Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam vitae pulvinar nulla, sed rhoncus nisi. Praesent lectus nunc, varius nec eros eget, volutpat eleifend mauris. Integer accumsan lacus eget sagittis hendrerit. Quisque commodo mi ligula, et finibus quam euismod sed.
By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman - July 13, 2022
Shoes. Wire bins filled with shoes. From floor to ceiling. Dusty and old, infused with the stench of suffering.
Shoes. Cardboard boxes lined with flip flops and plastic summer sandals. Pink and yellow and blue – infused with a sense of hope and a new beginning.
“People, no matter where they come from or what they look like, deserve the same things: dignity, peace and a home,” said Candace Payne.
Read More: Jerusalem Post
(Photo: Mandel NGAN / AFP)
By Lazar German - July 14, 2022
US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a joint strategic declaration on Thursday in Jerusalem, in which the US vowed to use “all elements in its national power” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“The United States stresses that integral to this pledge is the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome,” reads the text of the statement, officially known as the Jerusalem US-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration.
“The United States further affirms the commitment to work together with other partners to confront Iran’s aggression and destabilizing activities, whether advanced directly or through proxies and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” the communique stated.
Read More: Times of Israel
By Lazar Berman - July 13, 2022
As covert ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel moved into the spotlight ahead of US President Joe Biden’s visit to the two Middle Eastern countries this week, a group of some 50 prominent Jewish business leaders visited the kingdom, led by an Israeli entrepreneur.
Avi Jorisch, the driving force behind trip, told The Times of Israel this week that the May visit convinced him that Israeli-Saudi normalization was “a question of when, not if.”
“It felt like we were engineering history,” Jorisch reflected. “This was done very intentionally and very mindfully. We felt like we were ambassadors for the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and we came to play a role in engineering history.”
Read More: Times of Israel
By Emanuel Fabian - July 12, 2022
Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday approved a new shipment of defensive aid to Ukraine’s emergency services as Russia’s invasion presses on.
The latest aid package will include 1,500 helmets, 1,500 protective vests, hundreds of mine protection suits, 1,000 gas masks and dozens of hazmat filtration systems, according to Gantz’s office.
The protective equipment will be transferred to the country in the coming weeks, the Defense Ministry said.
Jerusalem has so far avoided providing direct military aid to Kyiv — including offensive arms or advanced defensive technology — since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, in an attempt to avoid sparking a crisis with Moscow.
Read More: Times of Israel
By TOI Staff - July 11, 2022
Jerusalem’s Chords Bridge was lit up to show the Japanese flag alongside the Israeli flag on Sunday evening as a sign of solidarity with the Japanese people following last week’s assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
“The city of Jerusalem sends its condolences to the Japanese people and mourns the death of a friend of Israel, a great leader of his people and the entire world,” Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a statement.
Abe was shot from behind minutes after he started a speech Friday in Nara in western Japan. He was airlifted to a hospital for emergency treatment but was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was pronounced dead later at the hospital.
The 67-year-old Abe was Japan’s longest-serving leader before stepping down for health reasons two years ago. He served in 2006-2007 and again from 2012 to 2020.
Israeli leaders were quick to express their shock and condolences on Friday at the assassination of the former Japanese prime minister.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Mahmud Hams / AFP)
By AFP and TOI STAFF - June 26, 2022
While workers labored on a large construction site in the Gaza Strip, a security guard noticed a strange piece of stone sticking out of the earth.
“I thought it was a tunnel,” said Ahmad, the young guard, referring to secret passages dug by the Hamas terror group to help it battle Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, ruled by Hamas and repeatedly ravaged by war, people are more familiar with burying the dead than digging up their heritage.
But what Ahmad found in January was part of a Roman necropolis dating from about 2,000 years ago — representative of the impoverished Palestinian territory’s rich, if underdeveloped, archaeological treasures.
After the last war between Israel and Hamas — which began when Palestinian terror groups fired missiles into Israel in May 2021 — left a trail of damage in Gaza, Egypt began a reconstruction initiative worth $500 million.
As part of that project in Jabaliya, in the north of the coastal enclave, bulldozers were digging up the sandy soil in order to build new concrete buildings when Ahmad made his discovery.
“I notified the Egyptian foremen, who immediately contacted local authorities and asked the workers to stop,” said Ahmad, a Palestinian who preferred not to give his full name.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Yossi Zeliger/ via JTA)
By Cnaan Lipshiz - July 8, 2022
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (JTA) — When they flew out of this country for Israel three decades ago, Askabo Meshiha’s family left something valuable behind.
Unlike many other Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted to Israel in 1991, they didn’t say goodbye to any relatives. They also left behind a centuries-old Book of Psalms written in Ge’ez, a Semitic language used by Jewish clergy in Ethiopia.
