Tag: Israel

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared Turkey with Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution, saying Israel will “not be Turkey’s punching bag.” Writing in Thursday’s Jerusalem Post, Mr Lieberman blamed the crisis in bilateral ties between Jerusalem and Ankara on internal developments in Turkey.

State welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study by ultra-Orthodox men have become the subject of a fierce debate.

Ultra-orthodox Jews protested in Israel against an order by the government to desegregate their schools, which previously had different sections for Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews.

Excerpt from a memoir of life in an Israeli Kibbutz with discussion of the author’s growing disillusionment with Labour Zionism. “What I did, however, come quite quickly to understand if not openly acknowledge was just how limited the kibbutz and its members really were. The mere fact of collective self-government, or egalitarian distribution of consumer durables, does not make you either more sophisticated or more tolerant of others. Indeed, to the extent that it contributes to an extraordinary smugness of self-regard, it actually reinforces the worst kind of ethnic solipsism.”

The Islamist group Hamas is masterminding efforts to have senior Israeli leaders arrested for alleged war crimes when they visit European countries including Britain, a top Hamas official involved in the effort has told The Times. The claim comes amid continuing diplomatic fallout after a British arrest warrant was issued last week against Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister during Israel’s Gaza offensive last winter.

A row has broken out over a meeting about Israel at a University of London college that one man described as “anti-Semitic”. Jonathan Hoffman, vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain, made the claim in a blog relating to a meeting at the School of Oriental and African Studies. But others have insisted the meeting was fair and there were no anti-Semitic undertones. Other Jewish audience members spoke without being heckled.

Israel is teetering toward theocracy, with the rise of the Haredim.

An abbreviated version of the BBC’s guide to facts and terminology on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

Israelis and Palestinians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank share their hopes and fears for the future.

Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of a radical Islamist group in the Gaza Strip, has been killed during a gun battle with security forces that killed 22 people. The fighting erupted on Friday night when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egypt border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were hiding out.

Some residents of the mostly secular Ramat Aviv district, alarmed by the increasing presence and proselytizing of ultra-Orthodox Haredim, are trying to drive them out.

The recent FBI corruption sting in NJ not only indicted mayors for bribery but, strangely enough, also rabbis for trafficking in organs.  This Slate article examines Jewish attitude towards organ donation.  And again, religion seems to be a barrier against rational humanitarian behavior.

Some Israeli soldiers say military rabbis cast the offensive against Hamas rockets as a fight to expel non-Jews.

In his inaugural address on January 20, President Barack Obama said, to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect. But, without further defining mutual respect, how can the President’s remark be anything but words or a vague and indefinite platitude?