U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had high hopes of bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together, but fell into the same traps as other would-be saviors of the Middle East of the past.
Tag: israel
Even as diplomats look to push the peace process, a movement of ultraorthodox Jews is demanding the right to pray at the Temple Mount, home to the Dome of the Rock.
TEL AVIV — When Stanley Fischer left his senior post at the International Monetary Fund in 2001, he made sure to mention of one of his closest IMF friends and colleagues during his farewell speech. That friend is Alassane Ouattara, who served as Ivory Coast’s prime minister in the early 1990s before moving on to […]
TEL AVIV — Over the past few weeks, we have heard many members of Parliament calling on the government to block the sale of Israeli dairy company Tnuva to China’s Bright Food. Such a ban would be very bad news for Israel. We must first remember the basic principal that business decisions should be taken […]
TEHRAN – A senior general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards issued a blunt warning Tuesday to Israel, saying Iranian forces and weaponry “can destroy all points controlled by” Israel, with “any volume of firepower.” General Hassan Salami made the declaration during a conference on the role of the Islamic religion on global power relations, the official […]
A visit to Tzahala, a tony district on the edge of Tel Aviv, where a canine unit and dozens of cameras have been brought in to fight crime. But at what price?
A new, particularly scary version of an automobile ‘break-in’.
JERUSALEM — Three hundred kilometers by high-speed rail between the cities of Eilat and Ashdod, connecting the Red Sea coast to the Mediterranean: They call it the “Red-Med” Project. Financed by Beijing and launched from Jerusalem, China has revealed its strategy for “West Asia” — the term that the China Shipping Container Lines company uses […]
A failure of the American peace initiative in the Middle East could cause a severe political crisis that will undermine both the economy and the stability of the Palestinian Authority.
MUNICH — The Israeli General Consulate in Munich has finally found permanent premises that sources say is likely next door to the former Nazi Party headquarters. The building’s location is virtually back-to-back with the so-called Führerbau that the Nazis built as a representation venue for Adolf Hitler, sources tell Süddeutsche Zeitung. Directly next door, built […]
Since its inception, Israel has exempted ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service and offered them a host of subsidies. But as demographics change, many say the policy must end.
Though chances still remain low, Israel wants to be prepared as threats grow of a major global boycott of its goods, like what happened in South Africa in the 1980s.
TEL AVIV — Just last week at the Davos summit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly praising the hi-tech industry in Israel. Now it seems his compliments may have been a bit premature. A new report says that Palestinian hackers from Gaza have recently launched a cyber-attack on Israel that has successfully targeted government […]
TEL AVIV – New research from Ben-Gurion University found that 91% of those working in human resources in Israel are women. It is data that largely conforms to recruiting and personnel departments around the developed world. According to the figures released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK, 72% of […]
Researchers want to give new meaning to the idea of ‘plugging in’ students to maximize their performance.
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Single-Malt Whiskey From The Dead Sea?
Israeli businessmen are raising money and looking for a Tel Aviv location for what would be the Israel’s first whiskey distillery.
JERUSALEM — Aharon Shulov was a man of faith who knew his Scriptures by heart. Especially the passage in which Isaiah promises a new heaven: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy […]
The deadline of John Kerry’s diplomacy efforts are coming. What is going to happen if he returns to Washington humiliated? Calcalist founder Yoel Esteron’s pessimistic outlook for Mideast peace.
BLAST HITS EAST LEBANONAt least five people were killed and 42 wounded as a car bomb exploded this morning in Hermel, a Hezbollah bastion in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, The Daily Star reports. The blast, which appears to have been the work of a suicide bomber, occurred as the trial in absentia […]
TEL AVIV — Three months after my friend Tamy’s husband died from melonoma at age 45, she donated her long hair so that a young cancer patient could wear it in a new wig. I decided to do the same. The Zichron Menachem foundation, a cancer charity for children and their families, agreed to my […]
The central urban areas of Israel are a proven Silicon Valley success in the Middle East. But the country must find ways to bring the high-tech industry to the north and south.
