Middle East

  NEW YORK (Press Release) … The arrest of five students from a West Bank yeshiva on charges of torching and vandalizing a mosque in a neighboring Palestinian village, “highlights the danger of the teachings of Yeshiva head Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in calling on responsible Orthodox Jewish leaders to “speak […]

BERLIN — Siemens AG of Germany, Europe’s biggest engineering conglomerate with operations world-wide, has announced that it would cut all future business deals with Iran, although the company intends to honor existing contracts. Germany is one of the biggest exporters to Iran. Siemens business deal in Iran have repeatedly come under fire. The company’s CEO

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, published this Op-Ed column in the Jerusalem Post: By Moshe Kantor JERUSALEM (WJC)–In his seminal quote written at the beginning of the last century, philosopher George Santayana said in his treatise ‘The Life of Reason’ that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

JERUSALEM (WJC)–The original blueprints for the construction of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau have gone on display at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial  in Jerusalem. The collection of 29 plans, four of which are now on display, was given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Germany in August 2009. “There is an

BRUSSELS (WJC)–European Union foreign ministers have discussed possible responses to Iran’s continued nuclear program including new sanctions against Tehran. “We are moving very strongly toward sanctions,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb told reporters in Brussels. “We will start with UN sanctions, and if that does not work, we will go to EU sanctions.” France’s minister

JERUSALEM–Holocaust scholars have criticized a growing tendency in central and eastern Europe to equate the Shoah with Communist oppression, a trend which they consider “the gravest threat to preserving the memory of the Holocaust” as it served to exculpate populations complicit in the extermination of their Jewish minorities, according to a report by the Israeli

WARSAW (WJC)–In an interview published on an Italian Catholic website, the retired Polish Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek has accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. “While it is undeniable that most of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, there were also Gypsies, Poles, Italians and Catholics on the list,” Tadeusz Pieronek

SAN DIEGO (Press Release)– Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco is based on the exile to Babylon of the Jews from Jerusalem.  In the Bible, the Babylonian King Nabucco is known as Nebuchadnezzar.  San Diego Opera will be presenting “Nabucco” Feb. 20, 23, 26, 28 at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Prior to that time, Dr. Nicolas

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM–Those in the know say that the Goldstone report is deeply flawed, but not entirely wrong. Some believe it would have been much less wrong had Israel cooperated with Judge Richard Goldstone when he was compiling it for the United Nations and that, even now, it’s important that the allegations about

HAIFA (Press Release)–Over the course of 2009, five more kibbutzim converted to the “renewing kibbutz” model (paying its members differential wages) bringing the percentage of such kibbutzim up to 72% of all the kibbutzim in Israel. “It is highly probable that by the end of 2012 the number of kibbutzim shifting to alternative models will