Tensions have risen this year in the Christian and Armenian quarters of the 1 sq km ancient walled city, which includes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in Christianity where Jesus was believed to be crucified and resurrected. The Old City is also home to places of critical religious importance to Jews and Muslims. MORE

Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis announced the establishment of a new party March 6. Opinion polls published in the days that followed were flattering, and it seems that the old, established parties with strong social platforms have reason to be worried. True, her latest achievement exists only on paper, but the recent Hadashot poll that awarded her new party five seats is telling. MORE

AL-QOSH, Iraq — “The Iraqi government was against everything Jewish after the Jews left in the ’50s,” said Father Araam, a young Chaldean priest serving in the predominantly Christian town of al-Qosh, in northern Iraq. That, he explained, was why it has been indifferent to the fate of the sole remaining synagogue in Iraq, here in al-Qosh. “That’s why it almost collapsed.” MORE

Hamas has scheduled an anti-Israel protest by Gaza residents, touted as “the Journey of Great Return,” for March 30. The date picked for this mass march, on the same day Israel’s Arab citizens hold their annual Land Day demonstrations, is hardly coincidental. MORE

Israel Pulse

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Funny, I always pictured Israel as a prosperous Nation until I saw this commercial for food bank donations for their people.

Some 1.8 million Israelis, including 842,300 children, were living in poverty in 2016, according to new figures released by the National Insurance Institute this month.

The poorest region in the country continued to be Jerusalem, where some 55 percent of children live under the poverty line (down from 58% in 2015), followed by northern and southern Israel. MORE

The Anti-Defamation League is reporting a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. last year, the highest tally that the Jewish civil rights group has counted in more than two decades, according to data it released Tuesday. MORE

Re: “GOP the party of religious fundamentalists.” (Letters, Jan. 10)

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“Whoever feels in his heart a real bond with the life of the nation in all of its generation, could never imagine the people of Israel without Shabbat the Queen. One can say without a trace of exaggeration that more than Israel has kept the Shabbat, MORE

“Überall Luthers Worte …” — “Luther’s Words are everywhere”, the title of the exhibition highlighting how the Nazis exploited Martin Luther’s legacy during the Third Reich. RNS photo by Emily McFarlan Miller

Martin Luther is such a towering figure in German history that it’s no surprise Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich exploited his name whenever it could.

Most visitors to events in Germany marking this year’s 500th anniversary of the Reformation, however, probably didn’t expect to find an exhibition setting out just how extensively the Nazis used Luther to justify their anti-Semitism and nationalism. MORE

The language of Netanyahu and his cabinet increasingly references a Bible-citing and religious, rather than political, war against the Palestinians. And American evangelicals are his enthusiastic foot-soldiers. MORE

Will the U.S. Embassy be next? Or (pope) Francis?

On Aug. 31, the eve of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent holiday greetings through social media to Israel’s Druze population, which practices a monotheist Abrahamic religion based on teachings of major Muslim figures and therefore observes some Islamic holy days: MORE

The Israeli government voted on Sunday in favor of decriminalizing recreational marijuana use, joining some U.S. states and European countries who have adopted a similar approach.

“On the one hand we are opening ourselves up to the future. On the other hand, we understand the dangers and will try to balance the two,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks. MORE

“Netanyahu is an insane vampire drowned in crimes from head to toe, and the recent remarks made by the racist Israeli prime minister is not surprising to me,” Siamak Mareh Sedq, who represents the Jews of Iran in the government, said during an open session of parliament, JTAreported, citing Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency. MORE