Category: Israel

(JTA) — The Israeli government approved the creation of a new, 2,000-member national guard demanded by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, in a cabinet vote on Sunday. The new force won’t begin operating immediately while a government committee spends 90 days evaluating its details — meaning that its future, including whether Ben-Gvir […]

CHICAGO (JTA) – At one point ahead of an international conference on Israel education, as raucous anti-government protests filled the streets of Israeli cities, conference organizers considered leaning into the tension created by the news: What if they focused one day of the gathering on conflict, and the next day on hope? Ultimately, they decided […]

(JTA) — In addition to juggling school, extracurriculars and trying to fit in, American Jewish teens have the added challenge of trying to foster a relationship with Israel in an increasingly hostile environment. Proposed judicial reforms by Israel’s far-right government and terrorist attacks and reprisals have led to a sense of crisis within Israel and […]

(JTA) — Even though he hasn’t officially declared his Republican presidential campaign (yet), Ron DeSantis has been pitching his governance of Florida as a model for running the United States — telling Fox News last week, for example, that “we can get America back on track and back on our foundations” by following Florida’s example.  […]

(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would postpone a vote on far-reaching reforms to the judiciary and engage in dialogue with the opposition, yielding to calls from hundreds of thousands of protesters as well as senior members of his own party and international leaders. In his televised address, Netanyahu cited fears of […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Major American Jewish organizations that hoped to send a unified message about the turmoil in Israel yesterday instead found themselves tussling, partly in the public eye, about what exactly they wanted to say.  Should they praise the massive anti-government protests that have taken shape in recent months? Should they criticize Israel’s sitting […]

BERLIN (JTA) — Novelist Ruby Namdar’s appearance at a major conference of European Jewish leaders wasn’t meant to include a speech to an empty chair. But there he was on Sunday night, addressing the chair he had thought would hold Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for Diaspora affairs. Chikli had been scheduled to address the summit, […]

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Yaniv, a resident of Tel Aviv, has lost count of how many protests he’s been to during the past three months. But on Monday afternoon, he headed once again to Kaplan Street, the urban artery that has become ground zero of the anti-government demonstrations, to demonstrate once again. Israel’s current rupture, […]

JERUSALEM (JTA) — After three months of demonstrations dominated by detractors of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan, supporters of the proposed reform took to the streets Monday, making their voice heard in Jerusalem and across Israel. Gathered outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, thousands of pro-reform protesters, including settlers bused in from the West […]

(JTA) — Like hundreds of thousands of her fellow Israelis, Kelly Breakstone Roth’s instinct on Sunday was to take to the streets. The only wrinkle: She and her family have been in Brooklyn for the last two years, part of the diaspora of hundreds of thousands of Israelis living abroad. They couldn’t just walk out the […]