JERUSALEM — They’ll lower the flag and fold it decorously. Then they’ll point the final convoy north. But what will Israel leave behind when it evacuates the last Jewish settlers from Gaza? Rows of well-tended houses for homeless Palestinians? Empty fields? Or piles of toxic rubble?As the August 15 date nears for the evacuation to begin, theRead More
JERUSALEM — Israel announced the launch this week of an ambitious program to quadruple the number of Diaspora Jewish students visiting Israel on long-term education programs. The program aims by 2008 to have 20,000 young adults each year, some one-fifth of all Diaspora Jews in the target age groups, attending half-year orRead More
WARSAW — In the Jewish community in Warsaw, the visit of Israel’s military chief of staff was a source of visible elation. On a weekday, at an awkward hour, dozens of members of the 1,500-person community waited in the Nozyk Synagogue, which had been used as a stable during the Nazi occupation, to hear Moshe Ya’alon speak. He told themRead More
OSWIECIM, Poland — With just weeks to go before he retires, Israel’s military chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, came to Auschwitz last week to deliver a moral sermon to the troops back home.“Never again — never victims and never murderers,” Ya’alon said, standing alongside a swath of barbed wire and addressing a small group of reportersRead More
JERUSALEM — In a devastating blow to the credibility of Israel’s state rabbinic establishment, the nation’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, was interrogated this week by the police on suspicion of complicity in the abduction and beating of a 17-year-old youth who was dating his daughter.Amar is not known to be suspected of directRead More