The Jewish Federations of North America last week rejected the inclusion of the term "Zionism" in a major system-wide planning document.
By Tibbi Singer
The worldwide event will take place at 11 AM London time (1 PM Jerusalem, 6 AM New York) on the morning of the opening ceremony, Friday, July 27.
JERUSALEM – Israel’s global intelligence apparatus is being stretched thin as Iranian- controlled Hizbullah terror squads and pro-Assad Syrian chemical warfare teams are threatening to attack more Israeli citizens abroad and within Israel itself.
By Jacob Shamsian, Tazpit News Agency
Director of Tazpit News Agency, Amotz Eyal, stated that the collaboration between Tazpit News Agency and the Weekly Press Pakistan has, for the first time, exposed millions to news and balanced information coming from Israel.
Israeli Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov, together with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev, at a joint press conference held on Monday in Sofia, Bulgaria, announced that Bulgaria and Israel will strengthen strategic cooperation in the areas of tourism and security.
Israel is watching the continuing debt European debt crisis warily, as the European Union is Israel's top trading partner. But despite Europe's economic woes and trepidation in Israel, the EU is set to intensify relations with Israel by approving up to 60 new cooperative initiatives, according to AFP.
The ad states: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The MTA refused to run it.
Bob Costas may soon make history by defying the International Olympic Committee and conducting an on-air memorial of his own.
Jerusalem originally showed up on the official website as the capital of a country, but it was East Jerusalem, and the capital was “Palestine,” not Israel. Following complaints filed last week by a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Olympics site was changed. Now Jerusalem does not appear as the actual capital of any country at all.
UPDATE: 7/19/12 10:46PM Sources are indicating that the Swedish national that was held in Guantanamo is not the Burgas bomber. As soon as we know more, we'll update the report. Bulgarian TV has announced that Medi Muhammad Ghezali, the suicide bomber who killed seven people on Wednesday, five of them Israelis, was member of […]
Israeli rescue teams have gathered the 33 Israelis wounded in Wednesday’s terror attack on a tour bus in Bulgaria, and evacuated them home to Israel for treatment. The death toll in the bombing of the bus of Israeli tourists is listed at 8, with one injured person succumbing to wounds in hospital. A ZAKA rescue service spokesperson told Israel’s Army Radio that the remains were difficult to identify. Five Israeli victims will be flown home for burial Thursday evening after completion of the formal identification process. World leaders condemned the attack. Israeli leaders vowed to respond to Iran.
Was there a similar terror attack attempt against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, back in January?
At least seven passengers were killed and 30 injured in an explosion on a tour bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in an apparent terror attack.
In a briefing before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi as President of Egypt has brought political Islam to the forefront of politics in the Arab world, but predicted that the Egyptian military would continue to serve as a strong restraint. As a result, he doubted that Egypt would be allowed to drift into Iran's orbit.
After what German diplomats have described as a "disastrous" damage to Germany's image abroad, especially in light of its Nazi past, it appears that Berlin has finally gotten the message.
By JTA
Europe's main Orthodox rabbinical body is urging Jews in Germany to uphold the commandment to circumcise newborn sons, despite a court ruling in Germany that said circumcising young boys could be considered a criminal act.
On Monday, the Church of England's General Synod overwhelmingly passed a motion to support the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. The program "brings internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation" and "monitor and report human rights abuses" for a period of three to four months. As part of the program, participants are encouraged to lobby on behalf of the Palestinian cause upon their return.
In what the Holocaust Claims Conference is calling a “historic breakthrough”, the German government decided on Monday at pay restitution to victims of Nazi Germany now living in the former Soviet Union.
Caterpillar issued a stinging rebuke of the accusations, and it was revealed that the Palestinian Authority recently bought Caterpillar equipment.
The “outposts committee” recommended legalizing and expanding the outposts. Leaders in the region are urging immediate implementation.
Iran was elected to a top post on the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference, UN Watch revealed on Sunday. The Geneva-based human rights group is calling on UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who addressed the conference on the same day, to condemn the selection of the Tehran regime.
UNHRC on Friday named three women to the panel, one accused Israel of "total discrimination," another's sister served on the Goldstone commission.
A 17 year-old student from the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, where gunman Mohammed Merah murdered three children and an administrator last March, was attacked violently on a train Wednesday night in Lyon, according to the French Interior Ministry. Neither of the perpetrator has been summoned for questioning on Thursday morning, after having been caught by the train’s controller.
