A far-right German politician has been charged with incitement for publicly displaying a large tattoo of the Auschwitz death camp on his back. Prosecutors announced Wednesday that Marcel Zech, a county council member near Berlin, is accused of violating Germany’s ban on the public display of Nazi symbols, The Associated Press reported. Zech’s tattoo was…
Bernie Sanders referenced the Holocaust and condemned Republican candidate Donald Trump’s “anti-Muslim rhetoric and hatred” in a visit to a Washington mosque. Sanders, the Democratic presidential hopeful and Vermont senator, participated in a roundtable discussion with Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders at the Masjid Muhammmed mosque on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported. Sanders specifically criticized…
A New York State panel recommended tighter control over an Orthodox-majority public school board in Rockland County whose budget cuts have provoked ire among public-school parents. The state-appointed monitors of the East Ramapo Central School District recommended in a report released Monday that the state authorize a monitor of the school board empowered veto board…
The heads of Israel’s major universities criticized an American academic group for moving to consider a boycott of Israel at its upcoming convention. The Association of University Heads, Israel, sent a letter Monday to Alisse Waterston, the president of the American Anthropological Association, expressing“great regret and disappointment” over the group’s decision, saying it “presents a…
At least 45 people suspected of drug trafficking were arrested in two haredi Orthodox areas thanks to the work of an under cover haredi agent. The arrests, in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood and the city of Beit Shemesh, were announced by the Israel Police on its website on Tuesday, hours after the arrests. Additional arrests…
Republican candidates, focusing on the Islamic State challenge, barely mentioned Israeli concerns in their national security debate. The Tuesday night debate on CNN dealt mainly with the challenge posed by the Islamic State, particularly in the wake of the deadly attack this month in San Bernardino, Calif. Candidates differed sharply on the degree to which…
BERLIN – Two young men of Palestinian descent are on trial in Germany for planning to bomb the Israeli embassy in Berlin or other Israeli targets, a criminal court spokesman said on Wednesday. The two men, both aged 21, were arrested in July and appeared in court on Tuesday, where they were charged with planning…
(JTA) — President Barack Obama used “chutzpah” in a fundraising pitch the other day. Joel Rubin, a Democrat running for Congress in a suburban Maryland district, did Obama one better by bringing bubbe into it. “Today is my bubbe Yetta’s 93rd birthday,” said Rubin, the State Department’s former chief liaison to the House of Representatives….
Echoing a slate of Jewish groups, President Barack Obama likened Syrian refugees to Jewish refugees in the 1930s. “Scripture tells us, ‘For we are strangers before you, and sojourners, as were all our fathers, we are strangers before you,’” Obama said Tuesday at a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives. “In the Mexican immigrant today,…
A French Muslim man accused of helping stage the recent attacks in Paris associated in prison with the alleged killer of four at Brussels’ Jewish museum. Mohammed Amri, who French police believe acted as a chauffeur for some of the terrorists who killed 130 people in Paris last month, became friends with Mehdi Nemmouche in…
Two top Reform movement groups reiterated their call on the NFL’s Washington Redskins to change the team’s name and logo. “’Redskin’ is a racial slur that references the deplorable treatment of American Indians that has been a significant part of this country’s history,” Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who heads Reform’s Religious Action Center, said in a…
