The Reform movement and Jewish refugee agency HIAS called on the Israeli government to re-examine its asylum policy for African migrants. In a news release issued Friday, North America’s Union for Reform Judaism, its Israeli counterpart and HIAS, took issue with Israel’s “anti-infiltration law,” which allows the government to detain asylum-seekers for up to 20…
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered near a Paris event celebrating Tel Aviv beach culture and established an alternative event called Gaza on Seine. Tel Aviv on Seine, part of the weeklong Paris Plages (“Paris Beaches”) festival, occurred Thursday as planned despite opposition from a Paris lawmaker and pro-Palestinian groups. The festival turns the banks of the Seine…
The national Jewish community’s security arm asked Jewish institutions to be on the alert after Osama Bin Laden’s son called for attacks on Jewish American interests. The Secure Community Network alert Friday said that Hamza bin Laden, who has ambitions to lead Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization founded by his father, posted an audio message…
The Jewish community of Lithuania fired the country’s chief rabbis amid his objections to the the government’s plan to build on an area the used to be a cemetery. The dismissal of Chaim Burshtein, an Israeli who has served as Lithuania’s chief rabbi for the past 11 years, was announced Friday by Shmuel Levin, chairperson…
A shipwreck discovered off Israel’s coast almost 40 years ago has been identified as likely a vessel belonging to Edmond James de Rothschild, a French Jewish banker and philanthropist. Although discovered in 1976 off Dor Beach, near Zichron Yaakov, which is on the Mediterranean coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv, the shipwreck had not been…
The New York State Education Department appointed a panel to study the operations of the haredi Orthodox-controlled school board in the East Ramapo school district. The board in the school district, located in New York’s suburban Rockland County, has stirred controversy and local ire for its decisions over the years to significantly cut public school…
Swedish police discovered what they described as a well-made fake bomb at the Chabad House in the southern city of Gothenburg. The mock bomb was found last week on Saturday, according to a report posted that day on the police’s website. Police came to inspect the premises following a report of a suspicious-looking man who…
An aging and infirm member of Britain’s House of Lords finally appeared in court on Friday over historical child sex abuse allegations, despite his lawyers repeatedly arguing he was too ill to attend. Lord Greville Janner, 87, a former Labor member of parliament and ex-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is accused…
The general council of a large Canadian church network voted in favor of promoting a boycott against institutions complicit in what it called the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. On its 42nd annual gathering this week, the council of the United Church of Canada voted in favor of the text on Israel on Aug. 11,…
A British-Jewish newspaper called on Jeremy Corbyn, the frontrunner to head Britain’s Labour Party, to address allegations that he is tied to anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. An editorial published Wednesday on the online edition of the The Jewish Chronicle of London said: “We are certain that we speak for the vast majority of British Jews…
A Palestinian detainee in the ninth week of his hunger strike fell unconscious at an Israeli hospital on Friday in a case that could test Israel’s new force-feeding law. Mohammed Allan, 31, an Islamic Jihad activist, began the strike after his detention without trial in November. Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon said he had been put…
