Playboy approved for Israel television

jerusalem (jta) | The Playboy Channel received permission to broadcast in Israel.

The decision by an 11-justice panel at Israel’s High Court on March3 brought to an end three years of judicial debate over whether soft-core pornography should be allowed on Israeli cable stations.

“The Playboy Channel’s content is relatively mild,” the High Court said in rejecting a petition submitted by a rare coalition of feminists and Orthodox politicians.

It was not immediately clear when Israel’s three main cable servers would begin offering Playboy.

Teens convicted for terror attempt

jerusalem (jta) | An Israeli military court convicted three would-be terrorists, ages 12, 13 and 15.

The three boys from a Palestinian village near Nablus were found guilty Wednesday, March 3, of belonging to Islamic Jihad and planning an attack on the nearby Israeli city of Afula.

They were arrested last week while preparing homemade guns. Palestinian security officials dismissed the boys as “pranksters.”

Military officials said the army was checking options for incarcerating the three; their convictions carry possible prison sentences of 10 years.

Fashion house photographs models at security fence

jerusalem (ap) | An Israeli fashion house plans to shoot its summer catalog at Israel’s West Bank security barrier this week, the company said Monday, March 2, less than a week after troops shot dead two Palestinians protesting the network of walls, wire and ditches.

A statement from the fashion house, Comme-il-faut, said the one-day shoot would take place at a section of the barrier on the edge of Jerusalem “for the purpose of creating a dialogue around boundaries.’

Victim’s wedding dress becomes Torah cover

jerusalem (jta) | The wedding dress that an Israeli terror victim never got to wear was remade into a curtain for a Torah ark.

A ceremony Thursday, March 4, marked the transformation of Nava Applebaum’s dress, which will be used at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. At the ceremony, the Kever Rachel Fund established a fund for Israeli couples who are having trouble paying for a wedding and the costs of setting up a house.

Applebaum was killed on the eve of her wedding, along with her father and five others, in a September 2003 suicide bombing at a Jerusalem cafe. Checks for the fund can be sent to Kever Rachel Fund, P.O. Box 1181, Teaneck, NJ, 07666.

Israel cracks Iran’s code, tips U.S.

jerusalem (jta) | Israeli code-breakers tipped off the United States about Iran’s nuclear buildup, according to a U.S. report.

The New Yorker magazine said recently that Israeli military intelligence intercepted encrypted communications between Iran and Pakistan a few years ago and passed the information on to Washington.