By BEN SALES
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Mitt Romney’s policy speech in Israel covered plenty of bases: The presumptive Republican presidential candidate spoke about the status of Jerusalem, the threat of a nuclear Iran, the “tumult” of the Arab Spring and the “enduring shared values” that bedrock the U.S.-Israel relationship. But...
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By URIEL HEILMAN
JERUSALEM (JTA) – If there’s one thing Danny Danon doesn’t do, it’s shy away from controversy. Danon, a deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset and chairman of World Likud, has come under fire for describing African migrants in Israel as a “national plague,” for hosting controversial U.S. TV...
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By MATI WAGNER
JERUSALEM (JTA) — In an age of sound bites and celebrity seekers, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who died Wednesday at age 102, represented a world apart. The head of the Lithuanian haredi Orthodox community in Israel, Elyashiv was a Torah sage who shunned the limelight, dedicating himself single-mindedly...
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By URIEL HEILMAN
(JTA) – For the second time in just two months, the Israeli political universe was upended when Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima Party voted to quit Israel’s governing coalition. Kadima’s departure, the result of a breakdown in negotiations over reforming Israel’s military draft law to include haredi Orthodox Jews, shatters...
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(JTA) — The Obama administration criticized an Israeli panel finding that West Bank settlements are legal under international law. “We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Monday evening in answer...
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By HILLEL KUTTLER
BALTIMORE (JTA) — Yitzhak Mann’s brother-in-law reached Israel in 1950 a broken man, his life in Belgium shattered. His wife, daughters and many other kin were murdered in the Holocaust, so in Israel he searched for his lone surviving relative. The brother-in-law submitted his own name to the...
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — Uri Blau, the Haaretz journalist who accepted classified documents from an Israeli soldier, has agreed to a plea bargain. Under the deal announced Thursday, Blau reportedly will admit to holding secret intelligence without intent to harm national security and his four-month prison sentence will be commuted to...
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By RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Yitzhak Shamir was Israel’s prime minister, he liked to point American visitors to a gift he received when he retired as director of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. It was a depiction of the famed three monkeys: See no evil, hear no evil,...
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By Adam Soclof
(JTA) — Israel’s national lacrosse team is clinging to a one-goal lead with 20 seconds remaining when the referee blows his whistle — the Wales coach wants a stick check on an Israeli player.
The challenge fails, the stick is legal and the Israelis go...
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Reacting to a statement aired Tuesday over Israeli radio by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) issued a firm condemnation in rebuttal today. In speaking over Kol Berama, a haredi radio station, Amar was quoted as calling non-Orthodox rabbis detrimental to “the foundations of Judaism.”...
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