A Jerusalem cafe became a symbol of secular defiance — until Israelis learned it was run by Jews for Jesus

JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s premier soccer team made an unusual announcement last week: It would give a new cafe free advertising on players’ uniforms for the coming season. Cafe Basimta was facing harassment from haredi Orthodox protesters who wanted it to close on Shabbat, and Hapoel Jerusalem said it wanted to send the message that Jerusalem […]

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This clown eats bubbles, cracks jokes and helps Israeli children recover from trauma

Shorty, the aptly named 4-foot-8-inch medical clown, stood between two young patients riding coin-operated toy cars in the lobby of Tel Aviv’s children’s hospital, alternately blowing and eating bubbles as the children giggled. Between mouthfuls, Shorty asked the girl’s mother why her daughter, about 6ֿ, was in the hospital. A tonsil operation, the mother said, […]

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AOC urges Clavicular, who visited Tel Aviv, to ‘shed some light’ on the plight of the Palestinians

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the influencer Clavicular should be informing his followers about the plight of Palestinians, in a sign of how widely Clavicular’s trip this week to Tel Aviv has registered among both Israelis and Israel’s critics. Ocasio-Cortez, who has been sharply critical of Israel, was asked about Clavicular by a reporter from TMZ, […]

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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors

The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution. Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed […]

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