JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Updated 01/20/13 @ 04:41PM EST

• Facebook apologized to an Israeli –Arab journalist for closing his Facebook account and removing posts.
• Some 200 Palestinian activists remain at a new tent city in the West Bank.
• The Latin American Jewish Congress is holding its plenary meeting in Venezuela "to strengthen the link with a community that has difficulties,” according to the organization's executive director.
• Two Bedouin men were arrested for planning terror attacks inside Israel.
• Israeli soldiers across the country began voting in Israel's elections.

• The HaTnuah Party has asked Israel's Central Elections Committee to disqualify the Jeremy Gimpel, a dual U.S. citizen on the Jewish Home Party's candidate list, for a controversial remark about the Dome of the Rock.
• Hundreds of Italian students traveled to Poland on special trips organized to mark international Holocaust Memorial Day.
• Ron Nachman, mayor of the West Bank city of Ariel for nearly 30 years, was buried in the city he founded.
• A lawmaker from Hungary’s Jobbik party who recently called for listing Jews as a “security risk” reportedly is planning a lecture tour about the “Zionist threat.”
• Nine Palestinians from eastern Jerusalem have been arrested in connection with a violent snowball attack against two haredi Orthodox men.

• Egyptian authorities seized one ton of explosives headed for Gaza.
• Haredi Orhodox Shas Party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef during his weekly sermon called the Jewish Home Party a "Jewish home for the gentiles" and said it is forbidden to vote for the party.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked a delegation of U.S. senators for their unreserved, bipartisan support for Israel and warned them that it was time to stop Iran's nuclear program.
• A history of New York Jewry took Jewish book of the year honors in the 2012 National Jewish Book Awards.
• The Orthodox Union has set a date to pick its next president in highly unusual contested elections.

• Leaders of Russia’s Jewish community have criticized a U.S. federal court ruling that fined Russia for refusing to hand over ancient Chasidic texts.
• Two-thirds of Jewish population growth in the New York area has come from two largely Orthodox neighborhoods, a study found.
• The Anti-Defamation League said disgraced designer John Galliano has changed his beliefs and now understands the evils of anti-Semitism.
• The National Jewish Democratic Council named former congressional aide Aaron Keyak its interim director.
• President Obama's new gun control proposals drew broad Jewish communal support.

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