Tag Archives: Country: Israel

AP: An Israeli parliamentary committee on Monday denounced a ruling in Germany banning ritual circumcision, saying the decision infringes upon religious freedom . . .

Daniel Pipes at National Review: The Russian and Chinese actions point to these alliances shaping the foreign policies of outside powers, too. Whereas the European Union and the U.S. government are increasingly sympathetic to Islamism, in part as a way to tame their own Muslim populations, Moscow and Beijing have a history of open conflict with their Muslim populations and therefore adopt policies more hostile to Islamism in the Middle East.

AP: Palestinian spokesman Hanan Ashrawi said the vote was an affirmation of Palestinian sovereignty over the site which marks the place where Christians believe Jesus was born.

YNet.com: Warning from Putin: Visiting Russian president cautions Israel against hasty military action in Iran, says ‘look at what happened to the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan’ . . . “Iraq has a pro-Iranian regime after everything that has happened there. These things should be thought out ahead of time before doing something one will regret later,” he said. “One should not act prematurely.”

AP: Israel is expelling an additional 150 South Sudanese as part of its campaign to reduce the number of African migrants who have slipped illegally into the Jewish state

Times of Israel: ‘There is no God but Allah’ graffitied in the entrance hall of the building.

CNN: The Palestinian group Hamas says its military wing has agreed to an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Israel following a sharp increase in violence between the two sides.

Foreign Policy: Palestine, recognized last October as the 195th member state by the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recently launched its first initiative as a full-fledged government in the Paris-based agency, nominating the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and a traditional pilgrimage route to be listed as an endangered site on the World Heritage List.

Boston Globe (AP): Militants crossed from Egypt’s turbulent Sinai desert into southern Israel on Monday and opened fire, killing an Israeli worker, defense officials said. Two assailants were shot dead in a gunbattle with Israeli troops responding to the ambush.

Religion Clause Blog: Zenit reports that the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel met in the Vatican on June 12 to discuss an agreement that has been under negotiation for the last 13 years.

AP: African migrants who entered Israel illegally will be given cash incentives if they leave on their own soon, or they will face expulsion, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

AP: Drag queens, dancers and shirtless men are partying through central Tel Aviv as thousands pack the streets for the city’s annual gay pride parade.

Religion Clause Blog: Haaretz reports today that in Israel, the Public Council for Soldiers’ Commemoration will recommend to Defense Minister Ehud Barak that in Memorial Day ceremonies at military cemeteries the service use a remembrance reading that does not mention God.

Israel National News: An Iranian official called this week for an ‘Islamic Awakening’ movement to help Palestinian Authority Arabs “demolish the Zionist regime”, the IRNA news agency reported.

Fox News: “We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate coming true at the hands of Mohammed Morsi,” the cleric, Safwat Hegazy, blared from his podium. “The capital of the Caliphate and the United Arab States is Jerusalem, God willing,” he added . . .

AP: Militants who have vowed allegiance to al-Qaida attack security forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula close to Israel and enjoy unchallenged control of two border towns.

The Times of Israel: Knesset approves IDF request to call up a further 16 battalions if needed

AP on Findlaw: Israel’s Foreign Ministry has criticized a U.N. statement that places the country on a list of nations it says are moving to further restrict advocacy and rights groups.

Weekly Standard: Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews.

FoxNews: The Conservative Jewish seminary in Israel says it will allow gays and lesbians to become rabbis . . .

AP: After the death of their spiritual leader, more than 2,000 Egyptian Copts have poured into the Holy Land for the Easter holidays, defying a ban he imposed on visiting Jerusalem and other Israeli-controlled areas.

CBN: The so-called Arab Spring has given a big boost to radical Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood. For Christians, it’s been a much different story. Believers in Jesus are suffering major persecution throughout the Middle East and North Africa. But there is one place left in the region where they don’t have to fear: Israel.

Boston Globe (AP): The exiled son of the toppled shah of Iran called on Israel not to bomb his home country, but rather to help the opposition to the ruling system, in an interview aired Monday on Israeli television.

BBC: A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.

One News Now: “The ICC prosecutor decided that Palestine is not a state, and because it’s not a state, they can’t file charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court,” the attorney reports.

The Washington Free Bacon: Keeping up with its longstanding policy, the State Department refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital—despite a U.S. law stating otherwise. Obama faced criticism on the issue last year, when it was revealed that the White House had scrubbed all references to Jerusalem being part of the Jewish state from a collection of photos on its website.

