Most of the world follows U.S. presidential elections closely, but Israel can seem particularly obsessive, endlessly assessing which candidate will better protect its interests and breaking down their every comment for policy clues. As America votes on Tuesday, a cartoon in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz captured a sense of that fretfulness, depicting friends sitting…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an unprecedented vilification of the Israeli media on Monday, accusing a leading television journalist of being part of a plot to bring down his right-wing government. After declining to be interviewed by Channel Two anchorwoman Ilana Dayan for a piece investigating the workings of his administration and the role his…
(JTA) — If you’re a Jewish-American liberal who believes that Donald Trump could never become president, British Jews have one word of warning: Brexit. Following the shocking referendum vote in June favoring a British exit from the European Union, many British Jews now believe that their liberal circles and cosmopolitan lifestyles had left them largely…
A Lower East Side real estate developer abruptly painted over a 43-year-old Jewish heritage mural Monday — sparking outrage among neighborhood residents and one of the artists who created it nearly a half century ago. Sara Krivisky was a teenager when she helped paint the mural, which features themes including the Holocaust, immigration, sweatshops —…
JERUSALEM ( — Israel’s interior minister, Aryeh Deri of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party, called Reform Judaism an “imitation” and said he “can do without that Judaism.” Deri, the Shas leader, reportedly made the comments on Monday during a question-and-answer session in the Knesset. “I want the original, not the imitation” of Judaism, Deri said in response…
— Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said he will leave his presidential ballot blank, walking back his endorsement of Donald Trump earlier this year. Fleischer, who serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, cited several reasons for his change of heart in a Washington Post op-ed. “Trump lost…
— Making his final campaign stop in the swing state of Florida before Tuesday’s election, Donald Trump said President Barack Obama was a “disaster” for Israel. “We will stand strong, we have to stand strong with the State of Israel in their fight against Islamic terrorists,” Trump told a rally Monday morning in Sarasota. “Barack Obama was…
JERUSALEM — Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his associates of interfering in the U.S. election. “In the past, we saw serious information stating that Israeli leaders tried to intervene and influence the results of the elections [in the United States], and the citizens of Israel paid the high price,”…
German prosecutors are investigating Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives for failing to react to the onslaught of hate speech on their platform as well as for not deleting posts denying the Holocaust. European countries like Germany have much stricter laws against hate speech than the United States. German law requires Facebook Germany to delete…
(JTA) — Jewish Americans have never been ones to sit out an election, whether it comes to voting, political fundraising or dinner table punditry. But even for a community grown used to the political fray, the 2016 campaign was different. The stakes are so high, the differences so stark, the language so overwrought that Trump…
An Israeli court sentenced a 14-year-old Palestinian boy to 12 years in prison on Monday for his part in a stabbing attack that wounded two Israelis in October last year. The boy, named by Palestinian officials as Ahmed Manasra, carried out the attack in an Israeli settlement north of Jerusalem along with his 15-year-old cousin….
