Maasiyahu Prison is a minimum-security prison in Ramle, Israel, run by the Israel Prison Service.
Prisoners who have proven responsible have access to various places of employment and education programs, the right to take vacations from prison, as well as rehabilitative treatment through various methods including therapy animals. Prisoners who have a history of problematic behavior are held under tighter security and are not permitted to take vacations. There is a special wing for religious inmates called the Torani wing, also known as "Beis Medrash Maasiyahu", where inmates spend most of the day praying and studying Torah and other sacred Jewish texts in two seminaries and do not have access to television and newspapers. The whole prison complex is located in the city of Ramla in the Central District of Israel.
In 2002, inmates declared a hunger strike to protest what they viewed as improper medical and legal treatment.
In 2004, public workers from the nearby town of Lod, who had not been paid in months, chained themselves to the gates of the prison in a public protest, demanding to be arrested so they could be fed the free prison food.
In 2005, a wing of the prison was converted to house those detained while protesting Sharon's plan to withdraw from 21 settlements in Gaza and another 4 in the West Bank. The new wing can house 900 detainees.
The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish religious-political organization in the United States, whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary". It is classified as "a right wing terrorist group" by the FBI since 2001, and has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Most terrorism watch groups classify the group as inactive.
Ami Popper is an Israeli mass murderer, convicted for the killing of 7 people in Rishon Lezion on May 20, 1990. Known as the Oyoun Qara massacre to Palestinians, for unknown reasons Popper killed and wounded Palestinian men at a bus stop in Rishon Lezion, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to 40 years.
Moshe Katsav is an Israeli former politician who was the eighth President of Israel from 2000 to 2007. He was also a leading Likud member of the Israeli Knesset and a minister in its cabinet. He was the first Mizrahi Jew to be elected to presidency.
Shas is a Haredi religious political party in Israel. Founded in 1984 under the leadership of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Israeli Sephardi chief rabbi, who remained its spiritual leader until his death in October 2013, it primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews. The party works to end prejudice and discrimination against the Sephardic and Mizrahi community, and highlights economic issues and social justice.
Yigal Amir is an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin. At the time of the assassination he was a law student at Bar-Ilan University. The assassination took place on November 4, 1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel. Amir is serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under aggravating circumstances. He was later sentenced to an additional eight years for conspiracy to murder.
Baruch Meir Marzel is an Israeli politician and activist. He is an Orthodox Jew originally from Boston who now lives in the Jewish community of Hebron in Tel Rumeida with his wife and nine children. He was the leader of the far right-oriented Jewish National Front party. He is now a member of Otzma Yehudit. He was the "right-hand man" of assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, acting as spokesman for the American rabbi's Kach organization for ten years. The mainstream Israeli press has described him as an "extreme right-wing activist".
Ehud Olmert is an Israeli politician and lawyer. He served as the 12th Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009 and before that as a cabinet minister from 1988 to 1992 and from 2003 to 2006. Between his first and second stints as a cabinet member, he served as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. After serving as PM he was sentenced to serve a prison term over convictions for accepting bribes and for obstruction of justice during his terms as mayor of Jerusalem and as trade minister.
Gila Katsav is an Israeli public figure who served as the First Lady of Israel from 2000 until 2007 as the wife of former President Moshe Katsav.
Jewish religious terrorism is religious terrorism committed by extremists within Judaism.
Shlomo Benizri is an Israeli politician and member of the Shas party. He represented Shas in the Knesset between 1992 and 2008, serving as Deputy Health Minister, Minister of Health, and Labor and Social Welfare Minister during the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was later convicted for accepting bribes, breach of trust, conspiring to commit a crime, and obstruction of justice, and served a prison sentence.
Ya'akov Yosef was an Israeli rabbi and politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Shas between 1984 and 1988.
Events in the year 2009 in Israel.
Lehava is a far-right and Jewish supremacist organization based in Israel that strictly opposes Jewish assimilation, objecting to most personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews. It is opposed to the Christian presence in Israel. It has an anti-miscegenation focus, denouncing marriages between Jews and non-Jews forbidden by Orthodox Jewish law.
Kach was a radical Orthodox Jewish, ultranationalist political party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971, based on his Jewish-Orthodox-nationalist ideology, the party earned a single seat in the Knesset in the 1984 election, after several electoral failures. However, it was barred from participating in the next election in 1988 under the revised Knesset Elections Law banning parties that incited racism. After Kahane's assassination in 1990, the party split, with Kahane Chai breaking away from the main Kach faction. The party was also barred from standing in the 1992 election, and both organisations were banned outright in 1994.
The Annapolis Conference was a Middle East peace conference held on 27 November 2007, at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, United States. The conference aimed to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process and implement the "Roadmap for peace". The conference ended with the issuing of a joint statement from all parties. After the Annapolis Conference, the negotiations were continued.
The Holyland Case, named for the Holyland Park building complex in Jerusalem, was a high-profile corruption case in which top Israeli officials were charged with bribery and money laundering, among them former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupolianski. Of the 13 defendants, three were acquitted and ten, including Olmert, were found guilty.
Bezalel Yoel Smotrich is an Israeli lawyer and politician. The leader of the Religious Zionist Party, he previously served as a Knesset member for Yamina. He is also the co-founder of the NGO Regavim, an organization that monitors and pursues legal action in the Israeli court system against constructions undertaken by Palestinians, Bedouins, and other Arabs in Israel and the West Bank without Israeli permits.
Yishai Schlissel is a convicted Israeli criminal. He stabbed marchers during the Jerusalem gay pride parade in 2005, for which he served ten years in prison. On 30 July 2015, during the 2015 Jerusalem gay pride, he stabbed 16-year-old Shira Banki to death, and wounded six other people. The incident occurred just three weeks after his release from prison. On 24 August, Schlissel was indicted for murder, six counts of attempted murder, and wounding under aggravating circumstances, and detained until the end of proceedings. On 26 June 2016, he was sentenced to life plus 31 years in prison, as well as a fine of NIS 2,064,000 in damages.
The Jerusalem gay pride parade is an annual pride parade taking place in Jerusalem. Since the first March for Pride and Tolerance in 2002, Jerusalem Pride—"Love Without Border"—has become an established event in Jerusalem, each year bringing in additional partners and supporters.
Coordinates: 31°56′9.25″N34°52′59.41″E / 31.9359028°N 34.8831694°E