AP: A Canadian man testified Friday that he paid $105,000 ((EURO)80,000) to an Israeli citizen in 2008 to organize a kidney transplant in a Kosovo clinic allegedly used by an international organ trafficking network for dozens of illegal operations.

Religion Clause Blog: . . . all the properties of synagogues, including space used for commercial purposes, are exempt from real estate tax. However, for other religions, only prayer halls are exempt.

Washington Times: Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest an Israeli Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls school.

IsraelNationalNews.com: The Palestinian Authority declared a Baptist Church in Bethlehem to be unlawful and said that it will no longer receive rights as a religious institution, Algemeiner reported.

AP: Israel’s parliamentary speaker called off a legislative delegation’s visit to the U.S. after Washington denied an ultranationalist lawmaker a visa, citing his links to a terror group.

Michael Oren at WSJ: Just as Jews were once expelled from Arab lands, Christians are now being forced from countries they have long inhabited.

Patrick Buchanan at Townhall: Today’s GOP front-runners — Newt, Mitt and Rick Santorum — all clearly believe that a warlike stance toward Iran will appeal to the evangelical base and to Jewish voters who went for Obama by 57 points in 2008. But they are rolling the dice with a war-weary America. Ron Paul, whose youth vote the party needs and who receives the largest number of contributions from the military, has split with them on Iran.

Jurist: Israel’s Ramat Gan Family Court ruled Sunday that a lesbian couple can both be recognized as mothers of a child they had together. The women received permission from the Health Ministry [official website] in 2006 to conceive the child by fertilizing one woman’s egg with the sperm of an anonymous donor and implanting the embryo in the other woman’s uterus.

Boston Globe (AP): Egyptian security officials say militants have again blown up a gas pipeline in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula that transports fuel to neighboring Israel.

Religion Clause Blog: In Israel, mail carriers in the city of Ramat Gan are refusing to deliver thousands of copies of the New Testament translated into Hebrew that have been mailed to city residents.

AP: “Loose talk of war” only plays into Iran’s hands, Obama said Sunday. On Monday, he will try to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to slow quickening pressure among many in his hawkish government to attack Iran’s disputed nuclear development sites.

Jerusalem Post: Statistics bureau: Some 4,900 single Jewish women in Israel gave birth in 2010, nearly double the number who gave birth in 2000.

AP: A top Roman Catholic official has taken the rare step of asking Israel’s president to help put an end to attacks on Christian holy sites.

Star Tribune (AP): Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top religious partner said Wednesday that Israel’s ruling coalition would not be shaken by the Supreme Court’s annulment of a contentious law allowing ultra-Orthodox Jewish men to avoid military service.

Washington Times: Harvard University is going to be hosting a conference entitled “One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution,” scheduled to take place March 3-4.

AP: Three Iranians detained after accidentally setting off explosives in Bangkok were planning to attack Israeli diplomats . . .

Religion Clause: According to Haaretz, a trial court in Israel on Sunday ruled that a U.S. request for extradition of a convicted hit-and-run driver should be denied unless it is assured that the driver will have access to kosher food while serving his sentence

News from The Associated Press: The Greenville-Spartanburg area, home to many of South Carolina’s evangelical voters, should be prime political ground for Rick Santorum, a longtime anti-abortion crusader who was embraced by a group of Christian leaders meeting last weekend in Texas.

News from The Associated Press: Thousands of mourners chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” on Friday during the funeral of a slain nuclear expert whom Iranian officials accuse the two nations of killing in a bomb blast this week as part of a secret operation to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

CSMonitor.com: Evidence of a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program is mounting. Yesterday’s assassination of an Iranian scientist tied to the program is just the most recent data point in the last year that indicates an accelerating effort to spread fear and slow the country’s nuclear work.

JPost: Clinton flatly denies US involvement “in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” calls Hormuz threats “provocative, dangerous.”

News from The Associated Press: An aide to Israel’s prime minister says he has frozen a bill that critics said would let governing nationalists stack the committee that selects supreme court judges.

News from The Associated Press: Israeli lawmakers have pushed ahead contentious legislation that critics say undermines the independence of the country’s Supreme Court and is part of a broader assault by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Israel’s democracy.

Jerusalem Post: Egyptian party’s deputy leader tells ‘al-Hayat’ that they won’t negotiate with Israel, will seek to cancel peace treaty.

