Group of scammers arrested two weeks ago suspected of defrauding elderly American citizens out of millions of dollars. Attorneys: State must examine new social phenomenon. The Foreign Relations Division at the State Prosecutor’s Office is expected to file a request with the Jerusalem District Court on Thursday for the extradition to the United States of 11 Israelis arrested two weeks ago for... 

Submarine warfare seems to be in vogue in the Middle East these days, with Israel leading the way. Iran, Algeria and Egypt are also planning to acquire new submarines that could operate in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Israel’s surprise deployment of one of its German-built Dolphin boats, the 1,500-ton Leviathan, in the Red Sea in late June underscored... 

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites. Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility. The Israeli press has already... 

Two representatives of the Peace Now organization and members of an Israeli television crew were attacked last week by a settler who objected to their presence in the West Bank as they documented construction in the settlements. The footage, originally broadcast on Channel 2 Television and posted online by Peace Now, shows a security guard at the Dolev settlement snatching and destroying the TV crew’s... 

Israel has a sovereign right to decide what is in its best interest in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions whether the United States agrees or not, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview on Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that he agrees with U.S. President Barack Obama’s end-of-the-year deadline for progress in efforts to engage Iran diplomatically... 

One of my new themes on this site is that the Israel lobby as we know it is over. Gaza and Netanyahu shattered it. Obama gave his speech in Cairo because he knew he would have political cover from American Jews to reach out to the Muslim world. Marty Peretz and Charles Krauthammer didn’t like the speech, but Jeffrey Goldberg and Roger Cohen (and Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod) did. That’s... 

The Jews in Iraq seem to be getting desperate. A bomb ripped through a crowded market in Baghdad’s main Shiite district on Wednesday, killing at least 69 people and wounding more than 100 less than a week before a deadline for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq’s urban areas. The explosion in Sadr City — the deadliest to strike the sprawling slum in more than two years — came just days after... 

Rabbi Manis Friedman has come under intense criticism for appearing to call on Israel to massacre Palestinians. A prominent Chabad rabbi is seeking to clarify remarks in which he renounced “Western morality” and seemed to call on Israel to massacre Palestinian civilians. “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way,” wrote Rabbi Manis Friedman in the current issue of Moment magazine.... 

An example of a Palestinian boy being beaten by the IDF randomly, for no reason at all. He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left… The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing. – Israeli soldier describing assault by his commander... 

An Israeli parliamentarian accuses the Obama administration of ‘anti-Semitism’ ahead of a planned speech addressing the Muslim world. Knesset (parliament) member Yaakov Katz, head of the National Union party, said Wednesday that US President Barack Obama’s repeated calls for halting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is “nothing less than anti-Semitism,”... 

A student organization that promotes Zionism on campus is fuming after its members were given the Nazi salute by left-wing students during student elections at the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus last week. Members of the Im Tirtzu (If You Will It) group said that as they made their rounds on last Tuesday, singing songs and waving the national flag, a member of another student organization,... 

Israel will not heed President Barack Obama’s powerful appeal to halt all settlement activity on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state, officials said Friday, a position that looks sure to cause a policy clash with its most important ally. The government plans to allow construction inside existing West Bank settlements to accommodate for growing families, said the officials. In... 

In her first Sunday show interview since becoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said it is “US policy” to treat an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel as an attack on the United States. This echoed statements from Clinton’s presidential campaign in which she proposed that an Iranian attack on Israel would provoke “massive retaliation” and a U.S. response that “would... 

Misgav. A community in northern Israel has changed its bylaws to demand that new residents pledge support for “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land” in a thinly veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission. Critics are calling the bylaw, adopted by Manof, home to 170 Jewish families in Galilee, a local “loyalty oath” similar to a national scheme recently... 

Prodding the international community, President Barack Obama called Friday “for all of us to redouble our efforts” toward separate Israeli and Palestinian states. “The moment is now for us to act,” he declared. Alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel one day after his trip to the Middle East, Obama said: “The United States can’t force peace upon the parties.”...