Ethnic/Religious Minorities

MOHAMAD DABOUL/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Syria: Seige persists in Aleppo’s Kurdish enclaves despite SDF-Damascus truce

Tensions are rising over plans to integrate the Kurdish-led SDF into the new Syrian military amid clashes between government-affiliated and Kurdish forces in Syria’s largest city.

BARBOD KHORSHIDI/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Grenade attack on IRGC kills 2 in Iran’s Kurdistan province: What to know

The deadly assault comes amid recurring tensions and clashes in Iran’s Kurdish-majority western region.

Former senior commander of the Sudanese Janjaweed militia Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman.

In a first, ICC convicts Sudanese militia leader of Darfur war crimes

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman was found guilty of 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2004.

An election poster of Henry Hamra, a Syrian-American parliamentary candidate who is the son of the country's last rabbi and who if elected will be the first Jewish representative in the Syrian parliament since the late 1940s, is displayed on the entrance of the closed Jewish Maimonides School of Damascus, in the Jewish quarter of the old city of Damascus on Oct. 3, 2025, ahead of the upcoming vote on Oct. 5.

Syria's parliamentary elections: First Jewish candidate in 58 years enters race

Syria is holding its first parliamentary elections since the fall of the Assad regime, with a Jewish candidate running for the first time in decades in a vote conducted largely through indirect selection rather than a direct public ballot.

Latest News

Pentagon pushes to accelerate ISIS detainee repatriations from Syria

Women and children walk at the Al-Amal Camp (formerly Al-Jadaa), south of Mosul in northern Iraq, which houses Iraqi families who have been repatriated from Syria's Al-Hol camp, on May 8, 2025.

Syria holds first post‑Assad parliamentary vote: What to know

Interim Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa appears in the Citadel of Aleppo in Syria, on May 27, 2025.

New Druze militia forms in Syria as Hijri calls for autonomy

Druze religious leader Hikmat al-Hijri is pictured on Dec. 28, 2024, Suwayda, Syria.

Israel, US rift with France widens as Paris rebukes US envoy: What to know

Macron and Abbas

RONEN ZVULUN/AFP via Getty Images

Mixed feelings in Israel over Bennett’s mediation efforts on Ukraine

The Israeli opposition is criticizing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett as overeager to drag Israel into the Russia-Ukraine quagmire.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish children.

Israel's ultra-Orthodox reject housing in new Negev town

Ultra-Orthodox leaders search for a solution to the housing crisis in the sector, but they are not in favor of the solution proposed by the government to establish a new ultra-Orthodox town in the Negev region.

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images

Citizenship law deepens rift between Israel's Arab parties

The Joint List was hoping to use the vote on the controversial citizenship Law to embarrass its rival Muslim coalition party Ra’am.

Church of All Nations and Mary Magdalene Convent on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, Israel.

Jerusalem churches fight new settlement plan

Church heads and officials in Jerusalem are fighting an Israeli plan to expand a national park on the Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem, where dozens of churches and Christian sites are located.

Western wall

Ultra-Orthodox, Reformist Jews clash over prayer space at Western Wall

Progressive Judaism activists from Israel and the US are demanding Prime Minister Naftali Bennett implement the compromise on an egalitarian mixed-prayer space by the Western Wall, as was agreed under the former government.

Badatz kosher-certification supervisors at work, February 2022.

Analysis

Ultra-Orthodox kosher certification body becomes commercial giant

The extreme ultra-Orthodox Badatz kosher certification has become a giant commercial body much courted by big food-production companies.

Israel Hershkovitz

By Israel Hershkovitz

Zoabi

Analysis

First female Arab Knesset member to head Israeli diplomatic mission

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has appointed Meretz Knesset member Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi as consul general in Shanghai, sparking an outcry from critics.

Mazal Mualem

By Mazal Mualem

In Tel Aviv, reporting on politics

Chabad office in Moscow

Israeli ultra-Orthodox fret over Russia-Ukraine conflict

For the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, which considers Ukraine as a sort of a homeland, the possibility of a Russian invasion is taken personally.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women work on computers in the central city of Holon on April 17, 2016.

Record number of ultra-Orthodox women join Israeli workforce

More and more Israeli ultra-Orthodox women turn to computer programming, accounting, entrepreneurship and other jobs instead of traditional positions in the education system.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Israel promises support for Ukrainian Jews

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has made it clear that if Jews in Ukraine find themselves in need of rescue, Israel will be there for them.

BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images

Turkey probes concert at Black Sea monastery after Greek protest

Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism is investigating a concert at Sumela Monastery after Athens and the Orthodox Patriarchate complained of disrespect to the venue.

An Israeli nurse prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine, with Arabic writing in the background showing the last word of the slogan, "Hope without limit," at the Sheba Medical Center, Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Dec. 27, 2021.

Learning Arabic becomes political act in Israel

All the initiatives and events presented on Arabic language Day in the Knesset cannot hide the fact that the Nationality Law has stripped it from its status as an official language in Israel.