The Washington Post: The spokesman of Egypt’s ultraconservative Islamist party told Israeli Army Radio in unprecedented remarks broadcast Wednesday that the group is not opposed to the country’s historic peace treaty with Israel.

: ‘There’s no need to be more liberal than Europe,’ PM says of move that would ban loudspeakers in calls to prayer.

News from The Associated Press: Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem’s Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world’s most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.

News from The Associated Press: Israel expects a “grave erosion” in its peace agreement with Egypt and is even preparing for the possibility of the historic deal collapsing altogether, a Cabinet minister said Wednesday, in the first official assessment of the unrest rocking Israel’s southern neighbor.

News from The Associated Press: Israeli police say they are investigating anti-Arab graffiti found on Muslim tombs in central Jerusalem.

Sky News: The country’s defence minister Ehud Barak and the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But a narrow majority of ministers currently oppose the move, which could trigger a wave of regional retaliation.

Religion Clause: Today’s Jerusalem Post reports that an Israeli Magistrate’s Court last week dismissed an indictment against a Greek Orthodox priest who punched a Jewish yeshiva student in the face after the student spat on the ground toward the priest as he passed.

News from The Associated Press: The schedules for Mass at the two Roman Catholic churches in Jaffa, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, reveal a change that has dramatically, if quietly, altered the face of Christianity in the Holy Land.

Ynetnews: A week after the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, top Saudi cleric Dr. Awad al-Qarni is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who kidnaps Israeli soldiers.

Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News: Sapir Prize winner Yoram Kaniuk sets legal precedent implying that all Israelis can self-determine their own religious identity.

News from The Associated Press: Arsonists torched a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel Monday, setting off protests by residents who clashed with police.

Ynetnews: British Foreign Minister William Hague said the European Union was withholding its position on a looming Palestinian bid for UN membership in a bid to force a return to peace talks with Israel.

Haaretz Daily Newspaper: Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Likud conference, says has tried to approach Palestinian President Abbas several times for negotiations, to no avail.

News from The Associated Press: The Palestinians will ask the Security Council next week to accept them as a full member of the United Nations, the Palestinian foreign minister said Thursday, a move that would defy Washington’s threat to veto the statehood bid.

Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News: The future independent Palestinian state will not include a Jewish minority, a top Palestinian official told USA Today on Wednesday, adding that it was in the best interest of both peoples to “be separated.”

Telegraph: Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned on Wednesday there would be “harsh and grave consequences” if the Palestinians persist with their plan to seek UN membership as a state.

Austin Bay at Townhall Conservative: The generals running Egypt’s military services need to decide what kind of future they want for their country, and they must decide quickly.

Ynetnews: Bob Turner, who repeatedly criticized Obama on Israel, defeats Democrat David Weprin in district that is 40% Jewish.

Reuters: Some later marched to the opposite bank of the Nile in Giza. Demonstrators used hammers, large iron bars and police barricades to tear down the wall, erected this month by Egyptian authorities after daily protests over the killing of five Egyptian border guards in Sinai. Protesters scaled the embassy building, removed the Israeli flag for the second time in less than a month and burned it.

Religion Clause: Seeking to counter reports accusing Israel of creating a mass exodus of Palestinian Christians from Palestinian areas, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs yesterday announced the release of a report (full text) on the size of the Christian population in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.

Religion Clause: The Tennessean, however, reports that one person at the meeting objected on First Amendment grounds to one of the eight “Whereas” clauses with which the resolution begins. That clause reads: “WHEREAS, the Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob promises in Genesis 12:3 to bless those that bless Israel . . .

Religion Clause: Haaretz today reports on the latest volley in the battle between religious and secular Jews in Israel over the text used at the official military ceremonies remembering fallen soldiers, including the state ceremony each year at the end of Memorial Day and the beginning of Israel Independence Day.

OneNewsNow.com: A California judge has ordered the dismissal of prosecutors in a case against Muslim college students who disrupted Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during a speech last year

» Reports Of Muslims Stoning Praying Jews At Western Wall After Friday Prayers (VIDEO) – Big Government: There are reports that Muslims stoned praying Jews at the Western Wall today. That would be the equivilant of Jews stoning Muslims at Mecca.
Here is video of the incident, although it is hard to make out what is happening.

U.S. Dept. of State: We call on the Israeli government to investigate this attack and bring the perpetrators to justice, and for calm from all parties.