International

Rejecting US criticism, PM denies settlements are preventing peace

KIGALI, Rwanda — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected international criticism of his recent decision to build additional housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The US State Department, the UN and the European Union have harshly criticized those plans, which were announced after two Israelis — a 13-year-old girl and a father-of-10 — […]

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International, Middle East, USA

Despite heckles, pluralistic services at Western Wall pass ‘quietly’

Conservative and Reform Jews held a mixed-gender egalitarian service at the Western Wall plaza on Thursday amid jeering from a handful of protesters but few other disturbances. The organizers said they complied with an attorney general order not to pray at the site and held a singing and dancing service instead. “It passed totally quietly,”

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Jewish Religion, Middle East

Rejecting Rabbi Lookstein, who converted Ivanka Trump, ‘delegitimizes’ Israel, says Sharansky at protest

Strains of the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah” overpowered the sounds of morning rush hour as some 200 protesters demonstrated outside the Supreme Rabbinical Court at the entrance to Jerusalem on Wednesday morning. The protest was organized by former students of New York Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the former principal of the Ramaz High School and spiritual

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Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

Ronald Lauder works to spark the flames of Jewry’s future

As the United States ambassador to Austria in 1986, Ronald Lauder underwent what can only be called a life-changing experience. With the fraying of the Iron Curtain, the billionaire businessman-turned-diplomat was witness to a mass emigration of Russian Jewry to the West. For many Russian emigres, Vienna was meant to be a steppingstone to brighter

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International, USA

Dad of Slain Arab Asks Court to Destroy Killers’ Homes

The parents of a Palestinian teenager beaten and burned to death in Jerusalem two years ago have petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice for the demolition of his three Jewish killers’ homes. On July 2, 2014, three Jewish men, led by 31-year-old Yosef Haim Ben-David, kidnapped 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir from an East Jerusalem neighborhood.

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Middle East

The Last Nazi Hunter

Efraim Zuroff has accomplished much in his long career, but there’s one thing he’s particularly proud of: He’s the most hated Jew in Lithuania. His Lithuanian friend Ruta Vanagaite agrees: She called him a “mammoth,” a “boogeyman” and the “ruiner of reputations”—and that’s just in the introduction to a book they co-authored. Last summer, in

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International, Jewish History

Nazi Policy and Black Victims

Before, During, and After the Holocaust—from Africa to Berlin to North Carolina (c)  By Edwin Black In recent years, some in the African-American community have expressed a disconnect to Holocaust topics, seeing the genocide of Jews as someone else’s nightmare. After all, African-Americans are still struggling to achieve general recognition of the barbarity of the

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Edwin Black, International, Jewish History, USA