Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) - With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the group's conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American electoral politics. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's "Political Leadership Forum" this week is closed to press. But it offers the latest...
(JTA) — In its closing session, Ohio’s legislature passed a law imposing penalties of up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for “zoom-bombing” religious services, a practice that antisemites have used to intimidate Jews. The law, “Increasing Penalties for Disturbing a Religious Service,” passed last week unanimously in the state Senate. It had previously passed in the state House, 95-1. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sought the law after discovering that disrupting a religious service was only considered a “class four misdemeanor,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — An array of Jewish groups, including the activist arm of the Reform movement, blasted the likely incoming Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, for pledging to remove Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments he has called antisemitic. The tone of the statement released Monday was unusually combative for Jewish nonprofits, insinuating that McCarthy came closer to to expressing antisemitism than Omar did. McCarthy, a California Republican whose party won a bare majority in U...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Biden administration officials launched a roundtable on antisemitism on Wednesday by describing a “rising tide of antisemitism” and likening the atmosphere in the United States to that of Europe, where Jewish worship is held under lock and key. “Right now, there is an epidemic of hate facing our country,” said Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, who convened and chaired the 90-minute session. Jewish officials represented at the meeting were impressed by how comprehensive the meeting was, saying it went beyond th...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Lee Zeldin, the Republican Jewish congressman who mounted a stronger-than-expected but failed bid to be New York’s governor, says he has decided not to run to be the chairman of the Republican National Committee. But in a sign that he expects to have continued influence despite exiting Congress, Zeldin, who has been the top-ranked Jewish Republican in the country, this week joined the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. That means he will play a key role in animating political giving by Republican Jews at a time whe...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration will base its relationship to Israel’s incoming government on the actions it takes, not the people installed in positions of power, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a speech Sunday. Blinken’s speech, to the conference of the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group J Street, was notable because it offered the first official response to deepening questions about how the White House would work with a Israeli government that includes far-right parties. Until now, sources close to the a...
LAS VEGAS (JTA) - For Republican Jews looking for an alternative to Donald Trump in 2024's presidential race, Ted Cruz presented a tantalizing choice on Saturday - at least for a few minutes. "When I arrived in the Senate 10 years ago, I set a goal to be the leading defender of Israel in the United States," the Texas senator said during his chance to address the Republican Jewish Coalition conference last weekend. The crowd packed into a ballroom deep in the gold lame reaches of the Venetian...
LAS VEGAS (JTA) — Kevin McCarthy, the likely next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said he would remove Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in part because of her criticism of Israel. He also hinted that her personal criticism of him last year was a factor. McCarthy, a California Republican whose party just won a narrow majority in the House, was speaking Saturday to the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas. “I remember what she said about me,” he said. “I remembe...
(JTA) — Elon Musk bantered with Kanye West and trolled the Anti-Defamation League this weekend, in the latest of mounting signs that he is choosing to let the platform become a free for all after acquiring it last month. West, the rapper and designer who also goes by Ye, had been banned from Twitter last month for threatening Jews; he returned to the platform Nov. 4 and was swiftly banned again after he launched a new round of anti-Jewish invective. “Testing Testing Seeing if my Twitter is unblocked,” West tweeted midday Sunday. Several hours...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel will not cooperate with an FBI investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who died in May in an exchange of fire between Palestinian and Israeli troops, Israel’s defense minister said. “The American Justice Department’s decision to investigate the regrettable death of Shireen Abu Akleh is a grave mistake,” Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister, said Monday on Twitter. “I made clear to American representatives that we stand behind Israeli soldiers, we will not cooperate...
(JTA) — Five days after Nancy Pelosi made history in 2007 as the first woman elected to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, she held an event at her alma mater, the private Roman Catholic university, Trinity Washington. She asked a rabbi, the Reform movement’s David Saperstein, to headline the event because she saw the movement as taking the lead on a crisis that deeply concerned her, in Darfur. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” Saperstein said, quoting Leviticus. Pelosi was so pleased with Saperstein’s remarks t...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden called Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him on being reelected Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu said the two would work to expand the Abraham Accords. "President Biden called me to congratulate me on my elections victory and said the U.S.-Israel alliance is as resilient as ever,' Netanyahu said Monday in Hebrew on Twitter. "I thanked President Biden for our close personal friendship of 40 years and for his commitment to the state of Israel. I told him...
