A swastika was painted on the Wellington Jewish center, which houses the city’s only Orthodox congregation and is the focus of Jewish life in New Zealand’s harbor city capital,”  according to its website. Jewish officials said the swastika was painted on the back wall, and they reported the incident to police. “It was fairly minor [...]

The opening of a music club and disco in a 19th century Jewish learning center in Krakow is sparking controversy. The club, called Mezcal, which is also a Mexican alcoholic beverage, opened Saturday night in the former Chewra Thilim Beit Midrash in the heart of Krakow’s Jewish district, Kazimierz. The rundown building, built in 1896, [...]

The Obama administration added the names of four Iranian companies and an individual to those sanctioned for assisting Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. “Iranian private sector firms should heed the risks incurred by conducting business with those who support Iran’s proscribed nuclear activities and should choose to focus their activities on legitimate international commerce,” the [...]

Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni ordered her ministry on Thursday to draft legislation that would make the gender-based segregation of women illegal. “Discrimination against women in public places, in public services, cannot be allowed,” she said in a radio interview. She wrote on her Facebook page, “Removal of women from the public sphere is damaging [...]

Israelis by a 4-to-1 margin are more confident than Palestinians in how President Barack Obama a handles his foreign policy, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday. The survey revealed that 61 percent of Israelis “express confidence in the American president to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” as opposed to 15 [...]

Italian tax collectors have ordered the president of Rome’s Jewish community and a TV reporter to pay the court fees of convicted Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, who lost a lawsuit against them in 1996. “I won’t pay,” Jewish Community President Riccardo Pacifici told Italian media, but under Italian law, “all parties involved” must pay [...]