By Anshel Pfeffer 
Dr. Joel Mergui, the president of the umbrella organization of the Jewish community in Paris, said in an interview with Haaretz on Monday that he fears that a mass migration to Israel among French Jews could severely deplete the Paris community.
The fears Mergui expressed in his interview with Haaretz are held by quite a number of community leaders in the Jewish world, though few are willing to express them publicly.
"Out of 600,000 Jews living in France, only a third is in contact with the community, and educate their children in Jewish schools. A third is in the process of becoming assimilated, and another third is in the middle, on the fence - and we need to pull them in. All of the education of the Jewish community for years was based on ties and identification with Israel. My worry is that we succeeded too well, we worked so hard with the third of the community whose strong ties with Israel may possibly empty out the Paris community. This is not a fear of anti-Zionism," Mergui said.    
Mergui has a few surprising figures, even for those who are used to seeing Israel's beaches filled with ...   more »

by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Seventy-eight members of India's Bnei Menashe community entered Israel by bus from Jordan on Thursday and 40 more were scheduled to arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport early Friday morning on an El Al flight from Mumbai (Bombay), according to Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund, whose organization organized the operation.
Freund said that the "Aliyah" (Jewish immigration to Israel) operation had been coordinated with all relevant government authorities. The Bnei Menashe entered Israel on tourist visas and will undergo conversion to Judaism in Israel. Then they will receive permanent status as citizens. These details were worked out in an agreement with the former Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, who is now Minister of Construction and Housing.
Bnei Menashe Children in Kiryat Arba
Yigal Henshin, the Bnei Menashe community's president, said Friday: "This is a historical day for us. We have come home."
The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrian empire over 2,700 years ago. They reside primarily in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh. In recent years alone, over 800 members of the ...   more »

Former Israeli Arab MK and Balad chairman, Azmi Bishara, accused by Israel of spying for Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War told a Lebanese newspaper he will head an international push to try "the war criminals, Israel and America".
Bishara made the statement while touring south Lebanon, where he was hosted by Hezbollah's media division. He said Israel and the United States would be condemned for the damage they caused to Lebanon during last year's war.
On his tour, he visited Hezbollah battle headquarters north of the Israeli town of Avivim, and Bint Jbail where he laid wreaths on the graves of civilians killed in the fighting last summer. Bishara also visited Kfar Qana where an Israel Air Forces strike killed 29 in the community center during the Second Lebanon War.  
 Bishara called the attack on Kfar Qana the worst civilian slaughter since Deir Yassin in 1948, adding that these incidents made the "long-awaited agreement with the Zionist entity an impossibility".
In a speech Friday, Bishara praised Hezbollah saying it is now stronger than ever.
"Everybody envies the Lebanese for their resistance [Hezbollah] and its leadership, but I envy the resistance for its people," said Bishara, according to comments ...   more »

Yaakov Katz
Predicting that Israel's future wars will be characterized by unprecedented missile barrages, the IDF has decided to modify its missile defense doctrine and has changed its deployment of the Arrow missile in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The changes to the Air Defense Forces' doctrine have been made over recent months amid rising and falling concerns over war with Syria, and as a result of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War, during which some 4,000 missiles and rockets pounded the North.
"Our assumption is that the next war will be characterized by missile onslaughts, and lots of them," a high-ranking officer told the Post. "We can tell from the way our 'neighbors' are training that this is what they are planning and that we can expect a repeat of what happened during the Second Lebanon War."
Until now, the Arrow has been deployed in the Palmahim Air Force Base, as well as at an undisclosed site in northern Israel. The "thin deployment," as it was called, was implemented when the Arrow became fully operational in 2000 and when the doctrine was still based on the threat of Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles from the first Gulf ...   more »

A charter school has been ordered to temporarily suspend Hebrew classes while officials try to determine whether teachers are advocating the Jewish faith.
Broward Schools Superintendent James Notter sent a letter to officials at the Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood on Wednesday advising them to halt Hebrew classes until the school board could further examine the curriculum.
"If it comes up in the course of conversation, that is one thing but if it comes to promoting religion or proselytizing, we don't want it to happen," said Keith Bromery, a spokesman for the Broward schools.
Ben Gamla is in its first week of operation as the country's first Hebrew-language charter school, but school founder Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman, said he told teachers Thursday to halt the classes. He said he shared Notter's aim to ensure religion doesn't enter a publicly funded school.
"His goal and my goal are really exactly the same," Deutsch said.
The ban on Hebrew will extend at least until Sept. 11, when the board next meets. Until then, time that would have been spent on language instruction will be used teaching Israeli geography and Jewish history and culture.
Deutsch said he believes the school ...   more »