JERUSALEM — Orthodox youths mobbed the Western Wall plaza by the thousands to protest Women of the Wall as they held their monthly prayer service.
The youths, male and female, filled the Western Wall Plaza by 6:40 a.m. on Friday, May 10, 20 minutes before Women of the Wall, a women’s prayer group that holds monthly services at the site, also called the Kotel, began praying.
Because haredi Orthodox women had packed the women’s section of the plaza earlier in the morning, Women of the Wall prayed in the back section of the plaza, further away from the Kotel itself.
The Women of the Wall service to mark Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new Hebrew month, was the first since a ruling last month by a Jerusalem District Court judge that the group’s services do not violate the law and merit police protection rather than arrests.
JERUSALEM — The activist group Women of the Wall will face no more legal challenges after Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decided this week not to appeal a court decision favoring the group.
Weinstein’s office announced Monday, May 6, that he would not appeal last month’s ruling by the Jerusalem District Court that Women of the Wall were not breaking the law by conducting their monthly service.
Members of the group have been routinely arrested or detained in recent months for w...
WASHINGTON — When it comes to the latest Arab peace initiative, two questions are circulating in Washington: Why Qatar? And why now?
The three answers: Because Qatar is rich; it is scared; and why not?
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, in recent weeks has driven the revivification of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, moderating it slightly to hew closer to the outlines touted by the Obama administration since 2011.
The updated version, ...
SYDNEY — Ben Zygier, the Australian-Israeli national known as Prisoner X who allegedly was a Mossad agent, unwittingly scuttled an operation to return the bodies of three Israeli soldiers missing in Lebanon, according to an Australian television report.
A report by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that aired Tuesday, May 7, claimed that Zygier’s attempts to redeem himself in the eyes of his Mossad superiors backfired, prompting the Mossad to abort its mission to repatriate the bodies of Za...