Khaled Kasab Mahameed waited until the very last moment, hoping that his visa would come through. A Muslim lawyer from the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, he had reserved a seat on an afternoon flight December 10 from Amman to Tehran, expecting to address Iran’s international conference on the Holocaust. His bag was packed. His…
While the release of the long-awaited Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq policy has produced an outpouring of protest from Jewish groups opposing its calls for talks with Iran, Syria and the Palestinians, insiders say that the real target of Israel’s anxiety is neither Syria nor the Palestinians, but Iran and its nuclear program. Earlier this week,…
Los Angeles – By now, the large Iranian Jewish influx into this city — giving it the nickname “Tehrangeles” — is no secret. But, perhaps as with any growing community, fault lines are emerging. And since almost nothing reveals differences as sharply as an internationally broadcast controversy, the brouhaha over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparent antisemitism…
Doron Almog is one of Israel’s toughest soldiers — the first onto the tarmac in Entebbe in 1976, the first into Beirut in 1982, field commander of the mid-1980s desert exodus from Ethiopia, chief of the Southern Command during the worst years of the second intifada. Retired in 2003, he was called back this past…
Jewish and pro-Israel groups, after initially greeting the report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group with outrage, have begun to mute their criticisms on the basis of assurances that the Bush administration will not adopt the report’s proposed linkage between Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Public and private statements by administration officials have convinced leaders…
It’s not clear whether they are gaffes or calculated slips, but several comments made publicly by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have not only raised the ire of many Israeli citizens but have raised fears that he has endangered the lives of kidnapped soldiers — and perhaps Israel’s defense policy. “He’s a chatterbox,” said Hebrew University…
Jonathan Miller — the Jewish, Harvard-educated state treasurer who has recently all but declared that he will run for governor of Kentucky — has already developed a sure-fire opening for his stump speech: He talks about Jesus Christ. The Christian New Testament and the Jewish Talmud share a “really similar story,” Miller recently told a…
Englewood, N.J. – Twenty years ago, the Jewish face of this city was its Conservative synagogue, which had gathered in a community of young affluent couples who left behind their impoverished urban childhoods as well as the Orthodox religion of their parents. Today that synagogue, Temple Emanuel, has moved to a smaller, less affluent suburb…
Former New York City Mayor Edward Koch has called for Dennis Prager to resign or be removed from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, in response to the pundit’s recent insistence that a Muslim congressman not be sworn in using a Quran. “There is no question that Dennis Prager is a bigot who ought to…
For many, the traditional Hanukkah experience includes a greasy latke in one hand and (hopefully) a napkin in the other. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it was destroyed by Antiochus IV. As Rabbi David Ingber of New York’s Kabbalistic congregation Kehilat Romemu explains, “After the Jews reclaimed the Temple in…
curving branches of lit menorah widen into glowing grin growing into smile spreading like the rumor of a miracle rippling out from a moment in time radiating waves of warmth waves of light The poet is a prosecutor and oral historian living in Staten Island.
