A week after Gilad Shalit returned to Israel after being held in captivity for more than five years in Gaza, things were getting back to normal at the Shalit family home — sort of.
ABC News leaked details last week of an ongoing international intelligence investigation with allegations that up to 20 \”sleeper cell\” suspects from Hezbollah were activated, including a \”weapons expert\” spotted at a firing range south of Toronto.
After his wife died, the worker still came but less often, until global economic pressure forced the JDC to scale back operations for the \”least needy\” in the former Soviet Union. Six months ago, Zheleznyak began having to fend for himself.
Concern is growing among circles of Iranian nationals and expatriates that European countries are turning a blind eye to the regime\’s human rights atrocities in exchange for trade benefits.
Late last year, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution criticizing Iran for human rights violations. It cited new restrictions on freedom of expression and the persecution of political and religious dissenters.
On April 19, 12 German teenagers left Heidelberg, flew west for about 6,000 miles, disembarked at LAX, and entered the lives and homes of 12 Jewish American teenagers. None of the 24 teens knew quite what to expect.
During their two-week stay in homes of Kol Tikvah congregants, the German students visited local high schools, attended Shabbat services, took part in a Yom HaShoah program, tried a range of new foods and looked everywhere for Tom Cruise.
Seldom can Israeli Cabinet ministers have faced a more acute moral and political dilemma than the current prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah.
That proposal, which the 23-member Cabinet approved Sunday by a one-vote margin, forced ministers to weigh the conflicting interests of several Israeli families, put a price on the life of a kidnapped Israeli citizen and consider the long-term price that all Israelis may yet have to pay.
Now the government may have another decision to make: Hezbollah is demanding that those released include Samir Kuntar, the terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who murdered an Israeli family in a 1979 attack that shocked Israel.
A Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles reception welcomed 18 students participating in a cultural exchange sponsored by the Federation\’s Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership. Fourteen students from Tel Aviv\’s A.D. Gordon School and four students from their paired partner, Northridge\’s Abraham Heschel Day School, gathered to reflect on their experience as the Israeli students — all ages 13 and 14 — wrapped up their 10-day visit to Los Angeles.
Smith and Rabin were part of an 11-member group from Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles that had a student exchange with counterparts from Tel Aviv\’s Zeitlin High School.
In early October, four 13-year-olds from Tel Aviv spent 10 days in Southern California.
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