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The historic saga of Ethiopian Jewry, with its unique traditions and customs, will be incorporated into the mainstream Pessah story for the first time in a new Haggada written by Ethiopian-Jewish history expert Rabbi Menachem Waldman. Read More »
Jerusalem Post 
‘Stage 3’ of moratorium enforcement to begin
The Defense Ministry plans to launch “Stage 3” of its cabinet-sanctioned crackdown on new construction in West Bank settlements next week, including a major police roundup of those who violate the moratorium, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Read More »
Analysis: Frozen by his own fiasco
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement Thursday morning saying he had summoned Interior Minister Eli Yishai to his office a day earlier and “expressed his displeasure” at the timing of an Interior Ministry committee’s announcement regarding the plans to build 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo. Read More »
Biden wants direct peace talks by summer
Soon after US Vice President Joe Biden left for Jordan on Thursday, senior Israeli officials said they anticipate the proximity talks with the Palestinians will begin soon, because Biden made clear to the PA leadership that this is what the US expects. Read More »
Stage 3 of settlement moratorium is all part of Biden effect
The timing of the Defense Ministry’s decision to begin Stage 3 of the freeze on settlement construction next week is part of the “Biden effect,” or in simpler terms, an effort by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to show the world that he means business and wants peace. Read More »
The West Bank, Mr. VP? Actually, you were at Yad Vashem
US Vice President Joe Biden, who has a history of embarrassing verbal gaffes, made another one on Thursday when he inadvertently and indirectly referred to west Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as the “West Bank” in his speech at Tel Aviv University. Read More »
Israelrelieved after Biden speech
Senior diplomatic officials warmly welcomed US Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday, saying the friendly, supportive discourse at the end of his turbulent three-day trip showed that the furor over the announcement of 1,600 new housing units in the capital’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood had come and gone. Read More »
For Yishai, merely a slap on the wrist
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cannot punish Interior Minister Eli Yishai for marring the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden because of the Shas leader’s vast political power, a source close to Yishai said on Thursday. Read More »
3 foreign workers report sexual abuse to help line in 1 day
Workers’ rights organization Kav LaOved released testimonies on Thursday from three female foreign workers who claim to have been sexually abused by family members of their employers. None of the women know each other, but all three complained on the same day, marking a new low in the organization’s records. Read More »
PA puts off honoring Coastal Road Massacre leader
The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday that it has postponed the inauguration of a square named after Dalal Mughrabi, the Fatah woman who led the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians and an American photographer were killed and 71 people were wounded. Read More »
Efrat synagogue foundations destroyed
Efrat Local Council head Oded Revivi woke up at 4: 45 a.m. on Thursday, when his cellphone, beeper and home phone all rang at once. When he picked up the phone, a security guard told him that a massive bulldozer had just driven into the settlement, which is located in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, just south of Jerusalem. Read More »
Footage of Gibril Deal soldiers aired
A special broadcast aired Thursday by Al-Jazeera and picked up by both Channel 10 and Channel 2 showed file footage of IDF prisoners of war in Palestinian captivity in Syria. The footage, recorded in 1983, featured interviews conducted with the prisoners by their captors during IDF Operation Peace for Galilee. Read More »
Construction plans over Green Line unclear, but numerous
Although the diplomatic tempest over construction plans in Jerusalem neighborhoods located over the Green Line appeared to be waning on Thursday, the exact numbers and details of those plans remained unclear – and differed according to who was explaining them. Read More »
Protection on the roads
Five more names were added Wednesday to our grim toll of road accident fatalities. Among them was 12-year-old Arik Ofer from Ofakim. He and a friend were severely injured on Sunday at a pedestrian crossing. The cab driver who recklessly ran them over bemoaned his own fate, portraying himself as a victim no less than the hapless youngsters he hit. Read More »
Analysis: Construction freeze fiasco a test for J’lem, US
WASHINGTON – To those who have doubted the sincerity of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s embrace of peace talks since his first visit to the Obama White House last May, the premier has said, “Test me.” This week, before his American examiners, he failed his practical exam in spectacular fashion. Read More »