Around 20 organizations representing four million Muslim residents of Germany, announced that the parliament must ensure religious freedom by removing legal doubts about circumcision since the June 26 court ruling. The ruling was also criticized in no uncertain terms by the head of Germany's Central Council of Jews, Dieter Graumann.
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON – When Yitzhak Shamir was Israel’s prime minister, he liked to point American visitors to a gift he received upon his retirement after many years serving in the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.
Iran's current three-day military drill, understood as a thinly-veiled and defiant response to the newest round of EU sanctions on its petroleum industry, is intended to demonstrate Iran's ability to retaliate to a US or Israeli attack. But the maneuvers may be having the opposite effect, as more experts are coming to the conclusion that Iran's incessant sabre-rattling and bellicosity seek to mask the obsolete and impotent state of its armed forces.
The Jewish Hospital in Berlin has suspended all religious circumcisions of children following a ruling delivered by a German court banning the practice.
A report by NGO Monitor reveals that several western governments providing funds for Church-based efforts to delegitimize Israel.
The announcement comes on the heels of UNESCO's decision last week to name the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as "Palestine's" first World Heritage Site.
British police reported that the shots fired in front of Manchester’s Yeshivat Shaarei Torah around 2 AM last night were aimed at the yeshiva and did not happen by accident. The yeshiva is located in the mostly Jewish neighborhood of Broughton Park.
The most recent round of sanctions is part of the West's determined effort to halt Iran's contentious nuclear program without resorting to force. But Iran struck a belligerent tone, with Iran's central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani telling the semi-official Mehr News Agency that "we are implementing programs to counter sanctions and we will confront these malicious policies."
Nobel Prize winner author Günter Grass was asked not to visit the synagogue in Gdansk, his birthplace.
The 2012 B'nai B'rith World Center Survey on Contemporary Israeli Attitudes Toward Diaspora Jewry also found that an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews disagree with calls on American Jewry to "boycott the settlements," while thirteen percent support such a boycott. And 51 percent of respondents said that “encouraging Aliya” is the best government response to anti-Semitism.
A Cologne district court ruled on Tuesday that parents may not have their sons circumcised for religious reasons, essentially criminalizing religious circumcisions.
Two years ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a visit to Moscow, proposed the idea of a monument in Israel commemorating the sacrifices of the Red Army on behalf of Jews, President Putin promised to come to Israel for the inauguration ceremony.
By Jewish Press Staff Reporter
Following more than three years of investigation, Indian security forces have arrested Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari aka Abu Hamza, alleged member of Lashker-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous) and the Hindi instructor of 10 terrorists who executed the murderous attack in Mumbai in 2008.
The statement, made by Mohammed Morsi in an interview with Fars News Agency published Monday, seems to contradict comments he made in his televised victory speech, where he offered a vague assurance that he would "preserve international accords and obligations."
The transfer of one of Jerusalem’s most prime pieces of real estate to Russia will be finalized when the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) vacates its offices, following the completion of talks between Israel and Russia on Sunday.
Australia’s 2011 census shows that Australia’s official Jewish population has risen to almost 100,000, a rise of 10 percent in five years.
Morsi's election will have tremendous reverberations beyond Egypt's borders, and not least for Israel, as the Muslim Brotherhood has questioned the validity of the 30-plus year peace treaty between Israel and Egypt; and is also the inspiration for and closely affiliated with Hamas, which rules in Gaza, and borders both Egypt and Israel.
Cisco and Facebook demonstrate confidence in the long-term viability of Israel’s economy.
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said he intends to bring home Ivorian citizens who are living illegally in Israel. But following talks with Rivlin, Ouattara was unsure about Israel's estimate of the number of his brethren (2,000) living illegally within its borders.
Dagan and Ashkenazi made their comments on a panel at the 2012 Presidential Conference that included former Presidential adviser Dennis Ross. Dagan said in Egypt it matters not who votes but who counts the vote.
The 10 rockets launched by Hamas in the past 24 hours represent its first rocket barrage in some months, and its claim of responsibility and timing suggests that the escalation is linked to Muhammad Morsi's putative victory in the Egyptian presidential elections.
