Benjamin Netanyahu’s deputy for intelligence and atomic affairs on Thursday broke with the Israeli prime minister’s call for Iran to be confronted with a “red line” beyond which its disputed nuclear programme would face military attack. In a broadcast interview, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor appeared to side with the United States in balking at…
He’s not a Jew. At least, that’s the latest on the man behind the anti-Islam film, “Innocence of Muslims,” that has fueled attacks on U.S. diplomatic installations in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, leaving the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, dead. The filmmaker appears to be an Egyptian Christian rather than an Israeli Jew,…
Kidnapped American Warren Weinstein called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help free him from his al-Qaida captors. The plea from Weinstein, 71, was included in a video released by al-Qaida late Wednesday night. “As a Jew, I am appealing to you, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the head of the Jewish State of Israel, as…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his one-hour, late-night phone call with President Obama was “a good conversation.” “We spoke about our common goal of stopping Iran from developing its nuclear weapons program, and our desire to closely coordinate our efforts,” Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post. Though Netanyahu would not give details of the conversation…
New Yorker magazine editor and Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Remnick accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of endangering Israel, interfering in U.S. elections and aligning with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a “neocon strategy” against President Barack Obama. In a biting blog post in the magazine on Wednesday, Remnick accused Netanyahu of doing…
Protests continued outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Yemen over an anti-Muslim film. Protests over the film, which was said to have been made by a Jewish director with Jewish financial backing but was later disproved, had already led to the death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya…
The New York City board of health has voted unanimously to require parents to sign a consent form before allowing a mohel to perform metztizah b’peh, direct oral-genital suction during circumcision. The vote was 9-0 to require parental consent for direct oral suction, a practice employed only by ultra-Orthodox mohels that can lead to transmission…
Italian scholar Cesare Colafemmina, an internationally known pioneer in the study of Jewish history and culture in southern Italy, has died. Colafemmina died Wednesday after a long illness at the age of 79. A university professor, archeologist and specialist in Jewish inscriptions and ancient history, Colafemmina wrote and researched extensively on the Jewish presence in…
Cuba said on Wednesday that jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross is in “normal” health, despite his wife’s claims to the contrary, as it reiterated its willingness to talk with the U.S. government about resolving the case. Gross, arrested in Havana in December 2009 for illegally bringing in Internet equipment and setting up wi-fi networks under…
A top Reform rabbi appeared with Libya’s U.S. ambassador and Muslim and Christian leaders condemning the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya and the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, along with the anti-Muslim film that allegedly incited the violence. A rocket attack Tuesday in Benghazi killed four U.S. diplomats, including the Libyan ambassador, John Christopher…
The Israel government is working to enable new construction and has retroactively approved existing construction on private Palestinian land in more than 40 settlements, based on old expropriation orders that were issued for military purposes. The efforts were revealed in the state’s response to a High Court of Justice petition filed by the Yesh Din…
