Most of what I read online in the New Zealand and Australian papers seems to have an Israeli bias. Well that’s the impression I get here in Palestine, where I work at Bethlehem University. Bethlehem University is home to over 3300 students and 400 employees and over the past two weeks it has been closed for seven Read more
Orthodox rabbis and the speaker of Israel’s parliament have raised thousands of dollars to help repair a famous Christian Church torched by Jewish vandals. The Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes near the Sea of Galilee was set alight on June 18 and anti-Christian graffiti was daubed on its walls. A crowd-funding Read more
Let me tell you where I was when I learned about the Iran deal: I was leaving Treblinka. My wife and I have just returned from a journey to Poland for parents of United Synagogue Youth members. We visited Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz and Lublin — with pilgrimages to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka. We visited the Polin Museum of Read more
A church at the site where Jesus is believed to have fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish has been badly damaged by fire. Fires were lit on June 17 in the monastery section of the Church of the Multiplication, in Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee. Israeli police said it was arson. Read more
During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions Read more
Fr. Émile Shoufani, an Arab Israeli and tireless promoter of dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims, received the 2014 Judeo-Christian Friendship of France (AJCF) award on November 17. Born in 1947 in Nazareth, Shoufani was driven out of his family village the following year by the Israelis who killed his grandfather and uncle. He was Read more
An international flight from New York was disrupted after ultra-orthodox Jewish passengers insisted they couldn’t sit next to women. An El Al flight from JFK Airport to Israel on September 23 saw ultra-orthodox passengers stand in the aisles before take-off, which delayed the flight. Some orthodox passengers (haredim) even offered money to fellow travellers to Read more
Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors Read more
Auckland’s Catholic and Anglican bishops have called on Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders in accordance with United Nations’ requests. In a joint statement, Catholic Bishop Patrick Dunn and Anglican Bishop Ross Bay said such an act by Israel would be “a pre-requisite for dialogue to establish a lasting and just settlement in the Read more
New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission had joined religious leaders in rejecting hateful acts linked to religion in this country and overseas. “We mourn the tragic, heartbreaking loss of all lives in the conflict in Gaza and Israel: but we must honour their lives by standing up for peace at all costs,” said Chief Human Rights Read more