At least three participants in a wedding where Jewish revelers were captured on video celebrating the deaths of members of a Palestinian family in a firebombing were set to be released from police detention. Among those who were to be released on Thursday evening was the groom, Yakir Ashbal, according to Israeli media reports. The…
Israel’s first lady was questioned by the Israel Police fraud investigation unit over suspected spending irregularities at the prime minister’s residence. Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was questioned Thursday afternoon, despite a request by her attorney to close the investigation. She reportedly was asked to detail her involvement in the running…
A lawsuit naming the U.S. Treasury Department and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew aims to revoke the nonprofit status of groups that the litigants claim have given billions of dollars in tax-exempt donations to Israel. A group of American citizens filed the suit Dec. 21 in a U.S. court, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday. One of the…
A New York-based haredi Orthodox rabbi who has posted thousands of popular outreach lectures online said only about 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust rather than the historically established figure of 6 million. Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi in a video posted Tuesday on his YouTube channel cited high assimilation rates in Europe before World War…
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was wounded in a car-ramming attack in the West Bank. Israeli troops at the scene shot dead the Palestinian driver after he drove into a group of soldiers on Thursday on a road south of Nablus between the Hawara and Tapuach junctions, according to the IDF. The soldier, who was…
Ukrainian police arrested a haredi Orthodox couple from Israel at a Kiev airport after finding more than two pounds of marijuana in their luggage. The website of Ukraine’s border police did not identify the Israelis arrested at Boryspil Airport on Sunday but said they were apprehended in a combined operation by the country’s security service,…
The leader of the rabbinical arm of the Jewish federations movement expressed his “extreme disappointment” in Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi’s rebuke of the country’s education minister for visiting a non-Orthodox school. It is “particularly disappointing that you chose to criticize rather than encourage greater cooperation between the Jews of Diaspora and of Israel,” Rabbi Stuart…
Israel’s Cabinet unanimously approved a five-year, $3.84 billion plan to improve infrastructure in Arab-Israeli and other minority communities. The plan changes government allocation mechanisms in order to reduce gaps between Jews and Arabs and to aid the economic development of the Arab sector, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced in a statement Wednesday. Arab-Israeli leaders…
Chicago police will get new equipment and training to defuse tense situations and limit use of lethal force, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Wednesday, following weeks of protests calling for him to resign over his handling of fatal police shootings. The number of Tasers, or electric stun guns that are generally not lethal, will be…
A New York company is preparing to market what it says is the world’s first kosher-certified marijuana. The Orthodox Union has certified Vireo Health of New York’s non-smokable medical marijuana products, Vireo announced in a news release Wednesday. Vireo is one of five medical marijuana providers selected to participate in a New York state medical…
Israeli security officials are increasingly concerned about the threat of large-scale terror attacks by ISIS. In an article Wednesday, Haaretz reported that Israel’s “defense establishment” believes a growing number of Arab-Israelis are joining the Islamic extremist group, and that ISIS branches on the Syrian border with the Golan Heights and in Egypt’s Sinai will recruit…
