How Ice Hockey is bringing Israelis and Canadians together

(Darren Makowichuk/Calgary Sun/QMI Agency)

By Laura Booth - March 10, 2015

Originally appeared here in Calgary Sun

For hockey-loving children in Israel, the chance to head to the rink, lace up a pair of skates, and throw together a game of shinny is rare.

The only rink and hockey school in the entire country exists in its northern most city, Metulla, and is called the Canada Israel Hockey School (CIHS).

So when a group of 20 hockey players from Israel arrived in Calgary Tuesday, after a week in Vancouver, they were both thrilled and shocked at how obsessed this country is with the sport.

“Whenever they get to go into a new arena, it’s a whole new experience ... they just get so excited by every experience,” said CIHS volunteer and North American liaison Mitch Miller.

“To walk in and see a pro—shop here, to see all the hockey stuff, to see a vending machine that sells laces — they go crazy.”

The CIHS team of girls, boys, Arabs and Jews will spend five days in Calgary, taking in as much hockey as possible. Read More

UCLA student is latest victim of anti-Semitism on campus

By Barry Kosmin - March 10, 2015

Originally appeared here on CNN.com

The story of the Jews in the United States is a testament to "American exceptionalism" and stands in contrast to a long history of discrimination and pariah status in Europe and Muslim lands. In fact, the economic prosperity and social standing of America's Jews shows that generally they have fared better than many other minorities.

This positive record is a fulfillment of the assurance given to the Newport, Rhode Island, Hebrew Congregation in 1790 by President George Washington: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Since then, American Jews have been appointed and elected to public offices as governors, senators, mayors, Cabinet officers and in the military, and today, most American adults are unaware of and don't seem to care who's Jewish.

Thus it comes as a shock when at the University of California Los Angeles, a Jewish woman student applicant for the Student Council's Judicial Board is initially rejected after being asked: "Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?" According to The New York Times, the discussion that followed had "seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes -- particularly about divided loyalties -- that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries." Read More

Christians across the UK begin signing Israel ‘appreciation’ declaration

Originally appeared here in Jewish News (UK) - March 9, 2015

Christians across the UK have been signing a declaration expressing appreciation of Israel, in the wake of growing anti-Semitism and extremism in the Middle East.

The declaration states: “We deeply appreciate that Israel is the only country in the Middle East which extends freedom of worship to all its citizens and where the Christian community is growing.

“We grieve and stand with families in Israel and the wider Middle East, who have lost loved ones and with all who are persecuted by the rise of violent extremism and intolerance in the region.”

It has been endorsed by organizations, Christian Friends of Israel and the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, as well as by individual churches and prayer groups.

It calls upon the spiritual leaders and elected representative to work to combat anti-Semitism and extremism across the world and to strengthen co-operation between the UK and Israel.

A meeting was held in the Carriageworks theatre in Leeds on 1 March, attended by over 200 people, including Pastor Kemi Ilori, who leads the Team group of 21 churches in Leeds. He said he was ‘proud’ to sign the Declaration and show public support for both the Jewish community at a time of surging anti-Semitism in the UK and extremism in the Middle East. Read More

Cavers find treasure from era of Alexander the Great in Israel

(Clara Amit/Israel Antiquities Authority)  

By Jethro Mullen and Oren Liebermann - March 9, 2015

Originally appeared here on CNN.com 

Hen Zakai loves exploring darkness. In his spare time, he lowers himself into the underground world of hidden caves to navigate the nooks and crevasses of a very different environment.

Zakai was recently spelunking with his father and a friend, all of whom are members of the Israeli Caving Club, when Zakai spotted a shiny silver object in one of the most well-hidden stalactite caves in northern Israel.

As Zakai moved in for a closer look, he found two ancient silver coins stashed inside a nook. The coins were meant to be hidden, perhaps to be retrieved at a later date. Instead, they lay in secret for more than 2,000 years in a small hoard that will give archaeologists a valuable insight into ancient Israel. 

