In a personal letter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Mohammed Morsi, who was sworn in Saturday as Egypt’s president, to honor his country’s contractual obligations to Israel. A senior Israeli official said that in the letter Netanyahu congratulated Morsi on his election, offered to cooperate with the new government in Cairo and expressed his hope…
Former Mossad agent Yaakov Meidad, who took part in the abduction of the Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, died Saturday at the age of 93. Meidad was living in Tel Aviv. Meidad was in charge of the logistic aspects of the assignment, carried out in Argentina in May 1960 under the command of the Mossad…
When Italy’s national soccer team faces Spain in the final game of the European Soccer Championship, Italian Jews will have a special reason to cheer. Mario Balotelli, the black Italian soccer star whose two goals gave Italy its 2-1 semifinal victory over Germany on Thursday, grew up as the foster son of a Jewish mother…
The Department of Homeland Security has allocated $9.7 million to Jewish organizations and facilities considered vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The funding, announced on Friday, came from the DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which aids nonprofit organizations that are at risk of terrorist threats, and helps those organizations coordinate with broader security initiatives. This round of…
The leaders of last summer’s cost-of-living protest have joined forces with members of the business community and academia to put together a social justice covenant. The document features two basic principles: the elimination of inequality and poverty and gradual increases in the state budget “to get the wheels of development moving for all the country’s…
Yad Vashem is due to unveil a new wall text on Sunday describing the actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II, softening a previous message which stated that the head of the Catholic Church had not protested verbally or in writing to the murder of Jews by the Nazis. The initial wall text…
The al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula is believed to be planning a terror attack during the Olympic Games in London, scheduled to begin at the end of the month. According to a report in today’s Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, the organization has recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert who was supposed to hijack a…
Yizhak Shamir, the seventh prime minister of Israel, died Saturday at the age of 96. Shamir, who was born in 1915 in Ruzhany, served in Israel’s Shin Bet, and later on as Speaker of the Knesset as part of the Likud and Israel’s Foreign Minister before succeeding Menachem Begin as Prime Minister in 1983. In…
A week after the violent protests in Tel Aviv, rallies were scheduled to take place on Saturday in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Afula. In Tel Aviv, activists will march from Habima Sqare to the Tel Aviv Museum. Among the speakers are retired Major General Ze’ev Even-Hen, who lost his daughter Topaz in the 2010…
Some 500 Eritrean migrants demonstrated in front of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to protest what they say is the political persecution they are experiencing in Israel. They are demanding that the U.S. establish a mechanism to determine eligibility for refugee status, Ynet reported. The protesters carried signs that read “We want protection,” “No…
UNESCO has agreed to name the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a World Heritage Site, and list it as in Palestine. The secret vote, which came during the United Nations body’s World Heritage Convention in St. Petersburg, Russia, was 13-6, with two abstentions. Israel and the United States had opposed the move, seeing…
