Middle East

How BDS advocates fooled two Christian churches

By Max Samarov LOS ANGELES — I’ve spent the last three years witnessing and helping defeat Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns on campuses across North America, so I am rarely surprised by the depravity of anti-Israel activists. But BDS doesn’t limit itself to campuses, so this year I’ve had the distinct misfortune of witnessing it […]

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Middle East, USA

Foxman looks back on 50 years with the ADL

NEW YORK — Looking back after 50 years of service to the Anti-Defamation League, retiring national director Abraham Foxman expressed passionate worry to journalist Edwin Black about the safety and security of Jews overseas and Israel’s position in the world. Excerpts from his exit interview follow, edited and condensed for continuity, clarity, and length. Edwin

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Edwin Black, International, Middle East, USA

Obama presidency has harmed Israel

By Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel NEW YORK — Few seem to have noticed that President Barack Obama has scattered to the winds bipartisan Israeli reservations regarding establishing a Palestinian state. In a recent interview on Israel Television Channel 2, President Obama was quizzed on his public rejection of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election

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Middle East, USA

Orthodox out- maneuver Reform in Israeli politics

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — The collusion between secular Israelis and extreme Orthodoxy has a long and ignominious history. The mixture of cynical indifference and a seemingly visceral belief that authentic Judaism must be Orthodox continues to dominate the political realm in the land. To repeat the old adage: Many Israelis insist that the synagogue

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Jewish Religion, Middle East

Positive and negative opinion abounds in Israel

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — Writing in the New York Times (June 20) Ross Douthat distinguishes between dynamists and catastrophists. Dynamists, he writes, “see 21st-century modernity as a basically successful civilization advancing toward a future that’s better than the past.” Catastrophists, on the other hand, “see a global civilization that for all its achievements

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Middle East

Jewish news briefs: July 3, 2015

Netanyahu tours Be’er Sheva with Steve Forbes, hails city’s tech ‘revolution’ (Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—joined by billionaire Steve Forbes, owner of the Forbes magazine—on Thursday toured Be’er Sheva and the southern Israeli city’s Advanced Technologies Park at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). Netanyahu discussed the area’s potential in the field

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International, Middle East, USA

Israelis wonder what’s behind violence uptick

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Israelis are accustomed to not knowing what’s happening. With the most thoroughgoing security arrangements in western democracies, there is a lot they don’t tell us. The military experience most have had provides its own lessons on the workings of a high compartmentalized organization, and realizing that there are things we do not

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East