Page 24 - Aaron Boxerman News Today

A top national religious rabbi joins the chorus of right-wing, religious voices against the High Court of Justice’s ruling legitimizing non-Orthodox conversions carried out in Israel. “No High Court decision can turn a goy into a Jew,” says Rabbi Druckman, saying that would be akin to a person seeking the court’s help after the doctoral degree he received from the bus drivers’ union was rejected. “There are matters that the High Court cannot settle.” While he lambasted the decisio...

After a television report showed the vast majority of Israelis who are being given approval to enter the country during a general border closure were ultra-Orthodox, Defense Minister Benny Gantz says he will not approve the extension of regulations on international travel until a representative of the Ministry of Justice joins the committee that okays individuals to fly on a small number of available flights. Ganz demands “to disclose to the public in a transparent manner the criteria by whic...

15 shares Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing: Your 15-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday. Today’s panel comprises Times of Israel diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman and Palestinian affairs correspondent Aaron Boxerman, along with host Amanda Borschel-Dan. We start with a look at how Tehran appears to be jockeying for position ahead of talks on the nuclear deal by blackballing inspecto...

Abate Abbas et al. The Palestinian Authority is a fundamentally disordered political regime. Earlier this year PA President Mahmoud Abbas, age 85, entered the fifteenth seventeenth year of his four-year term. Abbas recently made news of a kind. He issued a decree calling for new parliamentary and presidential elections within the next several months. Barak Ravid has a brief Axios item with relevant background here (or here via Yahoo News). Aaron Boxerman’s Times of Israel story circles aroun...

Tune in Sunday through Thursday to hear ToI editors and reporters quickly catch you up on what’s important today

Two of Israel’s three major networks broadcast extensive leaked recordings from Thursday night’s tumultuous cabinet meeting on the extension of the lockdown, during which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at one point accused Defense Minister Benny Gantz that “the blood of many Israelis” would be on his hands and the Blue and White party head charged the premier that he was “throwing dust in the public’s eyes.” The recordings are aired simultaneously on both Channel 12 news and th...

From the blog of Tzemach Yehudah Richter at The Times of Israel

241 shares A relatively empty coronavirus vaccine dispenser in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem, January 5, 2021 (Aaron Boxerman/The Times of Israel) The least crowded coronavirus vaccination center in Israel might be in East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood. On Tuesday morning, the clinic began dispensing Covid-19 vaccines — but it was nearly empty, bereft of people waiting to be immunized. Acknowledging that only a few had signed up for shots, clinic director Dr. Mazen Daana estimate...

0 shares Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group makes a speech marking a year since the US assassination of Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani and a pro-Iran Iraqi militia leader, and threatens that Iran “doesn’t need help” from its allies and will take revenge “when it decides so.” Nasrallah says Tehran will not ask any other country or body to conduct the strike on its behalf. “Iran is a strong country and it will decide when and how to ...

0 shares Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports stepping up the lockdown restrictions for a week or two to curb rising coronavirus infections, Hebrew-language media reports. That would include resuming online studies for grades 5-10 and placing more limits on workplaces. Some members of the Blue and White party reportedly oppose the plan and are insisting that the outbreak is slowing down, reports say. Im proud to work at The Times of Israel I’ll tell you the truth: Life here...