JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Updated 05/21/12 @ 03:08PM EST

• The Knesset passed a bill that provides tax benefits to Israelis who donate to West Bank settlements.
• Orthodox conversions in Israel are down by 31 percent over the past two years, according to a new report.
• Israel's Foreign Ministry summoned the South African ambassador to Israel over the publication of a notice announcing a ban on labeling as Israeli products that originate from the West Bank.
• Google will donate office space to the new applied science graduate school of Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
• The public editor of The New York Times said the paper should have credited Jewish news outlets with leading the way on coverage of the handling of haredi Orthodox sex abuse cases by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

• Lillian Jacobs, who was recently featured in a New York Times article for living on the same block for 100 years, has died.
• Officials at a Philadelphia synagogue are calling a BB gun attack on the synagogue a hate crime.
• U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano met with Israeli officials in Jerusalem to discuss security.
• The chief rabbi of Yemen has called on the country's president to allow the Jewish community and other minority groups to have seats in the country's parliament.
• The family of a Hamas leader assassinated in a hotel room in Dubai is trying to halt the release of an Israeli movie about the incident.

• Israel's Cabinet unanimously approved the establishment of an Albert Einstein museum in Jerusalem.
• Israeli writer, journalist and translator Ruth Bondy, a Holocaust survivor, returned to her birthplace to receive a prestigious literary award.
• A video distributed by an Israeli human rights organization shows Jewish settlers firing at a group of rock-throwing Palestinians as Israeli soldiers look on.
• Palestinian political movements Fatah and Hamas signed an agreement to advance the reconciliation process.
• A former security guard at a Jewish boys' school in Melbourne was committed to stand trial on charges of sexually abusing children.

• Haredi Orthodox rabbis issued grave warnings about the dangers of the Internet to a sellout crowd at Citi Field in New York.
• An Israeli Health Ministry committee has recommended that gay men be allowed to use a surrogate mother to have a child.
• At least 30,000 people participated in the Jerusalem Day parade known as the Dance of the Flags, which led to some clashes between marchers and counter-protesters.
• The former Libyan intelligence agent convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, who was released from prison for humanitarian reasons, has died.
• The surge of illegal African migrants into Israel "threatens national security and identity," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

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