Secretly and on short notice, the family had to leave their rural homes for the capital Addis Ababa with as little baggage as possible, and so they entrusted non-Jewish neighbors with keeping the book safe until they could retrieve it. From Israel, they tracked the book’s whereabouts for more than 30 years, never losing hope of getting it back — even after their native country fell into civil war and the book wound up in the hands of a Christian priest who demanded a steep ransom to release it.
heir perseverance paid off.
In March, an unusual set of circumstances finally allowed the family to be reunited with the document, a rare but tangible relic from the rich traditions of one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities. The family now hopes to restore the book and use it to strengthen their community’s fading identity.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Institute for Biblical Studies and Ancient History)
By Michael Horovitz - July 7, 2022
A professor at the University of Haifa claimed on Wednesday that he had deciphered a 3,500-year-old stone tablet discovered in Jerusalem more than a decade ago, contending that the artifact’s inscription was a curse against the city’s governor at the time.
If the finding is confirmed, it is among the earliest inscriptions discovered to date in Jerusalem.
The stone was used in a voodoo ceremony, according to Prof. Gershon Galil, head of the Institute for Biblical Studies and Ancient History at the university, that was likely carried out by priests or other important figures in the city who were feuding with the city’s highest-level official, a statement released by the institute stated.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images)
By Bloomberg News - July 5, 2022
Russia has ordered the agency in charge of organizing the emigration of Jews to Israel to halt activities immediately, the Israeli government said on Tuesday, though the group said it’s continuing to operate.
A Kremlin decision to shutter the activities of the Jewish Agency, which has operated in Russia and the Soviet Union since the late Communist era, would mark a dramatic worsening of ties between the two countries and could complicate Jews’ efforts to leave Russia. More than a million from the former Soviet Union have moved to Israel in the past two decades.
The agency, which is private but closely affiliated with the Israeli government, initially said it’s “continuing to operate as planned” in Russia and has received “no such demand” from Russian authorities. It later said it was reviewing a recent letter from Russian officials warning of “possible legal consequences” from “problems” identified during inspections. The Russian justice ministry says the agency is collecting, saving and transferring information on Russians, which is illegal and so it should shut down, Haaretz reported.
A letter sent by the Israeli minister of immigration and absorption to interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that the agency had informed him of a directive issued by the Russian Justice Ministry halting its operations.
“Such a decision has dramatic and precedent-setting consequences for the possibility of Jews and those entitled under the Law of Return to exercise the right to immigrate to the State of Israel,” said the letter to Lapid seen by Bloomberg. “Mr. Prime Minister, I would like you to intervene urgently with the Russian government officials to continue the activities of the Jewish Agency in Russia so that the continued immigration from Russia will not be harmed.”
Read More: Bloomberg
By Harriet Alexander - July 5, 2022
Audio recordings of the architect of the Holocaust boasting about his actions have been made public for the first time, 60 years after his execution for crimes against humanity.
Adolf Eichmann recorded 70 hours of interviews in Argentina, having fled to Buenos Aires after the war. The audio has remained under lock and key and is only being broadcast now thanks to the dogged efforts of a team of Israeli documentary makers.
They were given 15 hours of surviving recordings - the interviewer taped over much of the rest - in which Eichmann, who went to the gallows denying his crimes, admits to his role in what he infamously dubbed his 'Final Solution.'
'If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, 'Good, we destroyed an enemy,'' Eichmann says.
'Then we would have fulfilled our mission.'
Read More: Daily Mail
(Photo: Jim Haberman)
By TOI Staff - July 5, 2022
Archeologists working at a dig in the Galilean town of Huqoq recently uncovered the earliest known depictions of the biblical heroines Deborah and Yael, in mosaics that are thought to be nearly 1,600 years old.
The find, announced by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Prof. Jodi Magness on Tuesday, joins a growing collection of ancient mosaics discovered over the past decade at the site of a former synagogue in the Lower Galilee.
Magness, a professor of religious studies at the university, has overseen a team of students and archeologists excavating the area for more than 10 years. Excavations at the site restarted earlier this year after they were halted for close to three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Handout/Israeli Foreign Ministry/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
By Barak Ravid
Senior diplomats from the U.S., Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain met in Manama, Bahrain, on Monday to push forward with the establishment of the Negev Forum, a new framework for cooperation in the region.
Why it matters: Regional cooperation and integration between Israel and other countries in the Middle East will be a central theme during Biden’s visit to the region in two weeks.
Flashback: Monday's meeting in Bahrain was a follow-up to the unprecedented Negev Summit, which took place in Israel last March and brought together Secretary of State Tony Blinken and the foreign ministers of Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt.
State of play: The diplomats at the meeting agreed to form six working groups on clean energy; education and co-existence; food and water security; health; regional security; and tourism.
Read More: Axios
(Photo: Nicki Davidov, Israel Antiquities Authority)
By Amanda Borschel-Dan - June 27, 2022
One of the most beautiful treasures of Roman-era Holy Land — the seafaring-themed Lod mosaic — was restored to its home port on June 27.
