By Caroline Glick, JPost— Malik Faisal Akram, the British national who seized four hostages at gunpoint at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas during Sabbath services, was straightforward about who he was and what he wanted. Upon entering the synagogue wielding a gun and claiming he had a bomb in his backpack, Akram began ranting…
By Times of Israel— Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke Thursday by phone with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, amid an apparent thaw in relations between Jerusalem and Ankara. According to Lapid’s office, Cavusoglu called to inquire about the foreign minister’s health following his COVID-19 diagnosis. The phone call was the first between Israeli and Turkish…
By Jonathan Schanzer, The Dispatch— One year into his presidency, Joe Biden endeavors to pivot away from the Middle East. The Middle East simply won’t let him. Like his predecessors, the president continues to struggle with the right approach to this important and perilous region. To date, many of Biden’s approaches have amounted to unforced…
By Arlene Bridges Samuels, CBN Israel— “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning “to ascend.” When we read Psalms 120-134, in essence we are participating in the “Songs of Ascent” much like…
By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger— Learning from mistakes? *Ten days before the toppling of the Shah of Iran, President Carter told a conference of world leaders on the Island of Guadeloupe that a Khomeini-led Iran “would not export revolution… and would be interested in buying tractors, not tanks…. On January 11, six days before the…
By Holly Yan, CNN— Behind Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s warm, disarming smile is a leader who’s willing to attack an armed man holding his congregants hostage. On Saturday, a stranger knocked on the door of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. The rabbi, assuming the stranger needed shelter from the cold, invited him in and made…
By Cnaan Lipshiz, JTA— The United Kingdom’s Prince Charles has commissioned portraits of seven Holocaust survivors to be displayed at Buckingham Palace for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Charles, whose title is the Prince of Wales, commissioned the portraits as part of his service as the royal patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, a position…
By Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post— It is a short clip, barely 24 seconds long, that was neither filmed professionally nor with a steady hand. But perhaps because the footage is so raw and so shocking, and the reality that it reveals is so brutal, is what makes it essential viewing for every Israeli. The video…
By Arlene Bridges Samuels, CBN Israel— Traveling north to Israel’s Golan Heights is an adventuresome journey of hairpin turns, vineyards, and vistas of the snow-capped 9,000-foot Mount Hermon. Yet despite an ancient history wrapped in boundless beauty, ominous warning signs about uncleared minefields from the 1967 Six-Day War still dot the landscape—and reflect ongoing controversy.…
By Jewish News Syndicate— Israeli lawmakers welcomed the launch of the Abraham Accords Caucus this week in Congress. The new caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington will be launched as a bipartisan initiative by Democrats and Republicans in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It will be co-chaired by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.),…