Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Tsachi Miri/TPS)
Herzliya (TPS) – Education Minister and Chairman of the Jewish Home Party Naftali Bennett told a counter-terrorism conference Monday that Israel is the world’s “front post” in the battle against terror. “No nation is as threatened by terror as we are,” Bennett told the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism annual… Read more »
MIAMI (JTA) — Every four years the same movie plays at the Jewish Political Film Festival: It’s the one where the Democrats pass another party platform with more ironclad support for Israel and then nominate yet another presidential candidate whose record on Israel is beyond question. The ending is… Read more »
Uri Dromi Those of us who remember the years before the Yom Kippur War will forever be more cautious than others. Then, Israeli were drunk with euphoria, believing, as the arrogant General Moshe Dayan used to say, that, “Our situation has never been better.” The Egyptian and the Syrian armies were… Read more »
Israeli left- and right-wing activists demonstrate in Tel Aviv, April 21, 2011. (Roni Schutzer/Flash90)
(JTA) — “If there is something that deprives me of sleep it is the fissures in Israeli society,” former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon declared, just after he resigned in May. That same day Ehud Barak, who preceded Yaalon as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2009 to… Read more »
Hillary Clinton acknowledges the crowd during the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, July 28, 2016. (Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)
It was Hillary Clinton’s night, but the Rev. William Barber II was the sleeper star. The self-described “theologically conservative, liberal, evangelical biblicist” drew repeated, enthusiastic applause –including when he described Jesus as a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew and declared that “when we love the Jewish child and the Palestinian child… Read more »
Dennis Ross speaks at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona “Together” event Nov. 18 at Congregation Anshei Israel. (Martha Lochert Photography)
“I was a political appointee for two Republican presidents and two Democratic presidents. … What that makes me is an extinct species,” Ambassador Dennis Ross told a crowd of more than 850 at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s “Together” campaign kickoff on Nov. 18 at Congregation Anshei Israel.… Read more »
Itamar Rabinovich Political and social ideological conflicts among Arab nations have fostered continued instability in the Middle East. Israel’s 1948 founding as a Jewish state, and the only democracy in the region, forever changed the landscape and interaction among regional interests. The University of Arizona will host “Israel in the Changing… Read more »
alestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 30, 2015, and Oct. 1, 2015 respectively. (Both Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas took plenty of shots at each other. But in their dueling dueling speeches to the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian Authority president directed much of their fire at the same target: the assembled world leaders. Netanyahu… Read more »
This week, a group of undergraduates from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University concluded a 10-day visit in Israel. During their trip they met with people from right and left, Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, religious and non-religious Jews, settlers and others and, as future journalists,… Read more »
The relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen here after Obama's arrival in Israel on March 20, 2013, is improving. (Pete Souza/White House)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Two months after questions about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution threatened to upend the U.S.-Israel relationship, tensions have abated, but not because peace with the Palestinians is any nearer. There has been no more talk recently from President Barack Obama’s White House about “reevaluating”… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Obama administration officials have long contended that the friction between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not personal and that American support for Israel remains as robust as ever — and arguably even more robust by some metrics. But a year of… Read more »
Now that the applause after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Congress has faded away, we are left with the question: Was he right or wrong to deliver that speech? Opponents of the move (like myself) believe that the speech has accomplished nothing except to further alienate the White… Read more »
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labor Chairman Isaac Herzog won’t be debating each other ahead of Israel’s March election, but English speakers in Tel Aviv who packed an event hall here got the next best thing: Candidates from five parties came out for a panel-style… Read more »
(JTA) — When Britain’s Parliament voted in favor of recognizing Palestine in October, Elie Barnavi, a former Israeli ambassador to France, dismissed the motion as mere symbolism. Reflecting many Israelis’ view of the string of nonbinding motions on Palestinian statehood adopted by European parliaments in recent weeks, Barnavi said… Read more »
The good news is that Israelis are still willing to sit down and talk with the Palestinians. The Peace Index, a monthly survey run by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, has just found out that “the rate of those who favor renewing the talks (50 percent)… Read more »
In situations as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which often seem insoluble, one sometimes envies the ancient Greeks, who invented deus ex machina — that artificial device that solved the entanglement of the dramatic plot. No wonder, then, that many in Israel cheered recently when Israel Army Radio announced… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Barack Obama meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 3, 2014. (Andrew Harper-Pool/Getty Images) (JTA) – All is not well in the U.S.-Israel relationship. Somehow, the 50 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas frayed ties between Washington and Jerusalem. How did this happen? In part, the contretemps stems from the divergent ways that the Israeli and U.S. administrations view the Gaza war.… Read more »
Likkud Knesset member Rerven Riv;in meets with children at a Jerusalem school on May 30, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — The front-runner in Israel’s presidential election has equated Reform Judaism with “idol worship” and refused to refer to Reform rabbis by their title. Former Knesset speaker Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin, considered a Likud party elder statesman, is one of six candidates running to succeed Shimon Peres in… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The recent vote by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejecting J Street’s membership bid was not entirely surprising. J Street had been reaching out to conference members and community contacts for weeks. We knew that gaining the necessary two-thirds majority was… Read more »
One of the professional hazards of columnists today is the temptation to borrow from the wealth of materials available on the Internet without giving proper credit to their authors. I guess that if Moses came down from Mount Sinai today, he would add an 11th commandment: Thou shall not… Read more »
