israel

RD’s weekly review, nearly as hoary as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

On August 31, a few days before the opening of the current American-led Middle East peace talks in Washington, four Israelis were killed by Hamas operatives in the West Bank. Among them was a pregnant woman. This did not bode well for the future of the talks, about which there was already a great…

New Yorkers may be grappling with conflicting ideas about how best to honor the sacred real estate around Ground Zero, but they got nothing on Jerusalem, where a California-inspired Museum of Tolerance is being constructed on what is said to be the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported last month in The Guardian that he had found evidence that Israel planned to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa in 1975, prompting the Israeli government to issue an official denial. Polakow-Suransky’s new book, “The Unspoken Alliance” is a history of Israel’s military alliance with apartheid South Africa.

When I was a graduate student, a professor once told me “there are no coincidences.” Last week I believed him. In the wake of the Gaza Flotilla disaster (it was a disaster any way you look at it, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine), Israel was engaged in a fight it has not known for some time:…

The Daily Alert newsletter sent by the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations is quite predictable: the news sources it quotes are either the official statements of Israeli officials or media articles supportive of…

Also links “anti-Israel” Obama administration to biblical prophecies of future harm to Gulf Coast.

A roundup of the latest from the world of religion.

An ancient burial site was unearthed while building a badly needed emergency room. Contradicting the opinion of scientists, a group of Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis declared the bones Jewish, setting off a battle that has reached the highest seat of power and caused observers to question the role of religion in government decisions.

A bold new forum was recently organized to confront a persistent problem in Jewish-Christian relations in Jerusalem. But why are Ultra-Orthodox Jewish teens spitting on Christians in the first place?