JERUSALEM — Israel's attorney general on Thursday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with bribery and breach of trust in a series of corruption cases, a momentous move that shook up Israel's election campaign and could spell the end of the prime minister's illustrious political career. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit...
Top Rivals Join Forces in Challenge to Israel's Netanyahu
JERUSALEM — The two main challengers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined forces Thursday in a united front ahead of April elections, a dramatic move that upended the campaign and suddenly created the most serious threat to the Israeli leader's decade-long grip on power. Retired military chief Benny Gantz and...
Rep. Omar Apologizes for Tweets on AIPAC's Influence
WASHINGTON — Freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar "unequivocally" apologized Monday for tweets suggesting that members of Congress support Israel because they are being paid to do so, which drew bipartisan criticism and a rebuke from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Minnesota Democrat said she had no intention offending anyone, including...
King's Speech Inspires Writer to Break Silence on Palestine
One year before his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King took a strong, public stand against the Vietnam war. NY Times opinion writer Michelle Alexander says most of King's closest advisors advised him to stay silent on the topic or soften his criticism. "They knew that if he told...
Rep. Omar Apologizes for 'Unknowingly' Using 'Anti-Semitic Trope'
Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, took to Twitter to apologize for a 2012 tweet in which she said that "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel." At the...
Israel Says Its Jets Struck Iranian Military Sites in Syria
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said its jets struck Iranian military targets in Syria early Monday, an announcement that marked a rare departure from Israel's years-long policy of ambiguity regarding activities in neighboring Syria. The military said the targets included munition storage facilities, an intelligence site and a military training...
NYT Shines Bright Light on Killing of Palestinian Medic
Are you trying to make sense of the deadly, seemingly neverending violence between Israel and the Palestinians? David M. Halbfinger, who is the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, points to the killing last June of 20-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar, a volunteer Palestinian medic in the Gaza Strip, as an...
Senate Republicans Target Boycott Movement in $38B Israel Defense Funding Bill
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans' first bill of the new Congress aims to insert the legislative branch into President Donald Trump's Middle East policy — but also tries to drive a wedge between centrist and liberal Democrats over attitudes toward Israel. Among other provisions, the bipartisan package, backed by Senate Majority...
Is Iran Now Too Powerful for Israel to Defeat?
Chuck Freilich knows Israel's military capabilities and politics inside out. After all, he is a former deputy Israeli national security adviser. Now he's a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and an op-ed he penned for the left-leaning Israeli news organization Haaretz is gaining widespread attention. Not just because of...
US, Israel Exit UN Cultural Agency, Claiming Bias
PARIS — The United States and Israel have officially quit the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural agency — the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias. The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded...