יום רביעי, כ״ב אב תשפ״וWednesday, August 5, 2026
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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.
A few hours after a report by MK Plesner's committee on "equal share in burden" was made public Wednesday morning, coalition partner Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz convened members of his faction to say that he expects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the committee's recommendations within a few days days. "The decision before us is a crucial decision for Israel," he stressed.
By JTA
Young Judaea is en route to full independence from Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. Hadassah's board had voted for the separation in June 2011, and both organizations announced this week that the move to independence had begun. Simon Klarfeld was hired in December as Young Judaea's executive director. Hadassah will provide $7 million […]
By JTA
The country’s largest Presbyterian church has agreed to vote by week’s end on divesting its portfolio from three companies that it says have resisted the request to stop providing services that aid Israel’s "occupation" of Judea and Samaria. The Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly’s Middle East Committee voted 36 to 11 with one abstention in […]
By JTA
Iranian nationals arrested in Kenya may have been planning to attack U.S. or Israeli targets, Kenyan security forces said. Security forces found 33 pounds of a powerful explosive after they arrested the Iranians in June, according to The Associated Press. The explosives were in Mombassa, a coastal city. The AP reported that several hotels on […]
By JTA
The Republican Jewish Coalition is sending two of its top officials to Israel to rally for expatriate votes. The voter registration drive is led by Ari Fleischer, press secretary for GW Bush, and RJC executive director Matt Brooks.
When a Reform summer camp in Mississippi invited an Orthodox summer camp for a Fourth of July celebration, the get-together became national Jewish news. The onslaught of publicity caught both camps off-guard. One camp director explained that in the deep South, Jewish camps offers a place where Jewish campers “get to be in the majority instead of the minority.”
Defense News magazine has reported that Egypt last week seized a large weapons cache, smuggled from Libya into Egypt, not far from the Libyan border. The cache included 138 Grad rockets and 139 Grad warheads, and the Egyptian interior ministry stated that police were searching for two men suspected of attempting to traffic the rockets “to […]
On Tuesday afternoon, a Border Guard police force raided the outpost of Ramat Migron in the Benjamin region, where two minors were detained without being arrested.
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.
With tougher sanctions by the European Union taking effect, Iran announced new missile tests and threatened to obliterate Israel. The Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps launched missiles with ranges of 300, 500, 800, and 1,300 kilometers, the Mehr agency reported on Tuesday.
Polish billionaire Jan Kulczyk's company Kulczyk Holding has donated zł.20 million, or close to $6 million, for the construction of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. The total cost of construction is expected to reach zł.320 million, or around $96 million, with the museum opening its doors in 2013. “Life […]
A coalition crisis has been growing the past few days. The crisis resolves around the now disbanded, Plessner Committee and their recommendations on how to resolve the draft/national service issue for Chareidim and Arabs. Kadima head, Shaul Mofaz has reportedly refused to meet with Netanyahu as a result. Avigdor Liberman refuses to accept a solution […]
During the funeral of Former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, robbers broke into the Tel Aviv home of Shamir's daughter Glada Diamont, and robbed the house. The thieves got away primarily with jewelry. Police have opened an investigation.
The Jewish Hospital in Berlin has suspended all religious circumcisions of children following a ruling delivered by a German court banning the practice.
By JTA
The Republican presidential candidate will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad later this summer.
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.
A monumental synagogue building dating to the Late Roman period (ca. 4th-5th centuries C.E.) has been uncovered in archaeological excavations at the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Israel's Galilee.
Israel’s Health Ministry will begin a more concentrated effort to encourage women to breastfeed their babies, instituting new policies in hospitals starting September 1.
If there’s any story inside the Jewish community that closely parallels the sexual abuse cover-up inside the Catholic Church, it’s the story of Avrohom Mondrowitz.
Israel is praising the Palestinian Authority for cracking down on crime and corruption in Arab territories in Judea and Samaria, following the arrest of 150 suspects.
A new movement to register American expatriates in Israel to vote in the US elections aims to encourage them to cast their ballots for the good of Israel.
By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
MK Uri Ariel of the National Union and Knesset hopeful Naftali Bennett offer their alternatives to the "Land for Peace" formula.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle weighed in Friday on a controversial German court ruling on circumcision, saying the country protected religious freedom and traditions, EJP reported. "The ruling on circumcision has provoked annoyance internationally," Westerwelle wrote on his official Twitter account. "We have to be clear: religious traditions are protected in Germany," he added. Westerwelle […]
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is under investigation for links to a prostitution ring, and his wife, Anne Sinclair, say they're filing a lawsuit against the French magazine Closer after it posted a report online Thursday saying they've been living apart and planning a divorce.
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."
By JTA
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is set to open next year, will receive a $7 million grant from two Jewish philanthropic foundations. The gift from the Koret and Taub Foundations will finance eight galleries that will take visitors through 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland. The exhibits will include a […]
The price of gas was lowered overnight Sunday by 2.15%, making the maximum price of self-serve 95-octane gasoline 16 agorot per liter less - NIS 7.27.
A series of violent storms sweeping the mid-Atlantic region have left 13 dead and three million people without power in oppressive summer heat.
The day after the disappearance, a police spokesman told reporters that Aguiar got into the boat alone, “but that’s not to say he didn’t meet up with anyone.” Now the attorney for Guma Aguiar's wife is saying that the Brazilian born billionaire could have staged his own disappearance to flee his marital and financial problems.
By JTA
Peter Madoff, the younger brother of jailed Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff, has been taken into custody by the FBI. Peter Madoff, 66, surrendered himself Friday morning at his lawyer’s office in midtown Manhattan ahead of an expected guilty plea to criminal charges related to the Ponzi scheme, according to the Wall Street Journal. He […]
By JTA
The president of the Austrian parliament announced that the country can prepare to close its General Settle Fund for Victims of Nazi Socialism. The independent body announced this week that it had completed its review of 20,702 claims applications in its 11 years of existence. Of these, 18,154 applicants were awarded compensation for 103,333 material […]
Former Prime Minister Yithak Shamir passed away on Saturday night at age 96. As member of the Mossad Shamir directed the assassinations of former Nazi rocket scientists working on the Egyptian missile program.He served several terms as prime minister throughout the 1980s. He maintained a hard political line, which strained his relations with the U.S.
By Tibbi Singer
Laurence Gavron was born in France to a Jewish family. She's lived in Dakar, Senegal, for the past ten years, where she is a film director and a writer. And she's running for parliament, a white, Jewish woman in a black, African country. “If all the people who have said they will vote for me really do vote for me, then I shall certainly be elected," she said. We urge our readers in Senegal to get out early to vote this Sunday.
Nobel Prize winner author Günter Grass was asked not to visit the synagogue in Gdansk, his birthplace.
By JTA
The Americafest celebration next week, which will bring campers from the Orthodox Camp Darom in Grenada, Miss., to the Union for Reform Judaism's Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, Miss., was made possible by a grant from the Foundation for Jewish Camp. The celebration will mark the first time the two camps have come together […]
By JTA
The brownstone housing the Chabad Lubavitch of the Loop, Gold Coast and Lincoln Park was to have gone on the auction block Wednesday, but the bankruptcy filing this week gave Chabad additional time to repay a bank loan, the Chicago Tribune reported. The group has found a way to pay its debts but needed more […]
Jews are the least of Elmo's problems. Four days after a man dressed in an Elmo suit was forcibly ejected from Central Park for spewing anti-Semitic propaganda, an article revealed his frightening past. “I hate those [women],” he told a news reporter in 1999.
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.
By dvora
JERUSALEM – A leading Orthodox rabbi in Israel has a revolutionary proposal for the harvesting of organs from a clinically dead patient. At present, his proposal not only has no support from other rabbis, it is also against Israeli law – but he is not fazed.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Democrat-appointed justices to rule 5-4 that Congress has the power to impose the healthcare mandate under its power to levy taxes.
A Hamas leader was assassinated in Damascus on Wednesday night, a member of the party's politburo announced, according to the Palestinian Ma'an news agency.. Izzat al-Rishq wrote on his Facebook page that Kamal Ghanaja, also known as Nizar Abu Mujahed, was killed in his home in the Syrian capital. Hamas is investigating the crime, al-Rishq […]
Their hopes that Beit El will swell in growth did not ease the pain of parting from the homes they had cultivated on the same mountain upon which Jewish tradition states Jacob had a dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder – the mountain upon which the Jewish people earned the name Israel.
Hamas official Izzat Al-Rishiq announced on his Facebook page on Wednesday announced that one of its senior members, Kamal Hussein Ranaja, was assassinated at his home outside Damascus. The perpetrators? Israel’s Mossad.
The sweetness of Israel has seeped into the lives of unsuspecting Iranians, in the form of cherries grown in the Holy Land.
By JTA
Eliyahu Werdesheim will serve three years probation for assaulting a black teenager in Baltimore in 2010, when he was a member of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood watch. Werdesheim, now 24, avoided jail time for the November 2010 beating of Corey Ausby, then 15, the Baltimore Sun reported. Werdesheim was member of the Shomrim watch group […]
Shifting regional alliances, spurred by Europe's economic adversity and the spread of radical Islam across Africa, has created a window of opportunity for Israel to reengage with a host of emerging African nations.
The Plesner Committee, tasked with crafting an alternative to the Tal Law for haredi service in Israel, is reportedly drafting a proposal which would defer the enlistment of haredi men till age 22, offer financial incentives to yeshivot that have younger enlistment rates, and begin to levy economic sanctions on haredim who don't enlist by age 23.
By JTA
The European Union for Progressive Judaism and Hungary’s two Reform congregations took their case against Hungary’s new law on religion to the European Court of Human Rights in The Hague. The two synagogues, Sim Shalom and Bet Orim, said in a statement that they had submitted an application Tuesday to the Court “concerning the violation […]
Great Jewish screenwriter Nora Ephron died on Tuesday at age 71. Alfred A. Knopf, her book publisher, said in a press release that Ephron died of leukemia. Her son, Jacob Bernstein, told the New York Times she had died of pneumonia brought on by her leukemia. Screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless […]
By JTA
A whistle-blowing Budapest rabbi was questioned by police for what has been described as misuse of sensitive private information stemming from a personal conflict within the Jewish community. Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti this week was finger-printed, photographed, and interrogated at a local police station. The investigation stems from a case last year, in which Radnoti revealed […]
It looks like someone went up to Charles Barron and slapped him. The former member of the City Council and the Black Panther party was handily defeated by Hakeem Jeffries for the newly redrawn 8th Congressional District. The new district is mainly African-American, with a significant percentage of Russian Jews and Hispanics. Jeffries won in a landslide with more than half the precincts reporting, taking 75 percent of the vote.
By Michael Snow, Israel Campus Beat
During their summer breaks away from lecture halls and libraries, many undergraduate students assume leadership roles as counselors and mentors to a younger generation in camps across the country. Camps across the Jewish spectrum feature programming, discussions and classes aimed at developing staff members into pro-Israel campus activists.
By JTA
A man in an Elmo costume was ejected from Central Park and hospitalized after going on an anti-Semitic rant in the middle of the New York landmark. While the man’s name was not released because he was not arrested. Police said that Monday's incident was not the first time he had been dressed as the […]
The NY Post reports that Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel overcame demographic changes in his district to win the Democratic nomination for what will be his 22nd term on Tuesday. With more than half the precincts reporting, Rangel was leading by double-digits. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries beat City Councilmember Charles Barron, a fierce anti-Israel voice, in the […]
A couple in their late 40's were detained on Sunday after police conducted themselves violently and would not display an arrest warrant. They used fists instead.
Andy Statman says the time of Klezmer has passed. Having just received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship in June for his work in bluegrass and Klezmer music, Statman admits Klezmer used to be his substitute for Jewish observance. Now that he is an Orthodox Jew, he no longer feels the need to play the music.
A Cologne district court ruled on Tuesday that parents may not have their sons circumcised for religious reasons, essentially criminalizing religious circumcisions.
