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David Isaac

David Isaac

Explore Senior Israel Correspondent David Isaac’s expert analysis on Jewish history, politics, and current events at JNS.

“What we are trying to achieve is to decentralize the power of the Chief Rabbinate,” said Tani Frank, director of the Center for Judaism and State Policy at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, which was involved in drafting the bill.
Among those in the collage were Rasmea Odeh, convicted of two bombings in 1969, and Leila Khaled, part of a Palestinian group that hijacked a TWA flight that same year.
“Great honor for Karen Pence and I to travel to Hebron today to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs at the Cave of Machpelah that Abraham bought to bury Sarah nearly 4,000 years ago,” Pence tweeted, adding that Abraham is revered by three “great world religions.”
“It was a difficult trip because it took many hours,” said 11-year-old Ilana Moskvitch, who arrived with her parents and two younger brothers. Still, she insisted, “I wasn’t scared.”
Most of the refugees at the Dacia Marin recreation center plan to immigrate to Israel in the coming weeks.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” says Benny Hadad, director of Aliyah and absorption for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “I was in this place a month ago on a routine visit from Odessa to Chisinau. Everything was pastoral and quiet, and suddenly it looks like a world war.”
The younger children leaving Ukraine didn’t seem worse for wear despite the long journey. The elder ones were more pensive. “I feel very bad because I have chosen to go to a normal country while my family stays in Ukraine, where they have rockets and bombs,” said Natasha Dubinskaya, 16.
According to York University’s Farhad Rezaei, what distinguishes Iran when it comes to persecution of Christians is that it is pursuing a “strategy of eliminationism” — an organized, unrelenting, Nazi-like campaign to reduce the Christian presence in the Middle East.
AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittmann told JNS that the American Israel Education Foundation’s trips to Israel “provide members of Congress from both parties with valuable information about the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship through firsthand experiences.”
It’s become “one of the most technologically important strands for the next decades,” says Aviv Zeevi at the Israel Innovation Authority. “We can see it by the amount of investment in this market and by the many countries investing in this technology.”
While the Israel Police and the Attorney General’s Office have pushed back against allegations of illegal evidence-gathering, senior Hebrew University lecturer Gadi Taub dismissed the responses as “spin.”
“The problem is that 99% of the people who are indicted receive a punishment more suited for a child than a grown man,” said Matan Asher, spokesperson for Im Tirtzu, which worked with Knesset member Keti Shitrit’s office to draft the legislation.