"We saw the pictures of some of the items that were found in the cave," says Eitan Klein, deputy director of the Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit at Israel Antiquities Authority, "and we understood that we are talking about something very, very unique." Read More

Jewish-Arab running group leaves race out of Jerusalem marathon

(photo: Itay Akirav)

By Melanie Lidman - March 5, 2015

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel

More than 25,000 people are expected to pound the pavement on March 13 for the fifth (full) Jerusalem marathon, including 2,200 from 60 countries other than Israel and 6,000 people running to raise money for charity. If you’re one of the participants, or cheering along the sidelines, keep your eyes peeled for a dozen teenage girls in white shirts. They may not be talking to each other, because they don’t speak the same language, but they’ll certainly be rooting for one another

The girls are members of a new running initiative called “Runners Without Borders” that brings Arab, Jewish, and Armenian girls together. But unlike other coexistence initiatives spearheaded by international groups or well-established organizations with executive boards and fundraising committees, the powerhouse behind this running group is a high school student and runner named Shoshana Ben-David from Jerusalem.

“Last summer, because the whole situation was so tense, I really felt the increase in the racism and the violence,” said Ben-David, 18. “I felt that I had to do something, and I wanted to something for teenage girls because I saw that girls are doing a lot less sport than the boys are doing. So I said, why not kill two birds with one stone? Let’s combine this together with doing something about the terrible political situation.”

Runners Without Borders has two goals: to help young women improve their self-confidence and body image through sports, and to bring disparate communities together, Ben-David explained. Read More

What Happens When a Christian Wears a Cross in Israel?

By Ari Soffer - March 4, 2015

Originally appeared here in Arutz Sheva

What's it like being a Christian in Israel?

That's a question Father Gabriel Naddaf - a Greek Orthodox priest and founder of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum and Christian Empowerment Council in Israel - decided to explore.

Inspired by a recent video showing the abuse Jews faced in Muslim neighborhoods of Paris, Naddaf asked Jonathan Elkhoury - an Israeli Christian originally from Lebanon - to don a cross and walk through the streets of Haifa in northern Israel. Read More 

How a Catholic Filipino became an IDF soldier

(photo credit:IDF)

By IDF BLOG - March 1, 2015

Originally appeared here in the The Jerusalem Post

Like every Israeli at the age of eighteen, Corporal Aaron Refael drafted into the IDF. However, Aaron is no ordinary Israeli. Today, he serves in the IDF’s Nahal Infantry Brigade, but the process to get there was not simple.

Aaron comes from a Catholic family, originally from the Philippines, and his father works as a driver in the Japanese Embassy to Israel. He was born and raised in Herzliya and has always considered Israel his home. Aaron grew up learning about the importance of the IDF, and knew from a very young age that he wanted to take part in defending the country. “I saw how everyone serves in the military, and I also wanted to contribute,” said Corp. Refael. Read More

Israeli doctors try to save Christian baby who fled Islamic State

(photo credit: Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

By Lazar Berman - February 26, 2015

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel 

The summer of 2014 was a tense time for the residents of Qaraqosh in northwestern Iraq. The Aramaic-speaking Chaldean Christian community was on edge. To the west, too close for comfort, the jihadists of the Islamic State had taken large swaths of land. Christians, like other minorities, were suffering grievously when they fell into the hands of IS terrorists.

Rumors swirled in the town that IS would make a push for Qaraqosh, but as long as it remained only a rumor, people stayed put. Leaving their family homes for a dangerous and uncertain future as refugees was too much of a risk. The community was safe, at least temporarily.

That all changed very quickly one day in August. “At 12:00 that day, people started shouting, ‘Get out, Daesh is coming!’ a refugee from Qaraqosh named Lina told The Times of Israel during an interview in Jerusalem, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “Most of them left their cars and everything and just ran away. They left everything — their clothes, their gold, everything. Even their IDs.”

Not everyone managed to flee. Read More

Historic Breakthrough In Palestinian-Israeli Soccer Cooperation

Photo: Michal Fattal/Flash90

By Times of Israel Staff - February 5, 2015

Originally appeared here in the Times of Israel 

In a historic decision, the Palestine Football Association granted two soccer players international transfer certificates (ITCs), allowing them to leave the Palestinian league and play in Israel.

Until recently, the Palestinian association refused to cooperate with the Israel Football Association, hampering attempts by Palestinian players to transfer between the two leagues.