Given a hero’s welcome in the form of a dedicated museum, the late 3rd century– early 4th century mosaic is now housed in the newly constructed Shelby White & Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Archaeological Center near Ben Gurion Airport.
The first section of the richly colorful mosaic was discovered accidentally during salvage excavations in 1996 under a central city square in Lod. Another section was uncovered under what appears to be a large Roman villa from the Byzantine era in 2015. Surprisingly, a third section was also discovered under the villa in 2018 during construction of the museum.
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Alon Messika/Peres Center for Peace and innovation)
By Diana Bletter - June 22, 2022
More than 300 Arab and Jewish Israeli children recently joined forces to create a sustainable garden at the Al-Hayat School in the Arab town of Kfar Qassem in central Israel. The Kfar Qassem kids were joined in the project by children from the nearby Jewish community of Kfar Saba.
The “Green Roofs” project, under the auspices of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, was funded by USAID.
For several months leading up to the planting of vegetables, spices, perennials and hydroponic plants, the seventh-graders learned about sustainability, environmental responsibility, climate crisis and consumer culture.
Read More: Israel21c
(Photo: Vladimir Simicek / AFP)
By TOI Staff - June 29, 2022
Israel’s under-19 men’s soccer team has reached the country’s first-ever European soccer final, defeating France in the semifinals of the UEFA under-19 championships by a score of 2-1 on Tuesday at the DAC Arena in Dunajska Streda, Slovakia.
The Israeli team will now face England in the final match on Friday evening in Trnava, Slovakia.
As the final whistle blew, the Israeli TV commentator at the game called the victory “one of the greatest achievements in the history of Israeli sport.”
Read More: Times of Israel
(Photo: Firas Talhami, Water Authority)
By Sue Surkes - June 28, 2022
Early next year, Israel is set to become the first country in the world to channel desalinated water into a natural lake — the Sea of Galilee.
One of the lowest-lying bodies of water on Earth, the Sea of Galilee is Israel’s largest freshwater lake and its emergency water store.
The national water company, Mekorot, plans to complete construction of a 13-kilometer (8-mile) underground pipe by the end of this year, to be followed by weeks of tests before it goes into operation around the end of the first quarter of 2023.
The pipe will connect the lake to infrastructure that in turn links into five desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast.
The water will enter the lake via the Zalmon stream, which drains into the Sea of Galilee near Kibbutz Ginosar on the northwestern shore.
Read More: Times of Israel
By Diana Bletter - June 26, 2022
For Myasar Khamaisy, 44, her involvement with Sindyanna of the Galilee began with an empty nest.
It was 2015, her three daughters had left home for college, and she had nothing to do. To get a job, she knew she had to improve her Hebrew language skills. She signed up for a Hebrew course offered by Sindyanna in her Galilee village of Kafr Kanna.
Then she took a course in basket weaving. She became so adept at weaving baskets from bamboo and palm fronds that she now teaches the course in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Khamaisy was one of the first women in the village to attend courses at Sindyanna. Over the years, hundreds of women, both Arab and Jews, have participated.
Since 1996, Sindyanna, a unique nonprofit organization, brings women from different backgrounds together, promotes Fair Trade, creates economic opportunities for Arab women, and assists local growers and producers.
Read More: Israel21c
By Jerusalem Post Staff - June 23, 2022
On Tuesday two Ukrainian refugees began the final leg of their journey to their new home in Israel, assisted by a number of organizations, including United Hatazalah. Among them was Khaled Hardan, a Muslim paramedic from Wadi Ara.
In a collaborative operation run by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), The Jewish Agency, and United Hatzalah, the two refugees — each suffering from severe medical conditions — were brought to Israel to receive medical care.
The JDC helped the refugees out of Ukraine and The Jewish Agency arranged for housing for them in Warsaw, Poland.
Read More: Jerusalem Post
(Photo: Khaled DESOUKI / AFP)
By TOI STAFF and AP - June 15, 2022
Israel, Egypt and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday in Cairo that will see Israel export its natural gas to the bloc for the first time.
The landmark agreement will increase liquified natural gas sales to EU countries, which are aiming to reduce dependence on supply from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
Last year, the EU imported roughly 40 percent of its gas from Russia. It has faced energy difficulties since imposing sweeping sanctions on Moscow.
The agreement will see Israel send gas via Egypt, which has facilities to liquify it for export via sea.
Read More: Times of Israel
By Emily Jones - June 9, 2022
JERUSALEM, Israel – The West African nation of Liberia is preparing to open a trade office in Jerusalem that will one day become a full-fledged embassy, Israel’s Ynet news reports.
An official delegation from Liberia met with Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll and President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
According to the report, the Liberians presented plans to open a diplomatic office in Jerusalem and will finalize a request for a location in the city within a few weeks. The delegation also asked to collaborate with Israel on water management, tourism, and agriculture, Ynet said.
Read More: CBN
