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The powerful car bomb that exploded next to a crowded rush-hour bus in northern Israel Wednesday killing at least 16 underscored for many Israelis the need for a security fence and for the removal of Palestinian President Yasir Arafat before there can be an end to 20 months of violence.

Birthright israel is receiving high marks for its success in bringing thousands of Jewish young adults to Israel on free 10-day trips. But is it receiving sufficient funding?
It seems that one of birthright's three primary partners, the United Jewish Communities, is having fund-raising problems that could have an adverse effect on the 2-year-old program, sources tell The Jewish Week.

Education is in the cards at the Menorah Day School in Smithtown, L.I.: bingo cards, that is.
The school was forced to relocate its 50 students last week after the Suffolk County Department of Health Services said the youngsters, in kindergarten through sixth grade, could not be in a building in which smoking was permitted. Four nights a week the school runs bingo games that allow smoking.
"Bingo supports three-quarters of our budget," said Gittel Bausk, the school board's chair. "We had the most successful bingo in the county."

Amid growing calls for a renewed major military offensive to complete the destruction of the terrorist infrastructure in the territories, Israelis braced for more attacks from Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen who have killed at least 31 Israelis since Operation Defensive Shield ended in early May.
Israeli officials insist their six-week assault in the West Bank that began March 29 was having success before it was aborted under pressure from the United States. But there appeared no consensus on whether to resume the assault.

The battle over lawyers' fees in the $1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement with Holocaust survivors and their heirs has taken yet another turn: a Florida lawyer is petitioning the court for $3.6 million, a figure a fellow lawyer in the case calls "shocking."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, widely regarded as a successful military strategist, displayed his political acumen this week when he turned a stunning defeat of his emergency economic package by the Knesset into a victory not only for the package but also for his political career.
"Sharon became a real hero," said Mordechai Kedar, a professor at Bar-Ilan University. "And he is now very high in the polls."

Writing about a shul is as impossible as writing about a marriage. No outsider can ever know what’s really going on, and those on the inside know less than they think.

The White House and the majority of Jews are certainly optimistic over Ehud Barak’s election. The Washington Post editorial was sure the election produced “from an American vantage point, the right winner.” However, the American vantage point isn’t the only one.
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, told ABC’s Nightline: “I don’t think we can have an easy ride with Mr. Barak. ... I think we’re going to face a lot of difficult times.”

It has been almost a year since a suicide bomber stood in line outside the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv and blew himself up along with 21 Israelis, almost all teenage girls. Leanora Bachar, a social worker who rushed to care for the families of victims that night, still gets emotional when she thinks about it.
"I actually heard the blast," Bachar said. "I live fairly close and my house shook, so I knew it was a bomb."

Jordan’s King Hussein was similar to Alabama’s George Wallace, a man whose brutal leadership gave way to penance and reconciliation. But when Wallace died, the media trotted out the horrific film clips revealing the indignities he wrought in the early 1960s. When the king died, however, there was little, if any, accounting the king’s equally horrific history in those very same years.