(JTA) — A poll of Jewish voters showed them overwhelmingly listing abortion rights and risks to democracy as their top issues when they voted in midterm elections. The poll commissioned by J Street and another exit poll conducted on behalf of Fox News Channel and the Associated Press also showed substantial majorities of Jews voting Democratic, although they differed on how big the majorities were. That is commensurate with Jewish voting in the past, which favors Democrats two-to-one generally. The J Street poll showed 74 percent of r...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to concede this week’s election as most of the votes were counted by the end of Thursday. “The State of Israel is above any political consideration. I wish Netanyahu luck for the sake of the people of Israel and the State of Israel,” Lapid wrote in a statement. Netanyahu, meantime, has launched the negotiating process to form the next government with the far-right Religious Zionist party and haredi Orthodox parties. With a total of 64 seats,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Israeli president Isaac Herzog had a message and stuck to it: Israel and the United States are on the same page no matter who wins elections in both countries next month. "We have elections in Israel, and you're having midterm elections in the United States," Herzog told President Joe Biden in the public portion of their meeting Wednesday, Oct. 26, in the Oval Office. "But one thing is clear - and I think this visit epitomizes it best - is that our friendship and strong bond...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a gay man in a conservative-leaning area, and a Black woman from California — all are among the nearly two-dozen Jews who are hoping to enter Congress next year. Among the 46 Jewish nominees for the U.S. House of Representatives are 22 incumbents — 21 Democrats and a single Republican. (Five Jewish incumbents retired or lost a primary this cycle.) The remaining 24 are challengers or running in open seats. Using a number of nonpartisan sources, including the Cook Political Report and 2...
(JTA) — After years of negotiation and military posturing, Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered agreement that establishes maritime boundaries between the countries, allowing each to explore for fossil fuels unthreatened by the prospect of an attack. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, heading into an election next Tuesday and under fire from his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the deal concedes too much, cast the deal as a historic breakthrough. “This is a diplomatic achievement,” Lapid said at the start of the C...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, has once again said he is baffled by the lack of appreciation he feels coming from American Jews. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” he said on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” He added, “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — before it is too lat...
(JTA) — Israel’s government has approved an historic maritime accord with Lebanon, as both countries are under pressure to get the agreement signed before October ends and their leaders may change. The Israeli and U.S. governments pushed back against claims that the deal ceded too much to Lebanon. The details of the deal are not yet in place, but Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday at a press conference, hours after his cabinet approved the deal, that Israel had declined two last-minute Lebanese demands. Lebanon had wanted to rem...
(JTA) — The U.S. Air Force Academy has pledged to “correct” its processes to ensure that it does not schedule key events on major faith holidays after a mandatory training exercise took place on Yom Kippur. “The U.S. Air Force Academy recognizes the importance of the holy days of all faiths. A training event was unintentionally scheduled this week during the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur,” Lt. Col. Brian Maguire, the director of public affairs, said in a statement his office emailed Thursday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Academy’s A...
(JTA) — It started with a shirt and ended in a conflagration over antisemitism and Republican politics. Such is the extended news cycle over multiple antisemitic comments during the last week by Kanye West, the artist and provocateur who prefers to go by Ye. On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, Instagram and Twitter, West made a string of comments reflecting a range of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories. The spree culminated with West’s vow to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” DEFCON is an acronym that refers to the state of alert of Ame...
(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has emphatically encouraged dialogue with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, despite his disagreements with the center-right pro-Israel lobby and calls among the pro-Palestinian community to disengage from the group. In a recording of his meeting last month with Palestinian Americans on the sidelines of the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York City obtained by The Times of Israel, Abbas also faulted the current Biden administration for not doing enough to pressur...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - The Biden administration is still hoping to close a deal between Israel and Lebanon on a maritime border. Still, Israel is citing the deal's apparent collapse to prepare for tensions on its northern border. "Special Presidential Coordinator Amos Hochstein continues his robust engagement to bring the maritime boundary discussions to a close," a National Security Council spokeswoman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "We remain in close communication with the Israelis and...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The lawmakers thanked the representatives from the social networks giants for attending the Capitol Hill hearing on antisemitism — after all, it was not an official congressional hearing and no one was obliged to turn up. But then, after some tense exchanges last Friday, things got acrimonious quickly: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Jewish Florida Democrat who convened the hearing, said that the tech reps’ stonewalling on whether and how antisemitism would be treated will lead to congressional action. “We’re all start...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s an argument that has percolated for years in salons and on social media and now members of Congress are duking it out: What fits better into the “progressive” portmanteau, supporting or opposing Israeli policies? Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who is Palestinian American and who is the only member of Congress who opposes Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state, said Tuesday that there was no room in the progressive movement for supporters of what she called Israel’s “apartheid” government. “I want you all...
