The senior rabbi of the Lithuanian haredi Orthodox, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, has announced that yeshiva students should not agree to enlist in National Service. The rabbi’s decision, quoted Monday in the haredi daily newspaper Yated Ne’eman, comes a day after Israel’s Cabinet approved a temporary law that would allow yeshiva students to perform national…
Australian police have uncovered new clues in the 1982 bombings of the Israeli Consulate and the Hakoah Club in Sydney. At a news conference Monday police said they had travelled for the first time to Israel to interview former consulate staff and witnesses of the bombings, which took place just hours apart on Dec. 23,…
Israeli soldiers raided the offices of three civil society organizations on Tuesday in the heart of Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Entering before dawn, troops wrenched open the doors of the Women’s Union, the Palestinian NGO Network and Addameer, an advocate for Palestinians in Israeli jails, confiscating five computers…
The number of “anti-Jewish” hate crimes has declined by 30% since 2000, a new FBI report revealed. Crimes listed “anti-Jewish” as the motivation also fell, to 771 reported last year from the 1,109 in 2000. There were 6,222 hate crimes reported during 2011, according to the report released Monday. The year 2000 showed slightly more…
A Brooklyn rabbi who acted as a therapist was convicted of sexually abusing a Brooklyn girl, authorities said Monday. Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, was found guilty of 59 separate counts of abuse and faces up to 117 years in prison. “The victim showed great courage to come forward in a very difficult time. Hopefully,…
Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund chief of sexually assaulting her in a New York hotel last year agreed on Monday to settle her civil lawsuit against him for an undisclosed sum. At a brief hearing in New York State Supreme Court in the New York City borough…
A draft of a European Union resolution said the EU was “deeply dismayed” by Israeli plans for new construction in settlements but did not mention sanctions. The draft resolution, which was obtained by the French news agency AFP, said Israeli settlement construction “threaten peace efforts.” It had been prepared for EU foreign ministers ahead of…
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal ended his first visit to the Gaza Strip on Monday with a pledge his Islamist movement would strive to heal political rifts with Palestinian rivals who hold sway in the occupied West Bank. His comments reinforced promises he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah movement, made to…
A former Jewish leader from Sydney will appear in court next month on charges of sexually assaulting four men. David Bitel, 60, a ex-member of the executive of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies and a prominent attorney, was arrested last week and charged with seven offenses, including rape and indecent assault on…
Institutions on the Holocaust and human rights opened in Belgium and Brazil. In Belgium, a museum opened last week in Mechelen, a city situated between Antwerp and Brussels where Belgian and German police officers concentrated thousands of Jews for deportation to Auschwitz. Named the Dossin Barracks Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre for the Holocaust and…
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly said he wanted to negotiate with Israel it if freezes construction for six months in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Abbas made the statement on Sunday in Qatar during a meeting of Arab League nations in Doha, The Jerusalem Post reported. He was responding to statements by Qatari Prime Minister…