Contractors hired by the Defense Ministry are busy packing the contents of the houses slated for evacuation Tuesday. Some residents held a press conference and described their feelings. "We're being removed against our will," said one of the local women. "We're doing it with a broken heart, but with our heads held high."
Ahmed Mohamed Shafik Zaki, who came second in Egypt's presidential runoff election last week, is reported to have boarded a flight to Abu Dhabi fleeing several corruption complaints.
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 JTA
Sylvia Cuttler Ettenberg, a veteran Jewish educator and founder of Camp Ramah, has died at age 95 Ettenberg was the first female senior administrator at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and was recognized as a dean emerita. The Brooklyn native was at the forefront of many Conservative Jewish educational initiatives, including the Prozdor Hebrew High School […]
As president of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Synagogue, Merkin introduced Madoff to members like Mort Zuckerman and Elie Wiesel, who together took "a $2 billion bloodbath."
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.
By Shalom Bear
A missing sentence in an Ha'aretz translation is all that stands between Eli Yishai being a racist, and those he's quoting.
The Olympic Committee of Israel approved its list of 36 athletes to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on Sunday.
About 50 of the 700 donors who attended the retreat this weekend in Park City were Jewish. Romney dropped in on the session, and said he had just been briefed by the Israeli ambassador. But the Romney campaign supports the same two-state solution as does Obama.
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.
An event sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles featuring controversial anti-Islamist Pamela Geller was cancelled on Sunday, just hours before it was to take place.
By JTA
The search for Guma Aguiar, a Florida businessman and philanthropist who has given millions to Jewish nonprofit organizations, reportedly was called off. Aguiar, the CEO of Leor Energy who lives in Fort Lauderdale, was last seen on the evening of June 19. His yacht washed ashore in Fort Lauderdale the following day, according to reports. […]
The assembly of at least 2000 began by saying Slichot, led by Rabbi Yaakov Chanun, who is the baal tefilah at the Munkatch beit Midrash on the Yamim Noraim. The assembled repeated chapters of Tehilim, verse by verse, and sat down on the ground in mourning just as Jews do on the day of Tisha B'Av.
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.
“In our strategic planning, we have defined a radius named the radius of deterrence, which includes all strategic interests of the enemy in the region, so that we can manage the battle at any level in case of the outbreak of war,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami said.
By JTA
A Muslim couple in Manchester, England, allegedly purchased items for homemade bombs to be used against Jewish targets, a court in that city was told. “It was jihad at home,” prosecutor Bobbie Cheema told the Manchester crown court on Thursday, according to the Guardian. “Between them they acquired substances, common for gardening, that can be […]
By JTA
The British Broadcasting Corporation “got it wrong” in its reporting of the massacre of the Fogel family by Palestinians in the West Bank village of Itamar, the broadcaster's outgoing director-general said at a parliamentary committee hearing. In March 2011, Arabs entered the Fogels’ home and murdered Udi, 36, Ruth, 35, and their children, Yoav, 11, […]
By JTA
French police said they were investigating death threats made against the country’s chief rabbi. Polices said over the weekend that they are looking for people connected to a photomontage disseminated through Facebook which shows Rabbi Gilles Bernheim with a revolver pointing at his head. The picture shows Bernheim wearing a Star of David on his […]
A new initiative – Bike for the Fight – will raise money for the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), a North American organization funding grants to top Israeli cancer researchers and scientific institutions, by biking for three months across the United States.
Cisco and Facebook demonstrate confidence in the long-term viability of Israel’s economy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured Israelis on Sunday that Israel’s armed forces would protect residents of the south, as a tentative quiet followed a weekend of rockets lobbed on the region from Gaza. Despite fear, residents move on with life on Sunday.
Judea and Samaria are not under occupation rule. This is the central finding of the "Outposts Committee" which was appointed to examine the legal status of Israel in Judea and Samaria.
