Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin expressed harsh criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday in a meeting with residents of the city of Kfar Sava, saying the pair is not worthy of leading the country. “My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership,…
The queen of the Netherlands is naming one of the country’s chief rabbis an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, among Holland’s highest honors. The honor will be awarded to Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Inter-Provincial Chief Rabbinate in Holland, next week. The announcement of the honor was made Friday by the Dutch…
Two Israelis are preparing to file a $260 million lawsuit against the Swiss government and two Swiss banks for allegedly refusing to return money and valuables deposited by their parents shortly before World War II. The plaintiffs say they intend to file the lawsuit next week in U.S. court, under a U.S. law enabling them…
The Israeli government plans to request that an Israeli Supreme Court order to dismantle part of a West Bank settlement be postponed for 90 days. The court has ordered that a neighborhood of the Beit El settlement, north of Jerusalem, be dismantled by May 1. The neighborhood, which contains five structures and is called Ulpana,…
The incidental interviewer doesn’t have to break a sweat to get President Shimon Peres to sit back in his armchair and detail, with enthusiasm and at length, his vision of what the State of Israel will ideally look like in three years’ time. After all, Peres and vision are synonymous. Like in Shmulik Kraus’ song,…
Vice President Joe Biden said “no president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel’s security than Barack Obama.” Biden delivered an attack Thursday on the foreign policies of Mitt Romney, the likely GOP candidate for president, a day after a top Romney surrogate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), had launched a broadside on Obama’s foreign…
Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, said he hoped Israel’s top soldier was “correct” in assessing that the Iranian regime was rational. “I would hope he’s correct and he knows something more that I do,” Panetta was quoted as saying Thursday by AFP, the French news service, during a visit to Chile. Lt. Gen. Benny…
A woman living in Toronto was charged in the United States with taking part in a scheme to steal from a Holocaust survivors’ fund. Documents obtained by the CBC, the state-owned broadcaster, show that the FBI alleges that Luba Kramrish was part of a conspiracy that falsified documents to claim money from a special fund…
Three Molotov cocktails were thrown early Friday morning toward the homes of refugees from Eritrea and Sudan in the Shapira neighborhood of southern Tel Aviv. No one was injured in the incidents. Police have opened an investigation into the matter. Investigators are looking into whether the Molotov cocktails were thrown by neighborhood residents or outsiders…
The sudden departure this month of the Jewish Agency’s veteran chief financial officer, Yaron Neudorfer, is sending shock waves through the cash-strapped organization as it grapples with a severe budget deficit. Neudorfer, who announced his resignation last month, is set to leave the Jewish Agency next week. The speedy manner of his departure, the fact…
The High Court of Justice has affirmed the validity of thousands of conversions called into question by the Rabbinical Court of Appeals in 2008, but refused to discuss the rabbinical courts’ authority to annul conversions in general. Nevertheless, the justices leveled harsh criticism at the rabbinical courts’ conduct. “The Rabbinical Court of Appeals rode roughshod…
