Baltimore, MD – Jan. 20, 2020 - It is with sadness that BaltimoreJewishLife.com informs the community of the petirah of Mr. Yossi Lax, Z’L, brother of Asher Lax. The levayah will take place today at 11:00am at Levinson’s. Kevurah will be in Eretz Yisrael. Yossi was the produce manager at Seven Mile Market for the past 30 years. Bila HaMaves LaNetzach...
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed two bills on Wednesday designed to address the rise of hate and anti-Semitism in the Garden State. The first increases security funding for nonprofits at high risk for terror attacks while the other reclassifies some hate crimes as domestic terrorism Murphy signed the bills just two days after the state’s attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal, released a report showing there were 944 bias incidents reported to law enforcement in 2019, representing at 65 percent increase from 2018. The incidents include the deadly Dec. 10 shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City, N.J. “Our state and our nation are facing a rising tide of anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred,” said Murphy in a press release. “We recently bore witness to how this...
MSNBC is running scared because Trump is winning.
President Trump is weighing whether to release his administration’s Mideast peace plan ahead of Israel’s March 2 general election, Hebrew-language broadcaster Channel 13 reported Sunday. Trump is expected to make a final decision in the coming days as he holds talks with his peace team and regional leaders in the Arab world. Making the decision public will take into consideration several factors, and will be made following senior Kushner’s expected meetings Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue & White alliance, later this week in Yerushalayim. Read more at i24NEWS.
The National Science Foundation announced earlier this month that the first national U.S. observatory to be named after a female astronomer will honor Jewish scientist Vera Rubin. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Cerro Pachón, Chile, will be renamed the NSF Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Science operations at the facility will begin in 2020. Rubin, who died in 2016 at the age of 88, is most well-known for discovering evidence of dark matter. The observatory renaming recognizes her role in better understanding dark matter and the study of dark energy will be one of the facility’s main research topics, along with taking an inventory of the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky and mapping the Milky Way. Paul Dabbar, Department of Energy undersecretary for scie...
Speaker of the Israeli Parliament Yuli Edelstein announced Sunday that a full debate in the Knesset plenum will be held next week on establishing a key committee that may strip away Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunity from prosecution. “As I said a week ago, the process of hearing the Prime Minister’s request for immunity has become polluted,” Edelstein said in a statement, referring to his decision last week to not obstruct the establishment of the Knesset plenum despite his personal objections to the process. The embattled prime minister is facing multiple indictments stemming from a wide-ranging corruption probe where he is accused of breaching the public trust, bribery and fraud. Read more at i24NEWS.
Nearly half of Israeli youths in 2019 failed to enter or complete their mandatory military service in the Israeli Defense Forces, Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Sunday. Citing newly published data collected by the IDF, the newspaper reported that 32.9% of men received military service exemptions due to mental health reasons, with another 15% dropping out from the army in line with historical averages. Coupled together, nearly half of men (47.9%) failed to complete their military service, raising concerns among the institution’s top brass. Read more at i24NEWS.
Israel’s military announced on Sunday the start of construction of an underground network of sensors along the Lebanese frontier to detect any cross-border tunnel building. The project is getting under way a year after the Israeli military said it had destroyed a series of infiltration tunnels dug by the Lebanese Hezbollah group. “All the drilling is being done on the Israeli side of the blue line,” military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, referring to the border demarcation with Lebanon, said in a conference call with journalists. He said the planned Israeli network “was not a wall” but seismic and acoustic sensors buried in the ground. Israel informed UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon about the work “to make sure everybody knows what...
A secret document seized during a raid by Israeli intelligence on a compound in Tehran in 2018 proves Iran was building a nuclear weapon back in 2002, according to an exclusive report by the British newspaper MailOnline. In the newly revealed document, which is addressed to Tehran’s top nuclear official, Moshen Fakhrizadeh, Iranian scientists outline their plans for a warhead to be fitted on a missile. Fakhrizadeh scribbled a handwritten note on the document, requesting that it be archived. The document forms a key part of a report to be released soon by the Friends of Israel Initiative (FOII), a group of foreign policy experts and other former senior officials, the British paper reported. After being “briefed extensively by Israeli security officials” on the contents ...
These are tumultuous days for Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s right-wing Lega (League) Party. Recent polls have projected that were elections to be held in Italy today, he would be elected prime minister, but his political opponents are trying to strip him of his immunity so they can bring charges against him for alleged misconduct while he was interior minister. Since arriving on the political scene six years ago, Salvini has transformed Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania, better known as Lega, from a fringe movement into Italy’s largest right-wing party. Dubbed by Italian media as “the face of anti-immigration politics,” Salvini entered the government in 2018, only to resign abruptly in the summer of 2019 after clashing with his coalition partner, ...
