November 10, 2020
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on Tuesday that for him “there is no difference if it’s a Republican or Democratic administration.”
“What I see before my eyes is not Democrats and not Republicans. It is just the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a speech to Israel’s Knesset, the Associated Press reported. “I am committed to stand behind the interests that are crucial to our future and...
November 08, 2020
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have congratulated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their election victory, despite President Donald Trump protesting the result.
Netanyahu alluded to his long acquaintance with Biden in his tweet, which was sent Sunday morning Israel time. Biden was projected Saturday to be president-elect after the voting result showed him winning Pennsylvania’s vote, and thus the Electoral College and the...
November 01, 2020
(JTA) — The leader of a major Hasidic sect in Israel denounced those who inform on other Jews for violating school closure orders and other restrictions intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The comments by Rabbi Yisroel Hager, head of the Vizhnitz Hasidic sect, are reminiscent of others accusing whistleblowers in Hasidic communities in recent months of being a “moser,” one who informs on his or her fellow...
October 25, 2020
By RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Bahraini institute has signed an agreement with the US State Department to combat anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and delegitimization of Israel.
The memorandum of understanding, signed Thursday in Washington, D.C., marks the first time an Arab country has embraced a key Trump administration agenda item, to get countries to include anti-Zionism and some forms of harsh criticism of Israel in their definitions of anti-Semitism. It...
October 24, 2020
For the first time in its more than a century of service to the worldwide Jewish community, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) announced the selection of a woman, Ariel Zwang, as its CEO.
Zwang, a highly visible Jewish figure in New York, will be leaving her present post as CEO of Safe Horizon, the former Victim Services Agency, a social services agency that sheltered and protected victims of...
October 24, 2020
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took an opportunity on Friday to emphasize the historical significance of the announcement that Sudan and the State of Israel would be normalizing relations with each other.
“Today we announce another dramatic breakthrough for peace, another Arab state joining the circle of peace. This time, it is normalization between Israel and Sudan. What a great turnaround!” Netanyahu proclaimed.
He recalled the 1967 Arab Summit held...
October 11, 2020
(JTA) — Tens of thousands of Israelis reportedly demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in hundreds of sites across Israel on Saturday night, renewing a movement that had been halted by a sharp second wave of the coronavirus.
The country’s second COVID-19 lockdown has kept Israelis from going far from their homes, so many smaller protests erupted in different locales. For instance, fewer than 100 people gathered in Jerusalem’s Paris...
October 05, 2020
(JTA) — It took 80 Israeli musicians two months to record covers of 50 classic Israeli songs as part of a project to help the Israeli music industry cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The artists, whose styles run the gamut from rock to rap to Mizrahi, were able to put their own spin on these tunes while earning an honorarium of about $1,400. While that may be...
October 02, 2020
By MARCY OSTER and GABE FRIEDMAN
(JTA) — Israel has been known as a country that can rise to face a crisis — usually of the military kind — quickly and efficiently.
The country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in its early months garnered international praise, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at one point boasted that “the world is learning from us.”
But now Israel has become the world’s foremost...
October 02, 2020
By RON KAMPEAS
(JTA) — Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general and a leader of Democratic Party progressives, will join an Americans for Peace Now memorial event marking the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
The participation of Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and the former deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has added significance because Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman New York Democrat emerging...
