By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service TEL AVIV (JTA) — Isaac Herzog paces slowly up and down the stage, one hand in his suit pocket, a slight smile forming through his slender lips. Quietly, his heavy breath audible through the microphone, the center-left candidate for prime minister runs downContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service TEL AVIV (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labor Chairman Isaac Herzog won’t be debating each other ahead of Israel’s March election, but English speakers in Tel Aviv who packed an event hall here got the next best thing: Candidates from five parties cameContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service TEL AVIV (JTA) — Stav Shaffir was angry. The 29-year-old firebrand is known for her outbursts, which have gotten her kicked out of multiple Knesset hearings in the past year. But when she rose in the Knesset on Jan. 21 to answer JewishContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA) — Outside the Moriah Synagogue in this central Israeli city, boys in ritual fringes and girls in long skirts handed out fliers for the dozens of candidates running in the Jan. 14 primary for the Jewish Home party, aContinue Reading
By Ron Kampeas, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) – Come early next year, there might be yet another world capital that opposes Israeli settlement expansion and sees Benjamin Netanyahu as principally responsible for Israel’s isolation: Jerusalem. Isaac Herzog, the Labor Party leader, is faring well in the polls sinceContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News TEL AVIV (JTA) — On Sunday, Israel’s Cabinet is set to advance a controversial bill that if passed by the Knesset would enshrine into law Israel’s status as a Jewish state. The nation-state law, as it is being called, has support from much ofContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Knesset committee vote on a law to officially make Israel the nation-state of all Jews was postponed. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Hatnua party, on Sunday postponed her ministerial committee for legislation’s vote on the bill known as the Nationality Law. “The explosiveContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Arab-Israeli Knesset member said the kidnappers of three Israeli teenagers are not terrorists.“They are people that cannot see any way to change their reality, and they are forced to use these means until Israeli society wises up a bit and sees and feels the suffering ofContinue Reading
Linda Gradstein/The Media Line Israel’s 120-seat parliament today chose long-time Likud member Reuven Rivlin as the country’s next president who will succeed the popular Shimon Peres, who retires next month at the age of 90. Rivlin, who served two terms as speaker of the Knesset, has been a member ofContinue Reading
By Carlyn J. Steiner, Special to the Jewish Sound Last July, close to 800 Seattle Jews convened for a “community conversation” on what was called “The Jewish Peoplehood Crisis.” The organizers defined the crisis as a loss of “identification with Jews throughout the world,” the loss of “commitment to JewsContinue Reading
