Israel’s escalating culture wars turned surreal in late February, when a vitriolic battle of words erupted between right and left over this question: What is the biblical birthplace of the Jewish people? One side picked Jerusalem. The other side picked Egypt. Both sides were wrong. But days later the battle is still raging, from the…
The Jewish-Israeli man who was convicted of organizing the revenge murder of a Palestinian teenager in 2014 was ruled mentally fit to be sentenced. An Israeli court ruled Monday that Yosef Ben-David, 31, of the West Bank settlement Adam, can be sentenced, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Ben-David was convicted of the murder along with two…
The approval of an egalitarian section of the Western Wall “profanes” the holy site, the haredi Orthodox group Agudath Israel of America said. “Designating an area at the Kotel Maaravi (Western Wall) for feminist and mixed-gender prayer not only profanes the holy site, it creates yet a further lamentable rift between Jews,” Agudah said in…
Two Jewish minors were found guilty on Monday of the 2014 murder of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, but the Israeli court held off on formally convicting a third man accused of orchestrating the crime, pending a psychological review. Prosecutors said the three had confessed to abducting, bludgeoning, strangling and burning Mohammed Abu Khudair, 16,…
The Palestinian National Theatre, which for three decades has been the leading performing arts and cultural center for Arabs in Jerusalem, is facing closure after running up large municipal debts, its director said on Friday. Known as “Al Hakawati” (The Storyteller), the theater has amassed unpaid bills of $150,000 over the past five years, with…
After a century of searching, archaeologists say they have found the remnants of an ancient Greek fortress once a center of power in Jerusalem and a stronghold used to hold off a Jewish rebellion celebrated in the scriptural Book of the Maccabees. Researchers have long debated over the location of the Acra, built more than…
(JTA) — To get to the Jewish compound in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, residents arrange in advance for an armored van to pick them up at a spot adjacent to the walls of the Old City. With a metal grate over its windshield and an armed guard sitting beside an armed driver, the…
A month ago, you couldn’t get a table in Abu Shukri’s hummus restaurant. Tucked in a backstreet of the Old City, off the Via Dolorosa, the place has long been regarded as the best hummus joint in the Holy Land. But on Oct. 2, yards from Abu Shukri’s front door, a Palestinian law student stabbed…
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