His grandparents fled a crumbling Ottoman Empire and rising anti-Semitism in Poland to seek refuge in Cuba. His parents left the island’s oppressive communist regime for a better future in the United States. Now, Leon Rodriguez, who grew up in a Cuban-Jewish enclave in Florida, has come full circle: 2015 is his first full year…
The Eritrean migrant mistaken for an assailant during a terrorist attack at the Beersheba bus station died from gunshot wounds, not from the beatings he sustained by Israelis. The results of the autopsy on Haftom Zarhum, 29, who died at Beersheba’s Soroka hospital several hours after the Sunday night attack, were released on Wednesday. The…
(JTA) — In the days since an Eritrean migrant was shot to death by an Israeli security guard and then beaten by a mob at Beersheba’s central bus station, a fellow migrant named Awat Ashever has insisted to other Eritreans that the killing was just a terrible mistake. It’s an uphill battle, as some of the…
Leon Rodriguez spread out a collage of black-and-white family photos he keeps in his Washington office. There was his father, surrounded by Jewish activists under a picture of Theodor Herzl in Havana; his grandparents smiling to the camera back in Turkey; his grandfather behind the sewing machine, making shoes. Next to the collage rests a…
(JTA) — With hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring across the borders of the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a landmark change in policy last month: Germany would begin to accept Syrian refugees, no matter how they got there. Four days later, Israeli Interior Minister Silvan Shalom made a statement on the same…
(JTA) — The Tel Aviv office of Mesila — a city government unit that helps African migrants — isn’t a stop you’ll find on most Israel tours. The office is located in a house down a side street around the corner from the city’s grimy, dim, semi-dystopian Central Bus Station. On Sunday morning, its waiting…
The office, which opened last week in Dnepropetrovsk, aims to facilitate the process for those seeking to immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their kin. It is a joint initiative of the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, the Israeli organizations Tzohar and Shorashim, and the Triguboff Institute of Australia. “It will…
In the wake of the drowning death of hundreds of migrants from Libya trying to reach Italy, an Israeli government minister justified his country’s building of a fence to keep out migrants. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz in a post Monday on his Facebook page, called the deaths a “tragedy that shocks all humanity,” then added,…
מיידלעך זענען פֿרײַ צו טאָן וואָס זיי ווילן, זאָגט זי, בשעת בחורים מוזן לערנען אַ גאַנצן טאָג אָן שום לײַטישער הפֿסקה
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