Shevet Achim, an Israeli-based Christian organization, helps to bring children from Iraq and the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals for life-saving heart surgery. It has established a bridge among Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land.
Kibbutz Hanaton, Israel’s only Masorti kibbutz, is entering a new stage of growth, just four years after facing bankruptcy. For some, it’s a hopeful sign for the progressive, yet marginalized Masorti Jewish movement.
Nabil al-Kurd, resident of Arab populated Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem has had to surrender the keys to the front section of his house to the Israeli High Court on November 3, 2009. To him this isn’t a religious conflict, it’s a political one. Every week Arabs and Israelis gather outside the neighborhood to voice their dissent.
Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upwards. Silently she mouths the words of the Quran’s first chapter. She is reciting it for her ancestor who was buried in the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly a half millennia ago. The Simon Weisenthal Center’s plans to build their Museum of Tolerance in Mamilla has ignited a new controversy in West Jerusalem.
In Ramat Shlomo, the demand for housing is particularly high both because of the Haredim’s high birth rates, and the religious zeal to be near Jerusalem. This settlement is located in an outlying area of East Jerusalem—on land that was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war.