EU Parliament demands Schalit’s release
The European parliament on Thursday called, by a large majority, for the immediate release of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, who has been held captive by Hamas in Gaza since June 2005. Read More »
Iranian Jewish family nabbed at Ben-Gurion with 15 kg. opium
An Iranian Jewish man, his wife, and their teenage son were arrested on Wednesday evening at Ben-Gurion Airport on suspicion of smuggling 15.4 kilograms of pure Iranian opium into Israel. Read More »
Knesset prepares to go virtual
Soon, voters will be able to Skype into Knesset committees, write talkbacks on their favorite MKs’ Facebook pages, and receive Tweets from the middle of the most heated hearings. Read More »
Supermarket chain’s ad spoof on Dubai hit set to go viral
“Everything’s going as planned. The commercial hasn’t even aired yet and already everybody’s talking about it,” said Sefi Shaked, a partner in Inbar Merhav Shaked advertising agency. Shaked’s company just finished filming a new commercial for discount supermarket chain Almost Free Warehouses Ltd. (Mahsanei Kimat Hinam) on Wednesday. Read More »
‘Post’ story leads to shake-up at German-Iran business group
BERLIN – A Jerusalem Post article in late January covering the German-Emirati Joint Council for Industry and Commerce as a conduit for legal and illegal trade with Iran played a role in an administrative shake-up at the business group, according to a report in the daily Die Welt. Read More »
‘Galloway misled public over sum raised for Gaza’
LONDON – The UK’s Charity Commission this week accused a charity run by controversial MP George Galloway of misleading the public over the amount of money it had raised for Gaza. But it found no evidence that the charity had given money to Hamas. Read More »
‘The US-Israel enduring partnership’
Mr. President, thank you for that lovely introduction. And thank you for hosting me at such a world-class center for higher learning. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back on campus. I was a mere child, a 31-year-old Senator when I was here the first time. But it’s a privilege to be back. Read More »
HRW: Press Syria on human rights
BEIRUT — Western nations must press Syria on its human rights record as the country emerges from international isolation, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The United States, France and other nations recently have boosted engagement with Syria, a country seen as key to peace in the region. Read More »
Soldiers object to requirement for admission to Rhianna show
If you want a ticket to see American R&B sensation Rhianna at Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium on May 30, you don’t need any money. But you do have to be 16-26 years old and willing to volunteer for four hours in a community project. That stipulation has some soldiers up in arms, claiming discrimination against them. Read More »
2 solders indicted for Cast Lead actions
An indictment was filed on Thursday against two IDF staff sergeants for alleged inappropriate conduct and overstepping their position during last winter’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Read More »
Galilee mom released to house arrest
The woman who was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of having tried to euthanize her 17-year-old son began to cooperate with her investigators on Thursday. The 53-year-old woman, from an Arab Israeli village in the North, was taken into custody after police received a report from the youth, who suffers from muscular dystrophy. Read More »
Peres asks leading rabbi to compromise on conversion bill
President Shimon Peres visited 98-year-old Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman at the Ponovezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak Wednesday in an effort to resolve the crisis over proposed conversion legislation. Read More »
Analysis: Biden’s get-your-act-together lecture
If Joe Biden had spent much of his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories fuming at the Netanyahu government for Tuesday’s dysfunctional announcement of new building plans in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, he didn’t dwell overly on the issue in a centerpiece address at Tel Aviv University on Thursday. Read More »
Top young French and Israeli scientists come together
As part of a joint effort between France and Israel to promote scientific research, 15 outstanding young French and Israeli scientists, recipients of prestigious research grants from the European Research Council, were hosted at a Jerusalem conference this week. Read More »
Shoppers storm Israel’s 1st H&M store
Hundreds of enthusiastic shoppers waited outside the first local H&M store on Thursday, as the Swedish-owned fashion house opened their first store in Israel in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Center. Immediately after the count down, dozens of customers ran into the store, practically trampling two baby strollers in their rush to enter, Channel 2 reported. Read More »