Gaza’s economy, stifled by the highest unemployment rate in the world, blockades, poor governance and a series of military conflicts, is headed towards a “collapse,” a new report by the World Bank says. “The report estimates that Gaza’s GDP would have been about four times higher than it currently is if it weren’t for the…
Pop star Lady Gaga accepted an award from the Anti-Defamation League on behalf of her Born This Way Foundation. On Thursday, the ADL announced that Gaga had received its Making a Difference award for “work championing positive social change.” “The Foundation shares ADL’s mission of combating bullying among young people,” an ADL press release said….
Dutch restaurant owners cited their gastronomical focus in explaining why they had replaced Israel with Palestine in a map of the Middle East they had printed. The owners of Le Souq, a restaurant based in Rotterdam that specializes in food from the Middle East, offered the explanation after a local politician criticized their removal of…
Carmi, the president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, is to be named commander of the Order of the British Empire because of her involvement in furthering scientific collaboration between Israel and the United Kingdom, The Jewish Chronicle of London reported. Carmi is a founder of the U.K.-Israel Science Council and its…
Swiss government officials defended their decision to fund an exhibition by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group that exposes alleged Israeli war crimes. Breaking the Silence is scheduled to put on the exhibition next month at Zurich’s Kulturhaus Helferei with funding from the Swiss federal government and the municipality, Swiss officials confirmed this week to…
With jobs scarce and time on their hands, some tech-savvy Gazans have found a new way to make money – hacking Internet-based phone lines and routing international calls for a fee. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) hacking has been a phenomenon for years. But now Gaza, sealed off by a blockade imposed by Israel and…
Israel’s newly-appointed Religious Services Minister said he would void the marriage authority of municipal rabbinates if they are found to be discriminating against Ethiopian Jews. David Azoulay of the Orthodox Shas party spoke interview Thursday with Army Radio, following the station’s report about alleged delays by the rabbinate of Petach Tikva near Tel Aviv in…
An Israeli settler who claims to have purchased an abandoned church near Hebron is planning to turn it into a Jewish settlement, according to a report. Right-wing activist Aryeh King bought the church near the Aroub refugee camp between Hebron and Jerusalem three years ago, and in recent weeks began refurbishing it ahead of establishing…
In an election debate, Poland’s president defended his acknowledgment of the complicity of some his countrymen in the Holocaust. Bronislaw Komorowski offered his defense during a televised debate earlier this week against Andrzej Duda, a conservative candidate who criticized the president’s apologies in recent years for the massacre that Polish farmers perpetrated against their Jewish…
A section of Jerusalem’s lower aqueduct, which brought water to the city more than 2,000 years ago, was uncovered during sewer work. The aqueduct, which was excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority, was found in the Umm Tuba neighborhood, near Har Homa. It begins near Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem and continues for about 13…
Open disagreement with Israel on some of its policies is a necessary component of the U.S. defense of Israel in the international community, President Barack Obama said. Obama, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg posted Thursday on The Atlantic’s website, singled out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Election Day appeal in March to his followers…
