Category: Israel

HAIFA — On a recent chilly morning, six Israeli Druze women gathered in a room at the University of Haifa library to discuss the joys and frustrations of living in a modern, Jewish, largely secular country. Chatting in Arabic and Hebrew, many of the women, all students at the university, spoke about the challenges of […]

(JTA) — Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square on Saturday to protest their new government’s plans to significantly decrease the power of the country’s Supreme Court. Authorities reported that as many as 80,000 protesters braved a rain storm in Tel Aviv, while smaller protests took place in other cities across […]

(JTA) — Yoav Silberstein, 16, waited an hour and a half to get into 7-Eleven’s new flagship — and so far only — store in Israel. Located in the heart of Tel Aviv in Dizengoff Center, the store opening on Wednesday attracted throngs of mostly teenagers hoping to get a taste of America in the […]

(JTA) — The genealogy website MyHeritage posted 1.7 million Israeli immigration records online this week, making accessible a trove of ship and plane passenger lists stored in bound tomes at the Israel State Archives.  The records cover arrivals to the country for about 60 years starting in 1919. They include details such as the name […]

(JTA) – As Israel’s new right-wing government continued to signal that it would push through measures to cripple the judiciary and clamp down on public dissent and news operations, thousands of citizens took to the streets in protest and one prominent opposition figure warned of imminent “civil war.” A reported 10,000 demonstrators gathered Saturday night […]

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Devora Zien’s tiny apartment in Bnei Brak runs like a factory, but, she admits, not a very smooth one. With 12 mouths to feed three times a day, single-use plasticware is a basic necessity, she says. So when Israel’s then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman increased taxes on disposables in 2021, Zien said […]

(JTA) — Israel’s new government is wasting little time before following through on a central promise made by its leading politicians: to reshape the country’s judiciary and give lawmakers more power over it. Yariv Levin, the newly appointed justice minister, on Wednesday announced planned legislation that would severely limit the Israeli Supreme Court’s ability to […]

(JTA) – A pair of what appeared to be Jews were captured on camera vandalizing dozens of Christian graves in Jerusalem’s historic Old City on Jan. 1, drawing condemnation from church officials and the United Kingdom. The video shows the vandals making a beeline for a large masonry cross inside the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery, […]

(JTA) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s new far-right security minister, visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Tuesday, shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly urged him to delay the visit because of security concerns. The visit to the site, considered the holiest in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam, was treated as a provocation by […]

(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu completed his stunning return to power by swearing into office a historically right-wing government coalition and beginning an unprecedented sixth stint as Israeli prime minister on Thursday. After winning a decisive mandate in November elections, Netanyahu spent several weeks negotiating with figures once relegated to the far-right fringes of Israeli politics […]