By ISRAEL KASNETT (JNS) – In an address to the U.N. General Assembly last September, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to a sympathetic gathering of world leaders that he would hold parliamentary elections. While the announcement garnered international headlines at the time, little progress has been made in the ensuing months towards elections, highlighting what experts see as entrenched […]

By JUDY LASH BALINT (JNS) – Israel is the home of Walter Bingham, 95, certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living radio-talk show host. At a gathering in his honor in Jerusalem, hosted by the Israel Government Press Office on the last night of Chanukah, Bingham told journalists, friends and family members that he feels that the […]

By MARCY OSTER JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Defense Ministry has recognized as a terror attack an incident in which a Palestinian mother of nine was killed by a thrown rock at her car. But since the woman, Aisha Rabi, is not an Israeli citizen, her family will not receive compensation from the National Insurance Institute, Ynet reported. Rabi, 47, was […]

DC Report By Douglas Bloomfield Make no mistake. Iranian General Qasem Soleimani deserved his fate. It was long overdue. So why now? It wasn’t really because of any imminent terrorist plot, as Donald Trump initially said. Iran’s top military leader was a commander, not a field operative. Any operation underway would not have been halted if he’d died by drone, […]

By LISA KEYS This article in its entirety originally appeared on Kveller. The decision to take our kids to the recent No Hate, No Fear Solidarity March did not come easily. At least, not at first. It’s hard to say what, precisely, gave me pause. My kids are no strangers to social activism — their elementary school is named for a […]

By JOSEFIN DOLSTEN TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) – Jason Greenblatt, Donald Trump’s former Middle East negotiator, made his first public speech since leaving the White House on Sunday night, Jan. 12. Greenblatt, 52, who worked as a lawyer for Trump for two decades prior to joining the administration, spoke at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck, N.J., the modern Orthodox synagogue where […]

SCHENECTADY–Each January Congregation Gates of Heaven commemorates the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with an annual community Shabbat event, which will be held this year on Friday, Jan. 24, at the temple, 852 Ashmore Ave., Schenectady. Prof. Sarah Rogerson, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Albany Law School will be the guest speaker. The […]

(JNS) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to an Israeli-American woman imprisoned in Russia on drug charges, promising to do everything in his power to secure her release. “We are here in Israel, and you are in Russia, but the distance between us is bridged by the closeness of our hearts,” Netanyhu wrote in the letter, a […]

By SAM SOKOL JERUSALEM (JTA) – On March 17, 1992, a suicide bomber drove a truck into the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injuries hundreds of others. Two years later, in the same city, on July 18, 1994, another bomber drove a truck into the AMIA Jewish center, killing 85 and injuring hundreds. It remains Argentina’s worst-ever […]

By MARCY OSTER JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi is under fire for calling immigrants from the former Soviet Union “Communist, religion-hating” Gentiles. At a recent rabbinical conference in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef criticized Israel’s Law of Return for granting citizenship to Russians who are not Jewish according to Orthodox religious law, the Yediot Acharonot daily first reported Tuesday, […]