Jewish & World News

The terrorist rocket bombings from Gaza on Sderot last year significantly increased the risk of miscarriages among couples in the development town, according to a new study published in the Psychosomatic Medicine Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine. In an article by Dr. Tamar Wainstock, Dr. Liat Lerner- Geva, Saralee Glasser, Dr. Ilana Shoham-Vardi and Dr. Eyal Anteby of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, the Gertner Institute at Tel Hashomer and Tel Aviv University, it was shown that women exposed before conception and during pregnancy to the bombings were more likely to lose their fetuses than women in other locations who were not exposed to the attacks.

Price tag vandals angry over the demolition of homes in the West Bank outpost of Ma’aleh Rehavam targeted a historical Muslim cemetery in downtown Jerusalem overnight Wednesday. The vandals spray-painted the words “Ma’aleh Rehavam,” “Price Tag” and Jewish stars on 10 gravestones in the Muslim cemetery on Agron Street next to the Mamillah mall.  By mid-morning the municipality’s anti-graffiti team has already worked to remove the vandalism. Police opened an investigation into the incident.

US President Barack Obama's Israel visit will not be "focused on specific Middle East peace process proposals," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. Carney added that newly-appointed Secretary of State John Kerry will attempt to find ways to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians during his February visit but that the White House does not want to foster false hopes regarding the president's visit.

Operation Pillar of Defense has adversely affected tourism, resulting in a 25% decline in tourist stays in December in Tel Aviv, a 24% decline in the Dead Sea and a 21% decline in Eilat. While Eilat recorded a smaller drop in tourist stays than Tel Aviv, its impact will be felt longer, as the Israeli operation in Gaza has led to the cancellation of about half of the charter flights slated to bring thousands to tourists to the southern resort city from different destinations in Europe this winter.

A 17-year-old Jewish boy was stabbed in the West Bank on Tuesday afternoon. The teen sustained mild abdominal injuries and was evacuated to the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva stable condition. According to the police's initial investigation, the perpetrator, a 20-year-old Palestinian man from Ramallah, simply walked over to the victim and stabbed him.

A pro-Palestinian website likely based in California posted 100 photos of what it claims are high ranking Israeli Air Force pilots suspected of war crimes. The website also noted each pilot's rank, date of birth and ID number. Among the 100 was the photo of one female pilot said to be a 24-year-old colonel. The website's managers claimed they received the information from an anonymous source. The disclosure of the information is meant to assist in the prosecution of the pilots when they leave Israel.

Four months after the last "flytilla" to Ben-Gurion airport, organizers of the Welcome to Palestine campaign are gearing up for another round of fly-ins, scheduled to take place at the end of August. The next round is slated to begin on August 24, and will be different from previous fly-ins, organizers say. The pro-Palestinian activists will fly into the Jordanian capital of Amman from different countries around the world, but mostly from France, and will then tour refugee camps before heading to Allenby Crossing, where they will request to pass into the Palestinian Authority.

While campaigning for the presidency in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama called Jerusalem the capital of Israel when addressing a pro-Israel audience, just as Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney did this week. On June 4 of that year – one day after announcing he had secured the required number of delegates to win the Democratic nomination – Obama delivered a speech at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference.

It's been 10 years since Palestinian Authority terrorists murdered students and staff at Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus, during the 2002 Second Intifada, also known to some as the Oslo War. A memorial service was held Tuesday in the Nancy Reagan Plaza near the scene of the bombing to mark the somber occasion.

A 16 year old boy was arrested near the Kerem Shalom kibbutz recently in connection with a planned suicide attack against Israeli Jews. According to Israeli Police, the Palestinian boy jumped over a border fence and walked for two days, from Gaza into Israel. Israeli soldiers with the IDF’s Golani Brigade spotted the boy, with a large axe, as he approached a kibbutz, and arrested him.  He was taken to a hospital in Soroka for medical treatment, and it was during his time there that more information was gathered about his intentions.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday declared Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state and told an Israeli audience that the United States has "a solemn duty and a moral imperative" to block Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. "Make no mistake, the ayatollahs in Iran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object and who will look the other way," Romney said during a speech in Jerusalem's Mishkenot Sha'ananim neighborhood. "We will not look away nor will our country ever look away from our passion and commitment to Israel."

Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad), notorious for her attacks on the State of Israel despite her being a member of its parliament, is at it again. Zoabi, who appeared in a public discussion forum at the Gordon College of Education in Haifa on Thursday, said that just as Israel demands to hold a minute of silence in memory of the 11 athletes who were murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics, there should also be a minute of silence for Palestinian Authority Arabs who were killed by Israel.

Summer fun – Narrow hallways, interrogation rooms painted black, isolation cells and handcuffed mannequins – this is all part of the setting of a new summer camp operated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic group has been operating summer camps for children in all cities and refugee camps throughout the Strip. This year, the organizers came up with an original theme – "the suffering of the Palestinian prisoners" – allowing children to experience first hand the daily lives of prisoners held in Israel.

US President Barack Obama spoke to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time in six months on Monday to discuss the long-stalled Middle East peace process, the White House said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement that Obama called Abbas and told him the United States was committed to Middle East peace. He told Abbas both sides need to reinforce the efforts that have brought an end to recent fighting and to avoid provocative actions. In the first conversation between Obama and Abbas since they met in New York in September 2011, Carney said Obama praised recent efforts by Jordan's King Abdullah to advance direct discussions between Israel and the Palestinians.

Most Israelis who lived through the horrendous second intifada a decade ago – during which over 1,000 of their countrymen died – recall it as a traumatic period of terror. But a study by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem based on surveys conducted at the time found that the five-year period of intensive Palestinian terrorism had “almost no impact” on Jewish Israelis self-reported satisfaction levels yet adversely affected the happiness of Arab Israelis. The research was conducted by Dr. Asaf Zussman from HU’s economics department, together with researchers from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the Bank of Israel. The report – “Does Terrorism Demoralize? Evidence from Israel” – was published in the January 2012 edition of the journal Economica.

An Arab-Jewish hockey team has become an unlikely icebreaker in this remote corner of northern Israel, overcoming barriers of language, culture and conflict. A few years ago, a mixed team in these parts was unthinkable. In the arid Middle East, hockey is virtually unheard of, and relations between Arabs and Jews in this combustible area, next to the tense borders of Lebanon and Syria, are generally downright chilly. The Arab players on the Metulla junior ice hockey team, coming from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, technically aren't even Israeli.

Jewish students at the London School of Economics and members of the university's Palestinian Society clashed during an Israel Apartheid Week protest. The Palestinian Society protesters created a mock checkpoint Monday outside a campus building, stopping students by asking for identification and reportedly harassing Jewish students. Counter-protesters, said to be members of the Students' Union Jewish Society, threw water balloons at the Palestinian Society protesters, spurring a fight that injured at least one student, the Jewish Chronicle reported. University security had to separate the protesters.

Contrary to popular belief, Palestinian Authority terrorists are motivated by religious and national ideology, not personal suffering, a PA researcher has found. The researcher, Bassam Yousef Banat, found that most terrorist killers were educated.