News

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When President Bill Clinton chose in January 2001 to unveil his Clinton Parameters for Arab-Israel peacemaking, he chose an Israel Policy Forum gala to do it. Four years later, then-Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought the same audience to announce then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s willingness… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Hezbollah may have landed a strike against Israel with last week’s bus bombing in Bulgaria, but the Lebanese terrorist faction faces an uncertain future as one of its main sponsors — Syria’s Assad regime — faces a serious revolt and weakening support from once Arab… Read more »

Ze'ev Jabotinsky (Courtesy Rafael Medoff)

The popular image of the Jews who took part in battles for black civil rights is of liberal activists and idealistic college students. Yet several important early civil rights efforts in the United States and South Africa were undertaken by—of all people—officers of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Jewish… Read more »

Young israelis carrying M-16 and Tavor assault rifles on Jaffa Street in the center of the city of Jerusalem. (Serge Attal/ Flash 90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — First-time visitors to Israel might be taken aback to see groups of armed teenagers walking through a city plaza on a weeknight, or surprised to walk into a public bathroom and see an M-16 laying across the sinks as a soldier washes his face. But… Read more »

Former Penn State University President Graham Spanier was forced to resign following criticism of his response to the sexual abuse scandal at the school. (via Creative Commons)

NEW YORK (JTA) — One unlikely venue for fallout from the Penn State University sex abuse scandal is the campus Hillel, for which now ousted university president Graham Spanier — the school’s first Jewish leader — was a fundraiser and vocal supporter. On Monday, the Penn State community was… Read more »

Thousands gather outside the Aurora Municipal Center in COlorado to remember the victims of the theater shooting, July 22, 2012. (wscottbloyer/Twitter)

(JTA) — As Colorado and the nation tried to absorb the tragic massacre in a suburban Denver movie theater, local synagogues conducted special prayers and the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado launched a response fund for the victims and their families. Early Friday morning, James Eagen Holmes allegedly walked… Read more »

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, January 13, 2011. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It’s foreign policy, stupid, at least for the next two weeks or so — and it’s the Middle East, especially. Mitt Romney’s planned trip to Britain, Poland and Israel beginning at the end of this week has shifted the presidential campaign debate for now from jobs,… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, shaking hands with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, with U.S. President Bill Clinton in the center at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony, Sept. 13, 1993. (Vince Musi / The White House)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Conflicting voices for and against renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks came to Capitol Hill as leading pro- and anti-voices gathered to recall the nearly 20 years since the dramatic signing of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo document, signed in Washington on Sept. 13, 1993, began the most… Read more »

Israeli ZAKA emergency rescue team examining the remains of the bus at the scene of the terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, July 19, 2012. (Dano Monkotovic/FLASH90/JTA)

SOFIA, Bulgaria (JTA) — Until this week, leaders of Bulgaria’s small, generally placid Jewish community said felt untouched by hate crimes or terrorism. But after Wednesday’s apparent suicide bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Black Sea city of Borgas, Jews in the country are speaking of… Read more »

Survivors of the terror attack on the Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, returning to Israel with the help of the Israeli Air Force, July 19, 2012. (Yossi Zeliger/FLASH90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Vered Kuza was standing with her daughter, Amit, on an airport shuttle bus at Sarafovo International Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, when she suddenly heard a blast. “It’s an attack!” Kuza, 54, shouted at Amit, 26. “We need to get out of here!” She pushed her… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Rep. Shelley Berkley pitched her bid for the U.S. Senate to pro-Israel donors, the Nevada Democrat reportedly told them it came down to math. In the U.S. House of Representatives, the leading pro-Israel lawmaker said, she was one of 435. In the Senate she’d be… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – For the past four years, Jewish conservatives have been working hard to paint President Obama as too willing to press Israel on Palestinian issues. But the latest Washington buzz could throw a wrench in that line of attack — if, as some Washington insiders are… Read more »

President Obama, flanked by Nathan Diament, left, and Dr. Simcha Katz of the Orthodox Union, displays the framed reproduction of President George Washington’s letter to the Jewish community of Newport, R.I., that he was given at the conclusion of his Oval Office meeting with Orthodox Jewish leaders.(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nathan Diament learned two things 22 years ago while watching Barack Obama play pickup basketball at the Harvard Law School gym. “He was a generous passer,” he said of the school’s Law Review editor and the future U.S. president. “He was competitive, but at an appropriate… Read more »

Duhenah Reveaka of Bobruisk, Belarus is among those survivors who rely on Claims Conference funding for aid. (Sarah Levin/JDC)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The first sign that something was amiss at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany happened to fall on an auspicious date on the Jewish calendar: Nov. 9, 2009, the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Greg Schneider had been at the helm of the Claims Conference,… Read more »

Sheldon Adelson, right, seen here with then-President George W. Bush and Israeli President Shimon Peres at a Jerusalem conference in May 2008, is at the center of controversy over contributions earmarked for Republican candidates. (Nati Shohat /FLASH90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson, whose cash and rhetoric has hit candidates hard this election cycle, just got swiped himself. The National Jewish Democratic Council wants Republicans, including presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, to stop taking “dirty money” from Adelson because of allegations surrounding his lucrative casino properties in… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Call it the age of “playlist Judaism.” That’s how Rabbi Kerry Olitzky describes engagement in Jewish life for the seemingly ever-increasing group showing up as “other” or “just Jewish” on recent American Jewish identity surveys. “I no longer have to buy the entire package in order… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Growing up outside of Chicago, Jillian Schwartz never expected that one day she would be an Israeli citizen. Now the hardest part of her immigrant experience is leaving Tel Aviv — with her roughly 17-feet-long Olympic equipment. “Trying to get out of here with poles… Read more »

Israeli President Shimon Peres, seated second from right, with his country's Olympic delegation for the London Games, July 9, 2012. (Noam Moskowitz/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israelis and their Summer Olympics athletes are eyeing the upcoming London Games with excitement and disappointment. The athletes are hoping that for the sixth straight summer Games, at least one of them will come home with a medal. Yet they are well aware that the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Proponents of using economic pressure to force Israel out of the West Bank may have lost a key battle this week — by a hair’s breadth — but they have no intention of giving up. That’s the message from backers of a divestment motion at the… Read more »

CHISINAU, Moldova (JTA) — To tour the largely empty Jewish communities of Moldova and its capital, Chisinau — once known by Jews the world over as Kishinev — is not to wonder where did all the Jews go but why there are any remaining. Overgrown cemeteries are all that… Read more »