Suspected hardline Israelis scrawled pro-settler graffiti and religious insults on a monastery outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday, police said, in the latest of a series of attacks on non-Jewish sites. The vandals wrote the phrase “price tag” in Hebrew on the gate of the Monastery of Saint Francis on Mount Zion…
Coalition parties widely expect new elections to be held in February or March, due to problems in reaching agreement over the 2013 budget. Officially, elections aren’t supposed to take place until October 2013. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a series of meetings with his coalition partners this week and next to see if agreement…
Lawyers for an imprisoned Jewish man argued in court on Monday that the state of Texas is violating his religious freedom by failing to provide him with kosher meals. Max Moussazadeh, convicted of murder, has been in a Texas prison for 19 years after he served as a lookout during a robbery in which a…
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by Sholom Rubashkin, the former chief executive of a kosher meat packing plant in Iowa who was sentenced to 27 years in prison on charges of financial fraud. Without comment, the high court refused to consider whether Sholom Rubashkin’s sentence was excessive for a first-time, nonviolent offender and…
A precipitous drop in Iran’s currency, the rial, shows that sanctions are cutting “deeper and deeper” into its economy, the United States said on Monday, reiterating Iran must rein in its nuclear program. The rial plunged against the U.S. dollar in open-market trading on Monday, and has lost more than a quarter of its value…
Syria’s foreign minister on Monday accused the United States, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey of supporting “terrorism” by funneling arms, money and foreign fighters to rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad while the U.N. chief decried killings and rights abuses by Assad’s government. Speaking on the last day of the annual 193-nation U.N….
Shopkeeper Nevzat Cavan is rushing to meet orders for the white, fur-trimmed costumes worn by Muslim boys for their circumcision, relieved that Berlin’s city government has allowed the operations to resume. For three months, the elaborate suits, capes and oriental slippers languished unsold due to a shock court ruling that raised the possibility of criminal…
Mitt Romney accused U.S. President Barack Obama of lacking resolve regarding the Middle East, Israel and Iran on Sunday, in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal. The Republican Party candidate for president wrote in the article that “disturbing developments” that have been sweeping the greater Middle East of late “are not, as President…
Iran’s economy is edging towards collapse due to international sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Sunday. Israel regards the prospect of its arch enemy developing nuclear weapons as a threat to its existence, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that, although sanctions are taking their toll, they…
Two Cuban Jewish leaders visited jailed American contractor Alan Gross and said they found him in “good spirits.” Adela Dworin, head of Cuba’s Jewish community, and David Prinstein, president of the Patronato Synagogue and Jewish community vice president, spent two hours with Gross on Sept. 27 in the military hospital where he is imprisoned, according…
Zion Evrony has taken up his post as Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See. Evrony, who was appointed to the post in July, presented his Letters of Credence to Pope Benedict XVI at an audience with the pontiff last Friday. He was born in Iran in 1949 but made aliyah as a baby. The career…