The Palestinian soccer group issued Mohammad Zuabi and Mohammad Fudi transfer certificates Monday, freeing them to “pursue sports activities and register with another national association affiliated to FIFA.” Read More

Postcard from Israel: Jerusalem's Nachlaot Neighborhood

Nachlaot, Jerusalem. Nachlaot ("Homesteads"), a cluster neighborhood of narrow, winding lanes near Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda Market, was first built in the 1870s. Today, its stone houses, hidden courtyards and small synagogues provide the backdrop for a youthful creative culture that has made Nachlaot a residential and tourism jewel.

Nachlaot ("Homesteads"), a cluster neighborhood of narrow, winding lanes near Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda Market, was first built in the 1870s. Today, its stone houses, hidden courtyards and small synagogues provide the backdrop for a youthful creative culture that has made Nachlaot a residential and tourism jewel.

Come along as ISRAEL21c shows you how the old and new, the funky and the traditional, all coexist colorfully in Nachlaot.

Video by Asi Aivas for ISRAEL21c

French Diaspora Could Push Israel Property Prices Even Higher

Photo: Bloomberg News

By Joshua Mitnick - February 3, 2015 

Originally appeared here on The Wall Street Journal 

TEL AVIV—Residential real-estate prices in Israel have been on a tear for the past seven years. An expected wave of French Jews fleeing an increasingly tense environment in France could push prices even higher.

Advertisements written in French fill the display windows of a strip of real-estate brokerages in this city just steps from the Mediterranean Sea. The influx of the Jewish diaspora from France, the U.S. and other places across the globe helped contribute to a near-doubling of Israel’s home prices since the end of 2007.

According to The Jewish Agency for Israel, an organization that works on immigration issues, 10,000 French Jews will move to Israel this year compared with 7,000 last year.

“January and February are not usually very busy periods because of the winter,” said Eric Toubiana, a co-owner of the Comacom Group brokerage on the city’s busy Ben Yehuda Street. “But ever since the period of Charlie, we’ve had a huge amount of work,” he said, referring to the attack in Paris on the staffers of the French satirical magazineCharlie Hebdo that left 12 dead. Mr. Toubiana said his business partner has flown to France to deal with all the extra business. Read More

AFTER ISRAEL BOYCOTT VOTE, SWASTIKAS HIT JEWISH FRATERNITY AT UC DAVIS

StandWithUs via Facebook 

By Joel B. Pollak - February 1, 2015

Originally appeared here on Breitbart.com 

A Jewish fraternity at the University of California Davis was spray-painted with two swastikas Saturday, several days after the student council voted to endorse divestment from Israel.

The fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, had opposed the vote, which is part of a coordinated campaign by pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activists across the University of California system.

CBS Sacramento reported that AEPi members believe their fraternity was attacked in retaliation for its support for Israel. The fraternity was attacked on the Jewish sabbath, shortly after the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Read More

‘By the rivers of Babylon’ exhibit breathes life into Judean exile

Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama courtesy of The Bible Lands Museum

By Ilan Ben Zion - February 1, 2015

Originally appeared here in The Times of Israel

We know they sat on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, and that they wept. But a new exhibit at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum puts faces and names to the Judean exiles in ancient Babylonia 2,500 years ago

“By the Rivers of Babylon” showcases a collection of about 100 rare clay tablets from 6th century Mesopotamia that detail the lives of exiled Judeans living in the heartland of the Babylonian Empire. Through these mundane Akkadian legal documents written in cuneiform, scholars have breathed life back into generations of Judeans who lived in Babylon but whose names and traditions speak of a longing for Zion.

The Al-Yahudu tablets are part of a private collection that has never before gone on public display. Their provenance is unknown; they likely turned up somewhere in southern Iraq, but no one knows when. After decades on the antiquities market they ended up in the hands of a private collector, David Sofer, who offered to loan them to the Bible Lands Museum. After two years of labor, the exhibit is opening to the public on Sunday.

