Ben & Jerry’s announced it will ban the sale of its ice cream in what it calls the “occupied Palestinian Territories” beginning in 2023. In a statement on July 19, Ben & Jerry’s said that continuing to sell products in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the Six-Day War in 1967, is “incompatible with our values.”

The Vermont company, which its founders, both Jewish, sold to the British company Unilever two decades ago, said it would not renew the contract of its Israeli licensee, which expires at the end of 2022. The statement added that the company “will stay in Israel through a different arrangement,” but did not elaborate.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid termed the territories’ boycott a “shameful surrender to antisemitism, to BDS, and to all that is wrong with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse.”

Some U.S. Jewish groups have called for a stateside boycott of Ben & Jerry’s, and several Jewish-owned stores in the U.S. have said they will no longer carry its products.

The Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has chosen Tel Aviv’s two-year-old ToHa skyscraper as the overall winner in the office building category of its 18th annual awards program.

ToHa is located at the intersection of Derech Hashalom, Yigal Allon and Totzeret Haaretz streets.

Tower 1 of two planned towers, completed early in 2019, has 28 floors. It was designed by Israeli artist/architect Ron Arad of London, who worked with local architect Avner Yashar, in the shape of an iceberg, the architect said. The atrium of the building is configured as a large, seven-story-high main lobby space that continues upward, culminating in a generous skylight on the public roof.

In May 2019, ToHa Tower 1 obtained LEED Platinum certification.

Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, is a day of mourning for a series of events that all, eerily, occurred on the 9th of Av. Next to Yom Kippur, Tisha B’Av is the most important fast day in the Jewish calendar. It marks the final day of a three-week period of intense mourning for the events that led to the loss of Jewish independence with the destruction of the holy shrines of Jewish life.

• 1313 BCE: Moses’ spies return with bad reports about the Land of Israel. (Numbers 13-14)
• 423 BCE: First Temple, built by King Solomon, is destroyed by the legions of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
• 69 CE: Second Temple, built by Ezra and Nehemiah, is destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus.
• 135 CE: The Bar Kochba revolt is crushed by Roman Emperor Hadrian.
• 1290: Jews are expelled from England by King Edward I.
• 1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign the edict of the Spanish expulsion.
• 1914 Germany declares war on Russia, sparking WWI.

A stampede early on April 30 at a mountainside religious celebration for Lag B’Omer on Mount Meron in northern Israel that drew tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews left at least 45 people dead and scores more injured.

By some estimates, about 100,000 people were crammed together to celebrate. The deadly crush began around 1 a.m. Friday, as celebrants began to pour out of a section of a compound where festivities were being held. The death toll of 45, released by the Health Ministry, made it one of the worst civilian disasters in Israeli history. About 150 were injured.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews traditionally gather at Mount Meron for the holiday, to dance and make bonfires around the tomb of a prominent rabbi from antiquity. Early reports indicated that a grandstand had collapsed. But as details emerged, it appeared that the crush may have occurred after celebrants slipped on stone steps leading into a narrow passageway with a metal-floored slope, setting off what the news site Ynet described as a “human avalanche.”

The annual gathering on Mount Meron, which is in the Galilee, takes place near the mystical city of Safed. The Lag B’Omer holiday is linked in Jewish tradition to the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans in the second century A.D. [Photo Ishay Jeusalemite/Behadrei Haredim, via Associated Press]

The Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle has agreed to give $240,000 to the descendants of Jewish Holocaust victims who under duress sold the 1635 painting “Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well” by Bernardo Strozzi. The painting is one of several artworks that the Dutch government’s Restitutions Committee has acknowledged as looted art, yet the committee has refused to return the paintings because the “public’s right to have access to the culturally significant works outweighs the interests of the rightful owner.”

The best known item on display in the Netherlands is “Painting With Houses” by Wassily Kandinsky. The painting is valued at $20 million. Amsterdam’s municipal museum, Stedelijk, acknowledges it was looted but has not offered to compensate the rightful owners, who sued the museum and lost.

The current violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip erupted with a barrage of missiles from the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza toward Jerusalem. This attack set off a soundtrack of rocket attack sirens accompanied by Israel’s air defense system, the Iron Dome, whose interceptor missiles blew up incoming rockets into a bizarre fireworks-like display.

Although the Iron Dome has been in use since 2011, this most recent conflict, with its intense media coverage, has exposed the capabilities of the Iron Dome to the Israeli public and to the world. As heavy rocket fire reached multiple and widespread locations across the country, Israelis were largely protected.

The Iron Dome is made up of three parts: radar, a control center, and interceptor missiles. Radar senses when a rocket is launched against Israel; the control center calculates its flight path; interceptor missiles are launched to detonate the rocket before it gets too close to its target. Each Iron Dome launcher holds 20 interceptor missiles.

The Iron Dome protects Israelis from short-range threats, such as rockets, but not other weaponry. But the Iron Dome is supplemented by an aerial defense system called David’s Sling and by Arrow, which target more sophisticated ballistic missiles. Accuracy is estimated at 95 percent, which means that the alarms and defense systems have saved countless lives.  

A 1,600-year-old mosaic pavement that was uncovered recently in Yavne, in central Israel, will be placed on display at the city’s cultural center. The project is a joint initiative of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the Yavne Municipality, and the Israel Land Authority.

The flooring dates to the Byzantine period (4th to 5th century C.E.) and was discovered during large-scale excavations launched ahead of the development of a new neighborhood in the ancient city.

IAA archaeologists Elie Haddad and Hagit Torgë said that they initially believed the flooring to be “simple white mosaic paving belonging to yet another industrial installation,” but once they treated it with acid to remove its patina coat, “a colorful mosaic carpet was revealed, ornamented with geometric motifs. The well-preserved flooring “may have been part of a splendid residential building in a wealthy neighborhood,” they said.