Thursday, April 18th 2024 |
JERUSALEM (JTA) — More than 103,000 people have signed a petition calling on President Obama to free imprisoned spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard.
The petition, which appears in Hebrew and English, was placed online Feb. 11 and will be hand delivered to Obama during his visit to Israel later this month, according to the Justice for Jonathan Pollard organization.
The organization is aiming for 150,000 signatures before Obama arrives in...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Republican and a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation that would make Israel a “major strategic ally,” a unique designation.
The bill, introduced Monday by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ted Deutch (D-FL), was timed for the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, and 13,000 activists are expected to lobby on Tuesday for the measure and Iran-related bills.
The “major strategic...
NEW YORK (JTA) — Hugo Chavez, the longtime president of Venezuela who spouted anti-Israel rhetoric and befriended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, died yesterday, March 5.
Chavez, who ruled the South American country for 14 years, died Tuesday following a long battle with cancer, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised speech. Chavez was 58.
An anti-capitalist, Chavez was first elected in 1999, rising to power with the massive...
(JTA) — Rabbi Menachem Froman, founder of the Modern Orthodox West Bank settlers movement Gush Emunim, has died.
Froman, the chief rabbi of southern Jerusalem’s Tekoa community, died Monday following a battle with cancer. He was 68.
Froman was unique in the West Bank for facilitating peace initiatives with Palestinian leaders, including members of Hamas, despite being a supporter of the settlement movement. Froman visited vandalized mosques in the West...
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ask President Obama to grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard while Obama was in Israel.
Netanyahu met Monday with Pollard’s wife, Esther, in advance of Obama’s visit scheduled for later this month.
“The time has long since come for Jonathan to go free,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office. “This issue will come up during...
SYDNEY (JTA) – Australian Jewry’s gay community celebrated its “bar mitzvah” at the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.
About 80 members of Dayenu, Sydney’s Jewish GLBT group, wore rainbow-colored prayer shawls and pink kipahs as they danced around a giant pink Star of David emblazoned with the words “Mazel tov” on Saturday in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters.
The Jewish float at the annual gay festival has...
(JTA) — Oberlin College canceled classes to convene a “day of solidarity” following a series of racial and anti-Semitic incidents. Classes at the school in northern Ohio were suspended on Monday after someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan-like hood and robe was seen walking on campus, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.
“This event, in addition to the series of other hate-related incidents on campus, has precipitated our decision to suspend formal...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vice President Joe Biden said President Obama is “not bluffing” when he says he will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The U.S. commitment “is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon period, end of discussion, period,” Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington on Monday.
“Prevent — not contain, prevent,” Biden said. “President Barack Obama is not bluffing.”
...(JTA) — The Jewish community of Denmark documented 40 anti-Semitic incidents in 2012, almost double the number from 2009. A report released last week by AKVAH, the security unit of Denmark’s Jewish community of 8,000, counted six physical attacks on Jews last year.
In one, in November, several men of Middle Eastern descent hit an elderly Israeli man in the Copenhagen suburb of Norrebro and pulled a Star of David pendant...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — About 50 people rallied in front of a congressional office building to protest a government employee’s refusal to grant his wife a Jewish divorce.
For slightly more than an hour on Feb. 28, the protesters waved signs and chanted slogans in support of Tamar Epstein, who is seeking the Jewish divorce, or get, from her ex-husband, Aharon Friedman, a Maryland resident who works in the Longworth Office...
