More in ‘settlements’

Where does Israel’s announcement of 1,600 new Israeli homes in East Jerusalem leave the United States? Where does it leave American Jews? America put immense pressure on both sides to agree to “proximity talks”—which center around its envoy, George Mitchell—even though neither side’s preconditions had been met; and soon after the U.S. vice president arrives ...

• A look at Purim as the holiday that “includes all others” and distills the fundamental choice all Jews face: whether to wait for God to act or to take matters into your own hands. [BeliefNet]
• Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a favorite of centrists on the Israeli side, vows that Palestinians will not be ...

At an Americans for Peace Now event, Rep. Howard Berman (D-California), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had the following, unusually dovish thoughts (which we received via email from APN):
I made my first congressional trip to Israel in 1983. It was then that I began to discern the primary problem Israel would have to ...

• The last time global anti-Semitism attained its current level, World War II was still going on, a new report found. Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky and an Israeli minister presented the document. [JPost]
• In an audiotape endorsing the attempted Christmas Day bombing, Osama bin Laden linked it and future attacks on the United States ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, Staff Writer Marissa Brostoff explores the world of competitive ballroom-dancing—which has recently come to be dominated by Russian-Jewish émigrés. Ellen Umansky profiles Denise Steen, a novelist of the Jewish community who enjoys the marketing benefits of the family-owned billboard business. Liel Leibovitz finds in this week’s haftorah resonances with the current ...

• The iconic wrought-iron sign that greeted new arrivals at Auschwitz with the words “Arbeit macht Frei” has been stolen. Police suspect neo-Nazis; the theft could be tied to Germany’s recent decision to commit over $80 million to the Polish site’s restoration. [Times of London]
• A left-wing Israeli lawyer living in Maryland pleaded guilty in ...

Israeli officials say that government inspectors have begun casing the West Bank for building projects that defy a recently declared 10-month moratorium on certain kinds of settlement construction, according to Reuters. These inspectors are authorized to issue stop-work orders and to confiscate construction equipment. Paving their way, IDF officials spent the past three days distributing ...

Curious about China’s stance on West Bank settlement expansion? Now you know: The Asian power is against it. Just days after President Obama visited China, that country’s foreign minister has criticized the planned construction of 900 new apartments in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, a position in concert with the U.S. ...

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics released its annual report last week, in time for Rosh Hashanah. This week, in advance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the Bureau published a report comparing poverty statistics from 2003 with those from 2007. Separately, the International Peace Institute came out this week with new statistics ...

• According to a market-research poll, the number one Rosh Hashanah wish among Israeli Jews is a practical one: increased rainfall. (In a rule that would be instructive to beauty pageant organizers, respondents weren’t allowed to choose peace.) [Ynet]
• Jewish charities in Latin America were the hardest hit victims of the Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme allegedly ...