“It puts a face on the real people who went through these fateful events,” Dr. Filip Vukosavović, curator of the exhibit, told The Times of Israel. The tablets preserve a wealth of Judean names — including the familiar Natanyahu — of the exilic community, and even include a handful of Aramaic inscriptions. Read More

Tel Aviv Engineering Students Bring Clean Water Solution To Tanzania

By NoCamels Team - January 21, 2015

Originally appeared here in NoCamels

Like many good stories, this one began with food. A group of students at TAU’s Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering organized a campus beer and bratwurst sale to kickstart fundraising for a volunteering project in Africa. Many sausages later, and with a lead donation from Arison Group’s Shikun & Binui construction company, a TAU team arrived in Tanzania to build a system that would provide hundreds of students at a local high school with clean drinking water.

Leading the TAU delegation was electrical engineering student Eran Roll, the director of TAU’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), which initiated and supervised the project. EWB is an international organization dedicated to bringing engineering solutions to disadvantaged communities. 

Roll explained that the project’s genesis went back to 2007, when engineering alumnus Itai Perry saw the hardship caused by contaminated water during a TAU-affiliated volunteer trip to the northern Tanzanian village of Minjingu. The residents’ drinking water was saturated with exceptionally high levels of fluoride, causing skeletal deformities and severe dental problems among the local children. Read More

What the Miss Universe Selfie Revealed

@doronmatalon, Instagram

By Eliyahu Federman - January 19, 2015

Originally appeared here in USA Today

Even the beauty of the Miss Universe pageant can't overcome the irrational and one-sided hatred of Israel. This weekend in South Florida, the Miss Israel contestant, Doron Matalon, Instagrammed a friendly selfie she snapped with Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, and several other contestants.

This caused an uproar in Lebanon with many calling to strip Greige's beauty queen title. The Lebanese government has even launched an official investigation. And the threat is sadly very real. In 1993, Miss Lebanon, Ghada al-Turk, was stripped of her title for taking a photo smiling with her Israeli contender.

Contrast that with Miss Israel proudly displaying the picture, receiving an outpouring of support from Israelis who praised the unity a photo like that could represent, and her express wish that any "hostility" be temporarily forgotten so girls from around the world can meet in peace and unity. Read More

What Dr. King Really Had to Say About Israel

By Dumisani Washington - January 19, 2015

Originally appeared here in Times of Israel

I was in a social media debate about Israel and Zionism the other day, when my opponent asked me a curious question. “Why point to MLK’s stance on the issue of Israel as a debate point?

I explained to my opponent that, particularly in the discussion of human rights and answering false accusations against the Jewish State, quoting Dr. King in context is an advisable starting point. This is particularly true when anti-Zionists attempt to twist Dr. King’s words to denounce Israel. Very often, Israel’s enemies refuse to accept the fact that the unparalleled civil rights champion of the 20th century was a staunch, vocal supporter of Israel and loyal friend to the Jewish people.

One person who knows Dr. King’s position on Israel full well is avowed anti-Zionist, and former Black Panther Party member, Angela Davis. There is no disputing Ms. Davis’ long and storied anti-racism career. (Few people in the world have had protest songs written in their honor by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles). Sadly, there is also no denying Ms. Davis’ anti-Zionist rhetoric and anti-Israel libel; the type of language Dr. King strongly denounced. So, having Angela Davis provide the keynote address at an event that purports to honor Martin Luther King is a bitter irony, and completely misguided. Such is the case with events at University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill on Monday, January 19, and University of California Santa Cruz on Wednesday, January 28. The title of these events is, “Racism, Militarism, Poverty: From Ferguson to Palestine”. Read More
 

Israel's Christian Awakening

Wikimedia Commons

By ADI SCHWARTZ
Dec. 27, 2013 7:34 p.m. ET

Originally appeared here in the Wall Street Journal

As Christmas neared, an 85-foot-high tree presided over the little square in front of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Kindergarten children with Santa Claus hats entered the church and listened to their teacher explain in Arabic the Greek inscriptions on the walls, while a group of Russian pilgrims knelt on their knees and whispered in prayer. In Nazareth's old city, merchants sold the usual array of Christmas wares.

This year, however, the familiar rhythms of Christmas season in the Holy Land have been disturbed by a new development: the rise of an independent voice for Israel's Christian community, which is increasingly trying to assert its separate identity. For decades, Arab Christians were considered part of Israel's sizable Palestinian minority, which comprises both Muslims and Christians and makes up about a fifth of the country's citizens, according to the Israeli government.

