“He’s a magician, he’s a magician,” the partisan crowd chanted as a beaming Benjamin Netanyahu strode into his party headquarters a little over a year ago to declare a come-from-behind victory in Israel’s election. Now, with the expected entry into his right-wing government of ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister, it looks like Netanyahu, in…
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Thursday he has been “surprised” of late at a “loss of moral compass on basic questions” in Israeli society, even as far right wing Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman worked to finalize an agreement that would see him replace Ya’alon as defense chief and expand the ruling coalition. “We…
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg heard from more than a dozen U.S. conservative leaders on Wednesday and said he will work to build trust with users who believe the social network displays politically biased news content. After a closed-door meeting at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, Zuckerberg defended his company’s practices but acknowledged that many…
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi to discuss how to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, along with other shared concerns. Meeting in Cairo Wednesday, Kerry “expressed his appreciation for [Sissi’s] recent statement of strong support for advancing Arab-Israeli peace,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement, according to…
Just days after rejecting four resolutions calling for divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s control of the West Bank, the United Methodist Church voted to withdraw from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. By a vote of 478-318 at its general conference in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, the church approved a petition requesting…
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The unity government was about to form: Likud and Labor, right and left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog. Then, according to media reports, Netanyahu swung to the right and instead embraced an old partner: Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hard-line nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party. Lieberman, formerly…
— Belgium has turned down a request for financial assistance from the daughters of an Israeli couple killed in an attack a year ago on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. Shira and Ayelet Riva were 15 and 17 at the time of the attack in May 2015. Mira and Emmanuel Riva were on vacation and…
— The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, has elected its first Canadian president. Rabbi Philip Scheim, who has led Beth David Congregation in Toronto since 1984, was elected by the membership and will be installed Sunday at an event in New York. Scheim succeeds Rabbi William Gershon of Dallas, who took a…
WARSAW, Poland — Staffers at the Auschwitz museum found a gold ring hidden in a false bottom of one of the cups on display in the main exhibition. During conservation work on one of the enamel mugs, a double, or false, bottom was discovered, the museum said in a statement this week. Inside the false…
Israeli Muslims are more devout than the country’s Jews, Christians and Druze, but less so than other Muslims in the region, according to Pew research released Wednesday. About 68% of Muslims living in the Jewish state say religion is “very important” in their lives, a figure that is lower than in all countries in the…
Benjamin Netanyahu met on Wednesday with far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman in an effort to recruit him into Israel’s government, and political sources said the prime minister agreed to his demand to be appointed defense minister. Netanyahu, who won a fourth term last year, governs by a majority of one in the 120-member Knesset, making his…
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