Israel Active

To mark the 120th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress that Theodor Herzl organized, 120 men and women named for him gathered in Herzliya, Israel, to celebrate his legacy.

Multicultural, energetic, inspiring. So much is happening in Jerusalem you will be amazed to see it packed in to 50 seconds.

“Operation Wedding” a film by Israel’s Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov is currently showing in Israel and will shortly tour the USA. The film portrays Anat’s parents and 14 others who were jailed for planning to escape Soviet Russia by plane in 1970. World protests led to the mass Aliya of Soviet Jewry.

Hans Beretele was so disgusted with his father’s Nazi past, that he came to Israel and converted to Judaism.  His daughter Gaya now serves in the Israel Defense Forces.

Hours after she arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, Neda Amin, an Iranian-born journalist and dissident who feared being deported from Turkey to Iran, thanked the Israeli government for granting her refuge, adding that she has Jewish roots and would love to live in Israel.

At a ceremony at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, 180 students graduated the 2017 StandWithUs Israel Fellows. They join over 1,600 Alumni of the program from the last eleven years. The StandWithUs Fellowship has become the leading program in Israel for public diplomacy at Israeli universities.

With a vote of 90-0, lawmakers of Capitol Hill’s Senate – the US upper chamber - voted through a resolution that stated, ‘Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel’. It was co-sponsored by 17 senators, including both Republican and Democratic party leaders.

At his Jerusalem residence, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin met 12 of the 4,554 Holocaust refugees who traveled on the Exodus, seven decades after the ship’s iconic voyage to the Land of Israel. All were deported in 1947 but many returned to the new State.

Israeli archaeologists excavating the Jerusalem’s City of David recently exposed evidence of the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. The excavations on the eastern slope of the City of David, revealed charred wood, grape seeds, pottery and rare artifacts.

Jews are fleeing the rapidly deteriorating conditions in Venezuela.  26 (from seven families) recently opted to use their eligibility for citizenship in Israel. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews organized and paid for their flights and subsidized each family member.