Sen. Ted Cruz said Sunday that the Senate’s impeachment trial could last as long as eight weeks if the chamber elects to hear from witnesses. “I think it’s certainly possible that this trial could last one to two weeks, on the other hand if the Senate makes the decision to go down the road of additional witnesses that could extend it to six to eight weeks or even longer,” Cruz told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “If the prosecution gets a witness, the defense gets a witness. If the prosecution gets two, the defense gets two. If the prosecution gets to call [former national security adviser] John Bolton, the prosecution gets to call Hunter Biden,” Cruz said. “The Democrats are terrified about seeing a witn...
The New York Times editorial board on Sunday night endorsed both Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for the Democratic nomination for president. The dual endorsement, a break in convention for the Times, comes just two weeks before the first primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Warren has remained a top contender while Klobuchar has struggled to break out of single-digit support. “In a break with convention, the editorial board has chosen to endorse two separate Democratic candidates for president,” reads the Times’s endorsement. “Choosing who should face off against [President] Trump also means acknowledging that Americans are being confronted with three models for how to govern this country, not two. Democrats must decide which of their two m...
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joins Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday.’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that the U.S. intelligence community is beginning to withhold documents on Ukraine from Congress as lawmakers prepare for the impeachment trial of President Trump. “The NSA, in particular, is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial,” Schiff said, referring to the National Security Agency. “The intelligence community is reluctant to have an open hearing, something that we had done every year prior to the Trump administration, because they’re worried about angering the president.” Read more at The Hill.
An organization which works to protect Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and to redeem Jewish real estate in and around the Old City scored a legal victory Sunday, when a Jerusalem court accepted the group’s demand that property in eastern Jerusalem be returned to its Jewish owners. The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Sunday ruled in favor of a petition filed by the Ateret Cohanim organization, which had sued for the return of Jewish-owned property in the Silwan (Shiloah) neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem and the removal of nearly two dozen Arab squatters. The property in question was part of the ‘Kfar Hashiloah’ neighborhood: a Jewish community established in the area in the 19th century which was destroyed during Arab riots prior to the establishment of the St...
Israel Police sappers arrived Monday to safely detonate an explosive device found near the central city of Beit Shemesh. The device, attached to a bunch of balloons, landed near the Beit Shemesh-area town of Mesilat Zion. No one was injured. On Sunday, explosives attached to balloons landed in the southern city of Sderot. Officials in the IDF and the defense establishment believe that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is behind the balloons' launch. Read more at Arutz-7
The "Blue and White" party claims that in the last elections it identified a large number of religiously observant voters who adopted the party as their new political base. Party representatives noted that several candidates at the top of the list are affiliated with the Religious Zionist sector including Elazar Stern, Yoaz Hendel, Hili Trooper, Orit Farkash-Hacohen, Tehila Friedman, Michal Kotler, Moshe (Kinley) Tur-Paz, and others. To facilitate the campaign, a special headquarters has been set up for the Religious Zionist population headed by Religious Zionist MKs and other sectoral figures. The campaign will be activated across various channels including the field, digital messages, communications and the media, and it will appeal to a variety of sectors within the Religious Zionist ...
Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov today referred to various reports about the possibility of the release of Naama Issachar, noting that his country never discussed such issues in the media. However, Peskov noted that the issue will be raised during Putin's visit to Israel this week, "This issue is likely to be raised during Putin's close contacts with Netanyahu." Peskov even added that it was "better to wait" for new details. Yaffa Issachar, Naama's mother, announced last night cancellation of all protest activity planned for Russian President Vlodymyr Putin's arrival in Israel. "Because of the sensitivity of the situation, and because of the appreciation and respect I have for engaging in the negotiations for Naama's return, and after seriously considering it - ...
Two consecutive elections in Israel just five months apart have produced inconclusive results without the formation of a left-wing, right-wing or centrist majority government. Israelis now hope to end the electoral impasse in a third election scheduled for March 2. In advance of the upcoming date, Knesset parties officially submitted their final candidate lists this week. During it all, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to lead the country, indictments and all. There have been relatively few political shifts thus far, with most of the major parties submitting nearly identical candidate lists as the previous election in September. Polls currently indicate that neither Israel’s pro-Netanyahu nor anti-Netanyahu blocs are likely to secure a majority. Meanwhile, Av...
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