Jewish leaders in Australia scolded an attempt to recognize a Palestine state in federal parliament as “an exercise in empty symbolism.” Labor lawmaker Maria Vamvakinou, a co-convener of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, tabled the private members’ bill in Canberra Monday calling on the Liberal government of Tony Abbott, one of Israel’s staunchest allies,…
Anti-Semitic incidents in Australia soared by more than a third in the past year. The annual Report on Anti-Semitic Incidents in Australia, presented Sunday at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s annual general meeting, logged 312 incidents between October 2013 and September 2014, about a 35 percent increase from 231 incidents the previous year. Much…
A highway expansion project in Israel has led to the discovery of a nearly 2,000-year-old mikvah. The ritual bath was discovered at Ha-Ela Junction, near the city of Beit Shemesh, during archaeological excavations conducted prior to widening Highway 38, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a news release. In addition to the 1,900-year-old mikvah, archaeologists…
The wife of the Brooklyn-born chief rabbi of Chabad in Sydney apologized unreservedly for offending a child sex abuse victim on the eve of Yom Kippur. Pnina Feldman sent an email on Oct. 3 to Manny Waks, the only Jewish child sex abuse victim in Australia to have gone public. “I haven’t met a person…
Anti-Semitic flyers were dropped in the mailboxes of private homes in Jewish suburbs in Sydney. Residents of Bondi Beach and Double Bay, which contain large numbers of Sydney’s 40,000-plus Jewish community, found the flyer in their mailboxes on Monday. “Wake up Australia,” reads the flyer. “Jews have been kicked out of countries 109 times through…
Students at a Jewish school in Melbourne were evacuated amid a bomb scare. More than 200 students at the King David School were moved off the campus after 8 a.m. Thursday when security personnel found an abandoned van containing a suspicious object near the school. The Australian Jewish community’s Community Security Group alerted local police,…
The former principal of a haredi-Orthodox girls’ school in Melbourne is facing extradition from Israel to Australia on claims she sexually abused some of her students. Malka Leifer, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Emmanuel, was arrested Sunday, officials said. The mother of eight ran the Adass Israel girls’ school from 2001 to…
Police in Sydney launched a legal bid to stop a pro-Palestinian protest at the opening of the Israeli Film Festival. Officials of the Palestine Action Group said members are listed for a hearing Monday in the Supreme Court of New South Wales ahead of the group’s planned protest outside the cinema on Thursday. The Guardian…
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