is considering attacks on U.S. soil, he cited a single incident and qualified the assessment with a “probably.” But intelligence and law enforcement experts say the Jan. 31 warning by the director of national intelligence, James Clapper,… Read more »
Komen reverses course on Planned Parenthood, but supporters still upset

NEW YORK (JTA) — It took just hours for the protests against Susan G. Komen for the Cure to begin, and they quickly took on the fury and form of a full-blown movement. Online petitions were started. Calls poured forth to withhold donations from Komen for its de-funding of… Read more »
NCJW applauds Komen Foundation for reversing decision on Planned Parenthood funding

February 3, 2012, Washington, DC — The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) today commended the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® foundation for reversing its decision to defund cancer screenings performed by Planned Parenthood. NCJW CEO Nancy K. Kaufman released the following statement: “NCJW was deeply disappointed when… Read more »
For some schoolkids in southern Italy, meeting their first Jew on Holocaust Day

AMENDOLARA, Italy (JTA) — It was International Holocaust Memorial Day, and when I told my audience that I was a Jew, they burst into applause. I was speaking at the City Hall in this ancient seacoast town in Calabria, deep in southern Italy on the instep of the Italian… Read more »
On Israel, think tanks adopts a more cautious approach, even as anger at critics lingers
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In one corner was the Center for American Progress, or CAP, arguably Washington’s leading liberal think tank. In the other was Josh Block, a pugnacious former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who aggressively pushed the notion to reporters that CAP has an Israel… Read more »
On Iranian nuclear issue, mixed signals proliferate

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel, the United States and Iran have all gone deep into mixed-signals territory. Conversations with Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left one prominent journalist convinced that Israel will strike Iran by year’s end. Yet two weeks ago, Barak had said that any possible Israeli… Read more »
In honor of Ledbetter anniversary, NCJW calls for passage of Paycheck Fairness Act
January 31, 2012, Washington, D.C. — Upon the third anniversary of the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by President Obama, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) yesterday called upon Congress to complete the task of ensuring workplace equality by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act. NCJW… Read more »
Controversy grows in Israel over extension of Tal Law granting haredim army exemptions

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it’s likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption — or that the issue would be among… Read more »
In Jewish fracking debate, it’s the environment vs. energy independence — and energy’s winning

NEW YORK (JTA) – To frack or not to frack? As concerns mount over the environmental and public health consequences of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, Jewish groups are coalescing around a strategy that supports efforts to extract natural gas from shale rock while seeking to mitigate its worst… Read more »
Seeking Kin: Tracing a group of refugees, from Europe to Cyprus to Palestine to East Africa

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — A virtually unknown episode in prestate Israel grabbed Peter Keeda last year and won’t let go: the British government’s June 1941 shipment of 384 European Jews from Cyprus to Palestine. They and 39 others… Read more »