Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres opened the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies on Sunday at Yad Vashem with a warning. In a solemn address, both leaders warned of the anti-Semitism that still exists in the world, 70 years after the Holocaust. Peres addressed the rise of extreme right parties in Europe as an…
Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” who transformed Britain and inspired conservatives around the world by radically rolling back the state during her 11 years in power, died on Monday following a stroke. She was 87. Britain’s only woman prime minister, the unyielding, outspoken Thatcher led the Conservatives to three election victories, governing from 1979 to…
Israel closed the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza to the passage of goods after three rockets were fired at southern Israel from the coastal strip. One rocket fired from Gaza struck southern Israel on Sunday night as the national ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day was taking place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The rocket…
Poland’s Jewish community has about a one month supply of kosher meat left, following a ban on ritual slaughter that went into effect at the beginning of the year. Piotr Kadlcik, president of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, confirmed to JTA on Monday from Warsaw that Poland will run out of kosher…
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday discussed reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but neither side offered details on how, when and whether that might happen. Kerry, who spoke one-on-one with Abbas for about an hour after a 20-minute group meeting, is on his third trip to the region in…
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel on Sunday, causing no damage or injuries, a police spokesman said. Last week rockets fired by Gaza militants spurred Israel to carry out air strikes on the territory, the first since the ceasefire that ended an eight-day war between Israel and Hamas in November. Police…
Global anti-Semitism increased by 30 percent in 2012 over the previous year, an annual report found. Following two years of decline, there was a “considerable escalation” in the level of violent acts and vandalism against Jews in 2012, according to the global anti-Semitism report for 2012 presented Sunday by the Kantor Center for the Study…
Palestinian riots continued over the weekend in several areas of the West Bank in the wake of the cancer death of a Palestinian prisoner. Palestinians clashed with Israel Defense Forces soldiers Saturday in the Gush Etzion area, also throwing rocks and firebombs at local Jewish settlements. Also on Saturday, Israeli soldiers prevented Palestinians from igniting…
Facebook has removed a page featuring anti-Jewish content, including a photo of murdered Jews in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen with the headline “Lazy Jews.” In response to a formal complaint by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mia Garlick, Facebook’s Sydney-based manager of communications and policy, confirmed Saturday that the Jewish memes page was…
A pro-Palestinian cyber attack campaign was launched against Israeli government websites on Sunday but did not cause serious disruption, an Israeli statement said. Over the weekend, email messages and websites using the name of the Anonymous hacking group said a campaign had been launched in solidarity with the Palestinian people to “erase Israel from cyberspace”…
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Turkey and Israel on Sunday to restore full relations, calling this vital to regional stability, but said it was not up to Washington to dictate the conditions of rapprochement. An Israeli-Turkish reconciliation could improve regional coordination to contain spillover from the Syrian civil war and ease Israel’s diplomatic…