Western diplomats continue to accuse Iran of foot-dragging and obfuscation, noting that the five-point proposal presented by the Islamic Republic in Baghdad last month calls for discussions on matters that are tangential to the nuclear issue. Yet Western diplomats continue to hold out hope that Iran will finally "engage seriously" the proposal that the six-nation bloc made last month.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s welcome on the sunny Ipanema beach in Rio was less than warm from an eclectic group of Jews, human rights activists, and homosexuals, who arrived Sunday to protest the Iranian president’s attendance at a UN summit on sustainable development.
By Larry Luxner
DHAKA, Bangladesh – Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury sat at the cafe of the five-star Ruposhi Bangla Hotel in downtown Dhaka – capital of the third-largest Muslim nation on earth – proclaiming his love for Israel and the Jewish people.
The Palestinian Authority will attempt to register the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a world heritage site in the country of Palestine when the World Heritage Committee meets in Russia from June 24 to July 6.
An 81 year old Israeli scientist whose revolutionary irrigation methods have saved and improved the lives of millions of people throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America, has received the prestigious World Food Prize, according to an announcement made by the foundation on Tuesday.
Among the innovations that will be showcased are hand-held through-the-wall radars, mini-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), robots, and frequency-hopping radios. The exhibition will take place from June 11th-15th, and will include over 1,400 exhibitors from around the globe.
IDF Col. Shmulik Olensky: “A flare-up in Lebanon can occur at any time. Therefore we are preparing as much as possible, with unique plans, improved models, and joint training.”
JERUSALEM – Despite the absence of an attack on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, Israel and the U.S. are engaged in a covert cyberwar campaign against a growing list of Iranian targets. The dual objective is to hamper the Iranian regime’s ability to build an atomic bomb while pressuring them to bow to Western and UN demands to downgrade their enrichment capabilities to less than 10 percent.
US undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence David Cohen, visiting Israel to coordinate sanctions policy with senior Israeli security, discussed plans to impose additional sanctions on Iran in the summer. In an interview with Haaretz, Cohen said: “If we don't get a breakthrough in Moscow there is no question we will continue to ratchet up the pressure."
The recent massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse "triggered an explosion” in anti-Semitic attacks across France, according to the French Jewish community's protection service. Last Saturday afternoon, three young Jewish men came under attack on their way to synagogue by at least 10 men of North-African origin.
In a recent survey of the OECD's 34 countries, Israel ranked sixth in 'life satisfaction.' Israelis are also among the healthiest in the developed world, with a low obesity rate (13.8%) and an average life expectancy of nearly 82 years.
Iranian officials and media painted the six-nation bloc as the source of intransigence and focused its ire specifically at America. "We believe the reason they are not able to reach a result is America. The P5+1 came to Baghdad without a clear mandate so we think the atmosphere is difficult," an Iranian delegate told Reuters.
Belgium’s health minister Laurette Onkelinx said she was “profoundly troubled” by the behavior of her Israeli counterpart, Yaakov Litzman, after the Haredi official refused to shake her hand at a conference. The website Juif.org wrote: "There are indeed only two possibilities: either this lady is ignorant, or has malicious intent."
By dvora
The sellout crowd that filled Citi Field on Sunday night wore black and white, not the New York Mets’ blue and orange. And instead of jeering the Philadelphia Phillies or Atlanta Braves, they faced a foe that was, intheir view, far more formidable: the World Wide Web.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, received an award Tuesday night for her role in fighting terrorism through international courts and defending the civil rights of Israeli terror victims. Having dealt a heavy blow to Syria, now she's after the Bank of China.
Rabbi Shlomo Rosenfeld: "The Jewish people are again being made a scapegoat for the lack of world peace while the Palestinian terrorists and murderers are depicted as innocent peace seekers. I want to state in no uncertain terms that the EU’s one sided support of the Palestinian demands is an extension of the Holocaust.”
Anatolia News Agency cited a Cypriot official as saying that Netanyahu offered to build a gas terminal for Cyprus on condition that all 10,000 construction workers be Israeli citizens and that 20,000 Israeli "commandos" be deployed to protect the workers and the terminal.
A former Libyan intelligence officer sentenced to life in prison for his role in bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, has died in a Libyan prison. He was 60.
Danny Ayalon: Denial of request to hold a minute silence during the upcoming London Olympic Games in memory of the 11 Israeli Olympic team members murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics tells "Israelis that this tragedy is yours alone and not a tragedy within the family of nations."
