Category: Israel

(JTA) — When a group of mostly American Jewish baseball players arrived in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics, they had multiple responsibilities. First among them was to represent Team Israel in its first-ever Olympic baseball outing. Many of the players were new Israelis, having obtained citizenship just to satisfy Olympics eligibility rules. But they were […]

TEL AVIV (JTA) — “Everyone who answers, ‘Thank God’ when asked, ‘How are you,’ raise your hand,” Brit Yakobi asked the crowd of 700 people gathered in an Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem. The overwhelming majority of hands shot up. “Everyone who is mortified with our current government, raise your hand,” continued Yakobi, the director of […]

(JTA) — A Palestinian rammed his car into civilians at a Jerusalem bus stop on Friday afternoon, killing  a 6-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man in Jerusalem. An off-duty policeman killed the attacker, a 31-year Palestinian from eastern Jerusalem. Reports said at least five others, including an 8-year-old child, were injured in the attack outside […]

(JTA) — With just one month to go until the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Team Israel announced its full roster on Thursday. Thanks to a recruitment effort led by Peter Kurz, president of the Israel Association of Baseball and Team Israel’s general manager, along with the team’s former-star-turned-manager, Ian Kinsler, Israel will arrive in Miami […]

(JTA) — A proposed Israeli law that would sharply curtail the rights of women and non-Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall sparked alarm on Thursday, leading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pledge that regulations at the holy site would “remain exactly the same” as they are now.  The bill was submitted by a lawmaker […]

(JTA) — Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire at the center of allegations of stock market manipulation and fraud, bought Haifa’s port days before the allegations surfaced. On Wednesday, Haaretz reviewed Adani’s purchase of the port in the Israeli coastal city, in light of allegations made by Hindenburg Research, which described Adani as “pulling the largest […]

(JTA) — Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau has announced that the city is no longer twinned with Tel Aviv, citing claims that Israel is guilty of “apartheid,” as well as “flagrant and systematic violation of human rights.”  Barcelona and Tel Aviv entered the relationship in 1998 — when both cities jointly signed a “twin city” agreement […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benny Chukrun, speaking in Hebrew on a wind-whipped day outside the Israeli embassy in the U.S. capital, had a message for his fellow protesters. “We have a special role in Washington. We have access to the Jewish opinion leaders in the United States,” he said at a rally on Sunday opposing far-reaching […]

(JTA) — French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if the Israeli government’s proposals to decrease the power of the Supreme Court become law, Paris will no longer consider Israel a “common democracy.” Macron and Netanyahu, on his first trip to Europe since returning to power as prime minister, outwardly […]

(JTA) — As much of the financial world increasingly eyes political developments in Israel with concern, a company that specializes in assessing investments based on social responsibility criteria made a special announcement Wednesday in which it declared Israel “a low-risk country.”  That designation is both a signal to investors that they are unlikely to get entangled […]