Passover in Israel means no bread, lots of traffic to popular tourism sites, and lots of bored teens and kids on vacation trying to find entertainment. Unfortunately, unsupervised teens don’t always make the best decisions. The Israel antiquities authority was shocked to find an ancient fort in the archeological site of Ashdod-Sea, by the city…
A New Orleans judge on Wednesday sentenced real estate scion Robert Durst to seven years in prison for a federal gun crime and agreed to recommend that he serve his time in California, where he faces a murder charge in a friend’s 2000 death. The 73-year-old, who entered and left the courtroom in a wheelchair,…
Freedom House, a freedom of the press watchdog, downgraded Israel’s status from “free” to “partly free,” citing the Israel Hayom daily, which is seen as pro-government. “Israel declined due to the growing impact of Yisrael Hayom [sic], whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets, and the unchecked expansion of paid content…
Police in Milan have arrested a rabbi for domestic violence after he allegedly hit and verbally abused one of his eight children. Police arrested the man, identified as 42-year-old M.E., a rabbi at the Chabad center at piazza Castello, on Sunday night after being alerted by his wife, Italian media reported. The center lists a…
An acclaimed Brazilian theater director who recently put on a successful production of “Fiddler on the Roof” condemned some Orthodox Jews whom he said routinely spit on Christians. Claudio Botelho levelled the accusation, which some Jews said was anti-Semitic, on Facebook last week, Alef News, a Brazilian Jewish news portal, reported. “Spitting on someone is…
The attorney for Israeli Rabbi Eliezer Berland, a fugitive accused of serial sex crimes, closed his case at the rabbi’s bail hearing in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, mounting an impassioned plea that the rabbi be given bail, especially since it is Passover. Lawyer Themba Langa said the rabbi was a man of elevated…
Romania is to fast-track claims from Holocaust survivors under an amended law on property restitution which is expected to be passed by parliament next week, legislators said on Tuesday. Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany during World War Two until it changed sides in August 1944, and much of the property seized during the…
Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian woman and a man on Wednesday, saying they had tried to stab security forces at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 193 Palestinians, 130 of whom…
The state of Maryland awarded a victory Tuesday night not only to the Democratic establishment, but also to the mainstream pro-Israel establishment. Alongside a resounding victory for Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, Maryland Democrats elected Rep. Chris Van Hollen as their candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Mikulski. In a state…
Eleven Jewish students and recent alumni of the Harvard Law School have signed a letter defending the law student who asked former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni why she is “so smelly.” In a letter to the Harvard Law Record, the students defend “our friend and peer” Husam El-Qoulaq, whose comment at an April 14…
The president of New York University said the school will not acquiesce to its graduate student union’s recent demand that the university cut its Israel ties. “A boycott of Israeli academics and institutions is contrary to our core principles of academic freedom, antithetical to the free exchange of ideas and at odds with the University’s…