By JTA
Supporters say he’s an innocent man caught up in the tentacles of a corrupt Latin American regime. Authorities in Bolivia allege he’s a shady businessman with ties to drug dealers and money launderers.
The family of Daniel Wultz, 16, a Florida resident who was killed in a Palestinian suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv won a $323 million judgment in a U.S. court against Iran and Syria. Attorney Darshan-Leitner said the Syrian government's aircraft, ships and corporations can be impounded to force Syria to comply with the court's ruling.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
Omar Epps, on his second visit to Israel with America's Voices in Israel, explained that it was the country's "rich history, culture, people and energies" that drew him back. "For me personally, the spiritual significance of this place hits me to the core. The fact that the world's three ancient religions meet in one place makes the holiness of this land so unique," said Epps. "I'm bringing my kids here next time to experience this land together with my wife."
A new report on the Iranian nuclear arms program compiled by the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) shows that Iran is in fact accelerating its efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
Cleric Safwat Higazi: "Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca, or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem, Allah willing. Our cry shall be: 'Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem! Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem!"
According to the contract signed in 2007, Russia committed to supplying Iran with at least five S-300 air-defense systems. But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared in September 2010 that selling the missile systems to Iran would contravene UN Security Council Resolution 1929.
By JTA
Jewish reaction was mixed to the election of the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande as the president of France while Jewish leaders in Greece expressed concern and disappointment after the fascist Golden Dawn party was poised to enter the Greek parliament for the first time.
By IMRA
Parliamentary committee approves tougher punishment for 'distorting' Quran.
A report titled "The Emperor Has No Clothes: Palestinians and the End of the Peace Process" was issued this week by the International Crisis Group, asking: "Does anybody still believe in the Middle East Peace Process?" It claims the current process, even if it yields some local progress, "will not bring about a durable and lasting peace.
By Jewish Press Staff Reporter
Some 5,000 French Jews participated in an aliyah fair in Paris. The fair, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, took place on the Sunday of Francois Hollande's election as their new president, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy—the Jewish community's favorite. A recent poll found that 26 percent of those surveyed said they have considered emigrating due to French anti-Semitism.
Two Irish bands scheduled to play highly-publicized concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Nahalal in June have cancelled, citing an overwhelming international uproar over their refusal to join the boycott against relations with Israel. Dervish and Fullset both published apologies on their Facebook pages, explaining that a mutual friend of theirs, Israeli musician Avshalom Farjun, […]
Following his victory Sunday, the 57-year-old François Hollande shouted himself hoarse, as he had done so often during the campaign, thanking his supporters for electing him president and promising to unite the whole country. But Richard Prasquier, President of the Jewish-French organizations, says one of the changes the Hollande presidency brings is a boost to the anti-Israel left.
Press TV, Iran's television network, broadcasting in English round-the-clock, on Sunday published an interview with Mark Glenn, of The Crescent and Cross Solidarity movement, who said that Israel is the only regime that “has threatened to take the entire world down in a nuclear Armageddon in the instance that her precious experiments in Jewish self-rule in the Middle East ceases to materialize.”
At the end of a week in which the United Church of Canada, that country's largest Protestant denomination called for a boycott of goods produced in “illegal” Israeli settlements, including East Jerusalem, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird declared that "Israel has no greater friend in the world today than Canada." Baird was addressing the American Jewish Committee World Leaders Plenary in D.C.
Despite a drop of 0.7% in antisemitic incidents in 2011 over the previous year, the gravity of the problem in Canada is better understood by observing long-term trends: antisemitic incidents have grown twenty-fold since B'nai Brith started monitoring antisemitism thirty years ago, while a five-year view shows a 24.6% rise.
Belgian Jews are at loggerheads as a result of an EU vote to dispatch the UN to Israel on a mission to scrutinize Jewish towns and communities in Judea and Samaria.
The Supermarket chain Co-Operative Group, Britain's fifth-largest food retailer, is the first major European retailer to stop buying from companies that export produce from Israeli settlements east of the Green Line. The largest Israeli agricultural export companies affected by this move are Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has announced that Israel had severed all working relations with the UN Human Rights Council as of Monday this week, and will block a U.N. fact finding team from entering Israel or Judea and Samaria to investigate Jewish settlements. Spokesman Yigal Palmor said this "means that we're not going to work with them. We're not going to let them carry out any kind of mission, including this probe."
