President-elect Donald Trump entered St. John’s Church, known as the “president’s church” in Washington DC Friday morning, along with his wife and children, including Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.
According to CNN, this year’s version of the traditional pre-inauguration religious service will focus on when God chooses a leader, specifically the biblical figure of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls that protected Jerusalem.
Israeli Border Police officers stand guard, November 19, 2013
A group of Israeli settlers, including three off-duty soldiers, were rescued from a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank on Friday after they entered the area for as-yet-unknown reasons and were quickly set upon by local residents, the army said.
The four Israelis entered the village of Qusra, east of Ariel, on Friday morning. Once inside the village, residents of the hamlet surrounded the group and began throwing rocks at them, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
Alberto Nisman, Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 20, 2009
On the morning of July 18, 1994, Hana Cohen headed from her apartment to the nearby AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires to run an errand. Edith Szerman Kogos walked to a bank a few blocks away. Jose Caro shopped in a store.
The boom of an explosion interrupted their activities, piercing the hubbub of daily life in the Argentinian capital and destroying the building housing the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association. The blast killed 85 people.
For Cohen, Kogos, Caro and other Argentinian Jews now living in Israel, attending the dedication here Wednesday evening of a sculpture memorializing the AMIA victims and the man who died while investigating the bombing, Alberto Nisman, was personal. Within minutes of the explosion, the trio arrived onsite. All had been in AMIA scores of times and knew some of the dead and wounded.
The gathering at an arts center in this northern coastal city came on the second anniversary of Nisman’s death. It attracted approximately 200 people, nearly all immigrants from Argentina and other South American countries. Many expressed anger and skepticism toward the corruption they believe taints their native land’s political system and makes solving crimes like the AMIA bombing unlikely.
By Alex Fishman: When thousands of members of “The Young” movement marched last Thursday on the streets of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, chanting the battle cry of the Tahrir Square, “Al sha’ab yureed iskat al-nizam” (the people want the fall of the regime), they attracted the attention of quite a few people in the Israeli defense establishment. There was a feeling that we are witnessing a rerun of the Arab Spring, threatening the Hamas regime this time.
This demonstration was the highlight of about 10 popular protests held in the strip in the past month, since the heavy cold wave began. It was the biggest popular protest since Hamas rose to power about 10 years ago, and it was held on the backdrop of the deteriorating living conditions. Palestinian journalists have been referring to this protest as ‘The Electricity Intifada,’ and it has already generated symbols: A Palestinian who set himself on fire in Jabalia outside the offices of a charity organization, and three babies who died of hypothermia.
Two senators introduced a bill providing protection from lawsuits to state and local governments passing anti-BDS legislation.
On Tuesday, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced the Combating BDS Act, which would increase legal protection for state and local governments that ban, limit or divest from companies “engaged in commerce-related or investment-related BDS activity targeting Israel.”
Benny Fischer, President, European Union of Jewish Students
By virtue of being Jewish, students across Europe are automatically branded as pro-Israel and harassed by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists, the head of a university umbrella organization told The Algemeiner.
Benny Fischer, president of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS), said that even those Jews who do not wish to be involved politically are “specifically and repeatedly targeted for what happens in the Middle East and dragged into talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whether they want to or not.”
A policeman was killed Wednesday in a suspected car-ramming attack during clashes over home demolitions in the long-contested Bedouin town of Umm al-Hiran, police said. The driver was shot and killed by security forces at the scene.
Police identified the slain officer as 1st Sgt. Erez Levi, 34, from Yavneh, saying he was “murdered in a car-ramming attack.”
By Mitchell Rocklin: “F– – – the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.”
The second part of this statement—uttered in 1992 by James Baker, then the Republican secretary of state—was as accurate as the first part was insulting. Jews are indeed overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic party, and their record in this respect is unbroken all the way back to the early decades of the 20th century. To this day, and despite the party’s growing coldness toward the state of Israel—and the Republicans’ contrasting warmth—American Jews have barely budged from their Democratic allegiances, most recently giving fully 70 percent of their vote to Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election, just about the same number they gave to Barack Obama in 2012 (though below the 78 percent they gave him in 2008).
How long can this continue? Much ink has been spilled over that question. Only lately, though, has the glimmer of an answer, however partial, begun to manifest itself. Especially in the aftermath of November’s presidential balloting, a number of observers pointed to the voting patterns of, specifically, Orthodox Jews—a group that, according to the Pew Report, identifies with Republicans over Democrats by a margin of two to one. It is true that Orthodox Jews constitute a mere 10 percent of the American Jewish population, but because of their significantly higher fertility, especially when contrasted with the below-replacement birthrates among other, larger sectors of the community, they are on pace to double their share every generation.
Palestinian and European officials on Monday slammed the UK’s apparent readiness to defy international consensus and stand up for Israel, accusing London of aligning with Jerusalem to garner favor with the incoming Trump administration.
“We were expecting the United Kingdom, in particular, to play an effective role in the international system that rejects the Israeli occupation and its settlement enterprise,” Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in a statement released Monday evening, mere hours after Britain blocked a French effort to have the European Union endorse a peace conference it held Sunday.
Dramatically breaking ranks with participants from 70 other countries, the United Kingdom criticized Sunday’s Middle East peace conference in Paris, arguing that it might harden Palestinian negotiating positions and refusing to sign a joint statement issued after the summit that called for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A Foreign Office spokesman said London had “particular reservations” about the Paris meeting taking place without Israeli or Palestinian representatives, especially since a new US administration is being sworn in later this week.
Indeed, the spokesman’s statement noted that the confab took place against Israel’s expressed wishes and “just days before the transition to a new American president when the US will be the ultimate guarantor of any agreement.”
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