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The Israeli Man Who Collected Everything
TEL AVIV — For 40 years Arnie Druck has been a collector. He has built one of Israel’s largest and most impressive caches of Israeli and Jewish art, local photography, wines, books, artifacts linked to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and El Al airline memorablia. His four-decade foray into collecting sprouted from his Bar Mitzvah […]
TEL AVIV — Every army needs its boots. In Israel, where the military has always played a central role in society, footwear for the troops has proudly been supplied locally since the country’s founding in 1948. But that may be about to change. Shimon Horowitz, head of the military division for Brill Company, which manufactures […]
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was smart to reject a pact that offered no long-term guarantees for Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. A Le Monde editorial.
TEL AVIV — It’s the joke of the evening and they tell it again and again, happy with themselves, a lukewarm glass of Coke in their hands: “Are you ready to hear a lie? Because if I tell you the truth, we’ll have to kill you.” They probably wouldn’t, but then again the participants of […]
A young American entrepreneur has created what appears to be a successful add-water-and-mix food he thinks could have many helpful applications around the globe. Others aren’t so sure.
Thursday, October 23, 2014 CANADA “NOT INTIMIDATED” Details of the suspected Ottawa gunman who killed Canadian soldier Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa yesterday are starting to emerge. The Globe And Mail describes 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau as “a man who had had a religious awakening and seemed to have become mentally unstable.” The Toronto Star portrays him […]
TEL AVIV — The Israeli middle class is tired of paying a full hour’s salary for a few bites of street food — and the market is reacting. Cofix, a leading coffee to-go chain, broke all the rules and came up with the symbolic price of 5 shekels ($1.40) for either a cup of coffee, […]
TEL AVIV — The Nobel Prize ceremony is usually an occasion for celebration in Israel, as there is often at least one Israeli citizen among the honorees. This year, two Israelis were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, but the country’s pride was bittersweet since both scientists live in the United States. The rise in […]
Taybeh was also the toast of a unique Oktoberfest celebration in Ramallah.
TEL AVIV — A record number of undergraduate students will get their degrees this year. But what awaits them isn’t pretty: job insecurity, bosses who are indifferent to what they studied, a shortage of jobs that match their education and talents, and big debts accumulated during their years at university. All of this suggests that […]
TEL AVIV — “One of my mentors and a very dear Jewish friend once shared with me the meaning of the Hebrew words Tzdakah (“alms’) and Tikun Olam (“healing the world”)…” So began Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing, speaking in Tel Aviv recently, just before his Hong-Kong foundation signed a $130 million grant to the Technion, […]
TEL AVIV — It has been a while since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pulled out some impromptu economic graph or catchy slogan. You can say he matured. Netanyahu of the third term is not the same man he was during his first or second, where he’d been drunk on victory from decimating the left […]
RAMALLAH — In this Palestinian city in the central West Bank, some 300 technology companies employ at least 4,500 people. Despite enormous potential, the industry is still nascent and suffers from a lack of development centers and productive ties with the outside world. Most of the companies in this Palestinian Silicon Valley are still small […]
HAIFA – His pack is ready: spare clothing, two clean uniforms, his combat boots and a charger for his smartphone. If he is called, Haim Halévy, a 32-year-old from Haifa, will only have a few hours to join his field regiment stationed on the Golan Heights. The fateful phone call may arrive today, tomorrow, in […]
GUARDIAN (UK), LE MONDE (France), AFP, ARUTZ SHEVA, JERUSALEM POST (Israel), RUSSIA TODAY, REUTERS Worldcrunch WASHINGTON — The Syrian crisis shifts in a new direction this week after President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will seek Congressional approval for any U.S. intervention. Following that news, Secretary of State John Kerry clarified that Obama had the […]
TEL AVIV — While we talk about a certain economic stability in Ramallah, the economy in Gaza is in free fall, which is due in no small measure to the massive closing of the tunnels used to smuggle in products across the border from Egypt. The Palestinian economy, at least in the West Bank, is […]
Israeli authorities granted some one million visas to vacationers from the West Bank to cross the border during the recent Ramadan holiday. Some had never set foot in Israel before.