President Shimon Peres: "Our mutual unwavering commitment to each other is crucial. The young generation's commitment to our state is essential as our shared tomorrow will be defined by innovation. As partners of our nation, your ability to secure a future defined by scientific development and discoveries is vital to our shared mission."
Israel marked twenty years of diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan on Sunday, with a visit to the 95% Muslim country by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who also visited the capital city’s Chabad house, according to a report by Lubavitch.com.
By Tibbi Singer
An online petition headlined "Tell the International Olympic Committee: 40 Years is Enough!" has garnered thousands of signatures. It is urging the Committee to honor at the Olympic Games this summer, the memory of 11 Israeli athletes who were murdered at the 1972 Olympics in Munich by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
Israeli Ambassador to UN uses the opportunity to address myths that have become a "permanent hindrance" to the progress in the Middle East; myths that "in the barren deserts of the Middle East...find fertile ground to grow wild...and can surprisingly find their way" into the halls of the UN.
A campaign by the widows of two Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre have had their petition for a memorial at the 2012 Olympic games rejected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
By Tibbi Singer
Three young Hindu women who were kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and married off to Muslim men, chose this week to live with their husbands instead of their families. It has been rumored that the three women had been threatened by Pakistan People's Party parliamentarian Mian Mithu with "dire consequences" if they decided to return to their parents.
Among its results, the study found that 72% of Polish citizens agree or strongly agree that "Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era," and that 68% of Hungarians share this sentiment. Nearly 70% percent of Hungarians also think that "Jews have too much influence" in their country.
By Tibbi Singer
The City of Vienna will rename a section of the fashionable Ring Avenue named after Dr. Karl Lueger, Vienna's mayor from 1897 to 1910. Lueger was a renowned anti-Semite. One resident of Vienna, a failed postcard artist named Adolf Hitler, said he was inspired by Lueger's public Jew hatred.
The annual Jewish Lag B’Omer pilgrimage to the oldest synagogue in Africa should be maintained as a symbol of Tunisian openness, according to Tunisia’s tourism minister on Tuesday, yet the increase in fundamentalist Salafi Islamic political rule threatens to drive out the remaining Jews of Djerba.
By Tibbi Singer
Back in 1998, Lord Nazir Ahmed, 53, became the first Muslim life peer. Now he is reported to have said: "'If the US can announce a reward of $10 million for the (capture) of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of £10 million (for the capture of) President Obama and his predecessor, George Bush."
Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, says Tehran does not intend to stop producing uranium enriched to a purity level of 20 percent, insisting that enrichment of uranium is his country's right. The UN Security Council has demanded the suspension of enrichment. Iran has enough enriched uranium for around four bombs if the material is refined further to about 90-percent purity.
By Tibbi Singer
JP Morgan acquired a $100 million stake in Conduit from investor Yozma fund at a $1.4 billion valuation. Conduit’s cash cow is its toolbar, which the company says has been used by more than 200,000 sites, including MLB.com and Miniclip, to reach 250 million users.
By Tibbi Singer
French National Front leader Marine Le Pen has been slipping in the polls ahead of the April 22 first-round vote, placing fourth President Nicolas Sarkozy and two other candidates. And so, to boost her ratings, she's been doing whatever she can, including pick the very Jewish sounding Goldman Sachs, as her target.
Günter Grass, Germany's most celebrated living author, became the center of a news hurricane on Wednesday, after he published a poem titled "What must be said," in which he blames Israel for destabilizing world peace with its plots against Iran. The Israeli Embassy in Berlin said it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover festival.
NETANYA – “The expression ‘time heals all wounds’ is simply not true, even a decade after the Pesach terror attack at the Park Hotel,” Batya Weinberg, a caseworker for the OneFamily organization said on the eve of last week’s 10th anniversary memorial gathering of victims and families who were directly affected by the atrocity.
In a key defeat for NGO "Lawfare", the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday decided that it does not have jurisdiction to begin an investigation over cases related to the 2008-09 Gaza War because "Palestine" is not a state. But this victory over Israel's Palestinian foes may not be long lasting.
The drill, called "Noble Dina", will continue through April 5, and will also include the U.S. Sixth Fleet. It is aimed at simulating submarine combat, airborne dogfights, as well as coordinating the defense of offshore natural gas platforms.
By dvora
JERUSALEM – If pro-Palestinian calls for a so-called Global March to Jerusalem are heeded, thousands of Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria could converge on Israel’s borders.