Middle East

Arthur Finklestein, master campaign strategist, dies at 72

He was credited with bringing Benjamin Netanyahu to power for the first time in 1996 and a series of successful campaigns in the US and Israel By Times of Israel staff Arthur Finkelstein and Benjamin Netanyahu in March 10, 1999. (Flash 90) Arthur Finklestein, a conservative campaign strategist widely credited with bringing Prime Minister Benjamin

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Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, USA

Lebanese army destroys 11 ISIL positions on Syrian border

The Lebanese army says its destroyed 11 Islamic State positions along the border with Syria. On Saturday, the U.S.-backed army launched its biggest military operation yet against ISIS, since the group gained a foothold along the country’s border with Syria in 2014. During a news conference, Nazih Jreij, a spokesman for the Lebanese army, said

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Middle East

Richard Spencer Demands Respect On Israeli TV

Speaking in an interview on Israeli television, white nationalist Richard Spencer Wednesday said Jews were “overrepresented” when challenged on antisemitism, adding Jews and Israelis should respect him despite his supremacist views. Spencer, who has previously courted Israeli media, despite engaging in Holocaust denial and refusing to condemn Hitler, made the remarks while speaking to Israeli

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Middle East, USA

Settler teens arrested for assaulting Arab bus drivers

Right-wing legal aid group representing the pair says the sting operation that led to their arrest was a ‘provocation’ By Jacob Magid View of the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin (photo credit: Gershon Elinson/Flash90) Police on Wednesday arrested a pair of teens from a settlement south of Jerusalem who are suspected of assaulting Israeli-Arab

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Middle East

Why French Muslim comedian Samia Orosemane says she’s like a UFO

It’s no small feat for a French Muslim woman from a disenfranchised suburb of Paris to make it on stage, let alone as a stand-up comedian. Enter Samia Orosemane. At the start of her Paris one-woman show “Femme de Couleurs” (“Woman of Colors”), the 37-year-old comedian of Tunisian descent walks on stage to a mashup

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International, Middle East, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

For Jewish Americans, anger over Trump’s response to Charlottesville

LOS ANGELES—Dina Chernick had just arrived for breakfast Thursday at a Jewish deli in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, but she already had a bad case of indigestion. She could thank President Donald Trump for that. “Here’s this guy and he’s talking about uniting the country and then he makes these terribly divisive statements,” said Chernick, an

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Middle East, USA

Bennett defends lesbian aide amid national religious criticism

Jewish Home leader says he won’t discriminate based on sexual orientation after rabbi quits party over spokeswoman’s employment By Alexander Fulbright Education Minister Naftali Bennett seen at the Knesset on July 26, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90) Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett came to the defense of his spokeswoman Thursday after a leading rabbi left the

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Middle East

‘LegoMan’ wishes children did not need him so

Maor Cohen is known at Ezer Mizion as the Lego Man. He runs a workshop for kids with cancer and their siblings using lego as a medium enabling them to cope with their fears and anxieties. For those children who are unable to attend the workshops he makes hospital visits.  Always smiling on the outside, one cannot imagine where he finds

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education

High Court rules women must be allowed to administer rabbinical courts

Women’s rights groups hail ruling as judges nix job requirements that effectively precluded females By Times of Israel staff The entrance to the Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv, November 27, 2013. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) Women must be allowed to serve as directors of rabbinical courts, the High Court of Justice ruled Wednesday, in a

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Jewish Religion, Middle East

Syria: A testament to intern’l moral bankruptcy

By Alon Ben-Meir NEW YORK –Much has been written about Syria’s civil war which has engulfed the country for the past six years, but sadly the mounting death and destruction in Syria has long since become mere statistics. The international community grew comfortably numb to the horror, the likes of which we haven’t seen since

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Alon Ben-Meir, International, Middle East

Netanyahu condemns ‘neo-Nazism and racism’ after Va. violence

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemned “neo-Nazism and racism” on Tuesday, following a white supremacist rally in the United States that ended in bloodshed. “Outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred,” Netanyahu posted in English on his official Twitter account. US President Donald Trump, who had been under pressure

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Middle East, USA