(JTA) — Sitting in his sister’s living room in this town outside Tel Aviv, Yuriy Yukhatskov says he’s glad to be far from his home city of Kiev. Yukhatskov, 44, says that what he sees as the pervasive anti-Semitism in Ukraine’s capital would grow only worse with the country’s recent unrest. He fears that last month’s…
Some 200 Baltimore Jews attended a hearing to protest the possible release of a man who was convicted of murdering an 11-year-old Jewish girl in 1969. Attorneys for Wayne Stephen Young, 68, are requesting a new trial based on a 2012 ruling by the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the state’s highest court, which found…
A Norway musuem said it would return a Nazi-looted painting by Henri Matisse to the heirs of its former Jewish owner. The Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo, or HOK, announced Friday that it would return the 1937 painting “Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace,” which has been part of the museum’s collection…
A collection of medieval religious art worth an estimated $275 million will not be returned to the heirs of four German-Jewish art dealers. The descendants of another heir said, however, that they will not give up the fight for the Guelph Collection now held by the Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In a ruling last…
A statement from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon clarifying his attack on U.S. foreign policy did not appease the Obama administration. “We are disappointed with the lack of an apology from Defense Minister Yaalon’s comments,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said Friday. “His comments, as we’ve stated a couple times, don’t reflect the true…
Jewish leaders condemned Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s supreme leader, for once again questioning the Holocaust. “#Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened,” was posted March 21 to a Twitter account, @Khamieni.ir, believed to reflect Khameini’s policies. “Once again, the injection of Holocaust denial…
Israel cell phone owners received threatening text messages from Hamas. The text messages were delivered on Saturday evening, and threatened rocket attacks and kidnapping. “A warning to Zionists. Kassam rockets are waiting with you. If you want the life then leave our country,” said one message in Hebrew. “Al-qassam has chosen you to be The…
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian leadership will not agree to a peace deal unless it includes a completely sovereign state with a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Abbas made the statement Saturday during a meeting of his Fatah Party’s Central Committee, according to reports. In expressing their support for Abbas, the committee called…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the security forces that took part in an operation in Jenin to arrest a Hamas terrorist, which left the suspect and at least two others dead. “Our policy is to attack those who attack us and who are planning to attack us. Both were applicable in this case,” Netanyahu…
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam on Sunday to highlight Japan’s friendship with the Jewish people and sees no contradiction with his recent controversial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine at home. The Anne Frank House, where the German-born Jewish girl kept a diary of her life in…
A Jewish teacher from Paris told police that three men assaulted and cursed him in Arabic before drawing a swastika on his chest. The attack occurred on Thursday night, according to a report by the Drancy-based Bureau for National Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group known as BNVCA. “They pressed him to the wall and…