On Saturday, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip continued with some 20 hits identified in towns and villages near the Gaza border. Israel's Air Force hit terrorists who were launching missiles at Israel. But the Islamic Jihad held its fire this week, "to see how others would face the Israeli aggression." (Watch video)
U.S. officials are saying Bashar al-Assad’s closest supporters are secretly making plans to defect to the other side in case the Syrian dictator succumbs to attacks by the rebellion. And a Syrian activist group reported Friday that four senior officers announced they are defecting and joining the ranks of the opposition.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
In the worst of the rocket escalations, a home in the Sdot Negev Regional Council was directly hit by a rocket on Wednesday, with the mother and her child home at the time. Miraculously, they were able to make it to the bomb shelter seconds before the rocket struck their home and were not injured.
By JTA
Poland's attorney general has asked the country's Constitutional Court to investigate the constitutionality of ritual slaughter. Andrzej Seremet said that he believes the minister of agriculture, who allowed an exemption to Polish law to accommodate ritual slaughter, violated the constitution. Under Polish law, animals must be stunned before slaughter; the only exception is ritual slaughter. […]
By JTA
Hungarian Jews "feel increasing danger" in a country with a government that condones anti-Semitism, the president of Hungary's Jewish community said. Peter Feldmajer, president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, made the remarks Tuesday at a conference on anti-Semitism in the European Parliament in Brussels. Though Hungarian government officials say they want to combat […]
By JTA
Latvian Justice Minister Gaidis Berzins has resigned in protest of plans to offer restitution for Jewish property seized after the Holocaust. Berzins, chair of the rightist All For Latvia-For Fatherland and Freedom Party, announced his resignation on Wednesday, the country’s news agency Leta reported. In 2006, the Latvian parliament blocked a bill proposing $55 million […]
By JTA
The body of a Yemenite Jewish leader who was stabbed to death in an anti-Semitic attack was brought to Israel for burial. Aaron Joseph Zindani, 46, was stabbed in the neck and stomach in a market in the capital city of Sana'a in May. His Muslim assailant accused Zindani of casting a spell on and […]
Mofaz, the Kadima leader who is in Washington this week for his first round of meetings since joining his party to the government, had a surprise meeting Thursday with the U.S. president when Obama interrupted a scheduled meeting with Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.
During a lengthy and heated interview with the Jewish Channel, Yossi Gestetner was quizzed about some of his past work for a tiny anti-Zionistic organization in Brooklyn. He also defended New Square arsonist Shaul Spitzer and was a spokesperson for a rally to benefit Nechemya Weberman, who is currently on trial for molestation.
Abe Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League: "My love and support for Israel is unconditional, it does not depend on the Israeli acceptance of my ideas. My Zionism is not in crisis because my Zionism is not conditioned on an idealized view of what I'd like Israel to be."
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.
By JTA
Guma Aguiar, a Florida businessman and philanthropist who has given millions to Jewish nonprofit organizations, is missing. Aguiar, the CEO of Leor Energy who lives in Fort Lauderdale, was last seen around 7:30 PM Tuesday. His 31-foot boat washed ashore in Fort Lauderdale early Wednesday morning, according to reports. A close friend of Aguiar, Rabbi […]
By JTA
The Jewish Federations of North America slammed Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar's criticism of the Israeli government's decision to pay the salaries of some non-Orthodox rabbis. "It is a fundamental Jewish virtue to ‘love your fellow as yourself.’ We condemn comments that disparage fellow Jews and, in particular, well-established branches of Judaism that represent 80 […]
President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Jewish leaders from around the world will unveil the brand-new ‘Victory Monument’ in Netanya, Israel this Monday, June 25.
JERUSALEM – After terror groups operating from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula launched Grad missiles into the Southern Negev’s Mitzpeh Ramon and Uvda regions last weekend and murdered an Israeli Arab construction worker from Haifa on Monday, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak took the unusual step of ordering IDF tank units to deploy along portions of Israel’s southern border with Egypt.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said that "over the past few days we have witnessed, and continue to witness, a series of attempts to harm the State of Israel. In the face of these threats stands a strong and powerful IDF, prepared to respond to any threat, at any time." Gantz spoke […]
July 31, 2026 
