Ben Sales
By Ben Sales
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Breaking News Russian Immigration to Israel Seen as Success Story
(JTA) — Growing up in the Urals, Pavel Polev was a precocious ice skater and a member of the Soviet Union’s national youth figure-skating team. But in 1992, at age 15, Polev’s life was upended when he joined the massive wave of Jews immigrating to Israel from the crumbling Soviet Union. After serving a mandatory…
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The Schmooze Shimon Peres Doesn’t Know Words to ‘Jingle Bells’
(JTA) — Israeli President Shimon Peres sent out a mostly boilerplate Christmas greeting yesterday, but what jumped out at me were the video’s first 22 seconds, where Peres stands at the center of a group of kids dressed in Santa suits, all singing “Jingle Bells,” accompanied by a piano. Discerning viewers will note, though, that…
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Breaking News Bedouin in Israel Calling for Recognition, Rather than Relocation
(JTA) — In this unofficial Bedouin town of 14,000 not far from Beersheva in the Negev Desert, families live in clusters of shanties with intermittent electricity provided by generators or solar panels. A communal structure has soft plastic walls and dirt floors, with a small pit at one end for an open fire that provides the…
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Breaking News Left-Wing Groups Propose Alliance With ‘Right-Wing Opponents’ of Israel Bedouin Plan
(JTA) — They can’t agree on the project’s goal. They can’t agree on who supports it. They can’t even agree on its name. But when it comes to the Israeli government’s plan to relocate 30,000 Negev Bedouin, representatives and allies of the Bedouin community agree with the right wing on one thing: the Prawer plan must…
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Opinion Obama’s Thanksgivukkah Greeting Has Different Meaning for Israelis
(JTA) President Obama, always up on the latest Jewish internet fads, sent out an official Thanksgivukkah greeting yesterday: “For the first time since the late 1800s – and for the last time until some 70,000 years from now – the first day of Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving. It’s an event so rare some have even…
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Opinion When Bibi and Peres Crooned Arik Einstein
(JTA) — Amid the grief over the passing of iconic Israeli singer Arik Einstein, the internet has given us a gem: Bibi Netanyahu and Shimon Peres — together, in the nineties — singing one of Einstein’s best-known songs, “Ani v’Ata” (You and I). The clip starts with Israeli celebrities Ofra Haza and Dan Shilon singing…
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Breaking News Will Israel Keep Fighting Iran Deal Even Now That It’s Sealed?
(JTA) — With an interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program in place, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each face formidable challenges ahead. For Obama, the goal will be to move from the interim agreement to a broader and more permanent deal within six months, all while managing deep skepticism about the deal…
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Israel News Holocaust Survivors Struggle To Survive on Pittance in Israel
(JTA) — Breakfast costs Dov Jakobovitz $2. Lunch costs him $2.25. Both are served in the public old-age home in south Tel Aviv where he lives. But the food is not to his liking. Jakobovitz longs for the dishes he ate as a child in Transylvania – gefilte fish, goulash, chicken wings – rather than…
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