Adam Verete (Photo: Channel 2)

Teacher who almost lost job for leftist views gets fired

High school teacher Adam Verete, who was accused by a 12th-grade student earlier this year of “brainwashing” students to adopt extreme left-wing and anti-Zionist views, was informed Sunday that the school would not employ him in the coming year — due to “budget cuts.” In last January, Verete was pressured by the ORT educational network to…

Woodside exit from Leviathan gas field “disappointing” local neo-liberals

Despite the Israeli neo-liberal governmental disappointment surrounding Woodside Petroleum’s decision to abandon the Leviathan gas field partnership Israeli energy analysts are confident in the developers’ ability to move forward, particularly with regional pipeline options. Following a memorandum of understanding with the Leviathan partners in February, the Australian hydrocarbon firm had been expected to take on…

MK Dov Khenin during an environmental meeting at the Tel-Aviv's coast, May 12, 2014 (Photo: Zalul)

Israel’s environmentalists are up in arms

The Interior Ministry has decided to terminate their long-established representation in the country’s foremost planning commission forums. Petitions to the High Court of Justice against this are already in the pipeline. The environmental organizations contend that their absence would inevitably deny ordinary Israelis a voice on what might be constructed in their vicinity and that…

Caricature: Michel Kishka

Netanyahu wants to define Israel as “Jewish state” in law

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, says he will introduce a basic law defining Israel as a Jewish state, giving high-level support to a controversial idea that has long been a demand of the Israeli extreme-right. The state has never before officially defined itself as “Jewish”, though right-wing legislators have introduced bills to that effect…

Demonstration in Tel-Aviv against the biometric database law (Photo: Nilly Oren)

Hadash moves to fight right-wing laws

Hadash MKs have presented bills in recent weeks in a bid to repeal laws that sharply curtail the civil rights of Israeli citizens, including the law that penalizes Israelis calling for a boycott of Israel or settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories. Hadash is also targeting the law that denies funding to groups that “undermine…

An African asylum seeker holding matzah and an alternative Passover Haggadah outside the Holot detention center (Photo: Ziv Oren)

Hundreds of refugees and Israeli activists hold Passover Seder outside prison

Israeli activists and African asylum seekers held an alternative Passover Seder event Friday outside the Holot detention center in the Negev desert, where 1,800 African migrants are currently being held. Hundreds of African asylum seekers from the detention center attended the event, during which activists highlighted the connection between the story of the Jewish exodus from…