Avi Gabbay was a newcomer to Israeli politics when he stunned the country by winning the Labor Party’s leadership primary last July. For American Jews, Gabbay is still an unknown — he came from the world of business, where contacts with the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community are not a top priority. Taking the stage…
Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri suggested on Monday that opponents of a controversial recent conversion bill, which would prohibit all private conversions, are motivated by a desire to convert illegal African immigrants and promote intermarriage. The Times of Israel reported that at the weekly meeting of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Deri attacked Israeli Reform leader…
Israel’s Labor Party is not that innocent – it’s delayed its leadership election because of a Britney Spears concert slated to take place on the same day as voting. Party sources told Ha’aretz the postponement was more due to logistical concerns than to deference for the American pop star, who will take the stage at…
Israeli opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog is poised to risk losing a passionate cohort of his party — the youth — if he succeeds in his push to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition. Young Labor members have come out strongly against Herzog’s negotiations with Netanyahu, staging a small protest outside Herzog’s Tel Aviv…
In the end it wasn’t even close. Pre-election polls had Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud trailing the Zionist Union of Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni by four Knesset seats, nearly 4% of the popular vote. Analysts around the world were falling over each other to write Bibi’s political obituary. Then came election day. Exit polls found he’d…
The Netanyahu government’s most left-wing member, environmental defense minister Amir Peretz, quit the cabinet on Sunday and declared war on the prime minister, vowing to work for a new government committed to peace and economic justice. Peretz, a onetime Labor Party chairman and defense minister, is a member of Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party. The move…
An Israeli soldier walks past a bus on which suspected Jewish vandals painted graffiti reading ‘Gentiles in the land are enemies’ / Getty Images Young Israelis don’t want separate bus lines for Palestinians — and they’re asking American Jews to ensure segregation never becomes a reality. That’s the nutshelled version of a letter sent today…
While Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies insist that Israel must maintain military control over the Jordan River in order to make sure that hostile forces don’t cross over and turn a Palestinian state into a forward base for attacks on Israel, Israel’s main security professionals continue to argue that Israel can accept…
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