But now, an informal grass-roots movement, prompted in part by the persecution of Christians elsewhere in the region since the Arab Spring, wants to cooperate more closely with Israeli Jewish society—which could mean a historic change in attitude toward the Jewish state. "Israel is my country, and I want to defend it," says Henry Zaher, an 18-year-old Christian from the village of Reineh who was visiting Nazareth. "The Jewish state is good for us." Read More

Hebrew University of Jerusalem Elects First-Ever Indian Student Leader

Milan.sk Wikimedia Commons

BY DEBRA KAMIN 

January 5, 2015, 9:12 pm

Originally appeared here in Times of Israel

An Indian doctoral research scholar from the Gujarat State in Western India made Hebrew University history last month when he became the first-ever Indian to represent the Rothberg International School to the school’s Student Union.

Zulfigar Sheth, an economics student who is attending Hebrew University as a Visiting Research Fellow, is also a Muslim. A student at Aligarh Muslim University in India, he came to Israel through an Indian government-run exchange program, sponsored by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Human Resources and Development.

“Despite being diverse, one thing we have in common is that at the end of the day, all we need is peace and prosperity,” Sheth says of the students at the Hebrew University. “I will follow one simple thing: accepting differences and searching for common ground.” Read More

Israeli Civil Rights Group Defends Christian Missionary Imprisoned in North Korea

By Carol Morello December 23, 2014

Originally appeared here in Times of Israel

North Korea can be ordered to pay damages to the family of a Christian missionary who was abducted almost 15 years ago, then presumably tortured and killed, a federal appeals court has determined.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia this week ordered the case of the Rev. Kim Dong-shik back to a trial court so his family can seek damages in the suspected death of the missionary, who was kidnapped in China in 2000. He was never seen again after being taken to North Korea. The trial court ruled against the family because they had no proof of his fate, though experts testified that he almost certainly was tortured to death.

“The Kims’ evidence that the regime abducted the Reverend, that it invariably tortures and kills prisoners like him, and that it uses terror and intimidation to prevent witnesses from testifying allows us to reach the logical conclusion that the regime tortured and killed the Reverend,” the three-judge panel said in a decision written by Appeals Court Judge David S. Tatel.

The Kim case revolves around a section of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that usually protects foreign governments from being sued in U.S. courts. One exception is for countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism. Read More

A mission to locate ailing refugees in Iraqi camps reveals the unlikely network that brings them to the Jewish state

Photo:  Flickr- Foreign and Commonwealth Office

BY LAZAR BERMAN January 28, 2014, 2:50 pm 

Originally appeared here in Times of Israel

KURDISTAN REGION, Iraq — A grandmother steps out warily into the muddy street. The sun setting behind the jagged mountains to the west casts a pink hue over the tents of the refugee camp. She wraps her blue scarf around her face, sizing up the unannounced visitors who are asking to see her granddaughter.

The seven-month-old child lies motionless in her arms, eyes barely open, breath slow and shallow.

The baby is fighting ventricular septal defect, a hole in the wall that divides the left and right ventricles of the heart. She weighs only three kilograms, and doctors here in Iraq won’t operate on her until she gets much bigger. But the same hole in her heart keeps her from growing.

It’s the first week of January, and a winter in the cold, damp refugee camp means that the only question about her future is whether she succumbs to a chest infection or her defective heart first. Her family still has a tank of kerosene to heat the tent, but it will soon run out, with little chance of being replaced.

Here in the refugee camp, fuel and hope are in equally short supply. But the visitors who have come all the way to the mountains of Iraq’s Kurdistan region to find this baby girl just might be able to offer the latter.

Maybe.

The visitors are from the Jerusalem-based Christian NGO Shevet Achim, founded by Jonathan Miles almost 20 years ago. (The Times of Israel wrote about Shevet Achim last June, when this reporter accompanied 4-year-old Nadrah, a Syrian refugee in Jordan, to Israel for a life-saving operation.) It brings sick children from the Muslim world into Israel for heart surgery; the group’s mission today is to locate Syrian Kurdish refugee children who need urgent medical attention in the camps of northern Iraq in order to arrange access for them to Israel’s pediatric heart surgeons.  Read More