Israel News

Jerusalem — Passing through Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station a few months ago, Rachel Jaskow decided to stop at the station’s synagogue and pray Mincha.

Jerusalem — The attack this week along the Israel-Egypt border poses dilemmas both for Israel and for the new Egyptian president.

Should Israel accede to pressure to modify its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and allow more Egyptian troops into the Sinai to quell the unrest there?

For Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, will his crackdown on militancy in the Sinai be seen domestically as his offering a helping hand to Israel, a country much of his constituency still views as an implacable foe?

Tel Aviv – Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign caravan has long packed up and left Jerusalem, but his two-day stopover here on a much-touted foreign tour by the presumed Republican nominee thrust Israel into the limelight of a presidential campaign even more than usual.

Romney’s visit followed in the footsteps of former presidential hopefuls and other aspiring American politicians have made Israel a regular destination to burnish their foreign policy chops and appeal to Jewish voters.  

Despite the withdrawal Tuesday of the Kadima Party from Israel’s coalition government following its rejection of a compromise universal draft bill, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to seek Knesset approval of the legislation.

Jerusalem — The same sense of national responsibility and anger that sent Israelis to tent cities last summer to protest social inequality, and to Beit Shemesh last winter to renounce religious coercion has spurred a grass-roots campaign for universal military service.

Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv Saturday night to demand an end to Israel Defense Forces exemptions.

Tel Aviv — In his first election after immigrating to Israel from Los Angeles, Avi Cohen, 26, voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But now, amid a swirling national debate over integrating the fervently Orthodox into the army, Cohen says he’s reconsidering.

That’s because Netanyahu on Monday dissolved the Plesner Committee, a panel formed with the centrist Kadima party to formulate new legislation aimed at ending a universal draft exemption for fervently Orthodox yeshiva students.

Israeli President Shimon Peres extended Israel’s congratulations to Mohamed Morsi upon his election as president of Egypt this week, but questions remain about his power and the viability of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
“We honor the peace between us, because peace is the real victory for both of us,” Peres said during an event Monday with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Peace is really the victory of all children in the world.”

A cross-border attack by terrorists in the Sinai that killed one Israeli contract worker Monday and led to Israeli and Hamas reprisal attacks is the latest fallout from the political earthquake in neighboring Egypt.

Three terrorists were reportedly responsible for the attack on a group of Israelis working on constructing a fence along the Israeli-Sinai border to keep out terrorists and African asylum seekers. Authorities said the attack was similar to one last August from the Sinai that killed eight Israelis near the southern Israeli resort of Eilat.

Rabbi Chaim Druckman, this year’s winner of the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the country’s highest honor, raised some eyebrows this week with his dismissal of the Israeli government’s decision last week to, for the first time, recognize Conservative and Reform rabbis.

The move, by Israel’s attorney general, not only recognizes them as rabbis but also pays 16 of them who work in rural settings.

Jerusalem — If anyone were rooting for Miri Gold, one of the 16 non-Orthodox rabbis the Israeli government recognized last week as a community rabbi of an outlying area, it was Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman.

Like Rabbi Gold, who was the plaintiff in the Israel Religious Action Center’s (IRAC’s) High Court petition demanding salaries for rabbis in outlying communities, Rabbi Kelman is petitioning the court for recognition of non-Orthodox neighborhood rabbis in towns and cities.