Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — After a dozen Jewish Democrats in Congress asked Rep. Ilhan Omar to clarify remarks in which she grouped Hamas and the Taliban with the United States and Israel, she complied — but not before she got something off her chest. An insinuation in the request that she was covering for terrorists was Islamophobic, Omar said in a tweet, and she exhorted her colleagues to call first next time. “On Monday, I asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken about ongoing International Criminal Court investigations,” Omar said Thursday afterno...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Biden administration official said the U.S. government supports restocking Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system after it was depleted by last month’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Dozens of House members from both parties have said they would push Congress to appropriate funds to replenish the system should Israel make the request. Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, was here on Thursday reportedly seeking $1 billion for Iron Dome. In addition to Iron Dome funding, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Ea...
(JTA) — The organization that advises U.S. Jewish communities on security matters said it recorded an 80 percent spike in antisemitic acts in the last month amid Israel’s 11-day war with Hamas. One of the causes, according to the Secure Community Network, was disinformation spread on social media during and since the exchange of rocket fire. “There may be foreign actors spreading information and disinformation, often tied to antisemitic tropes,” Michael Masters, its CEO, said Tuesday in an interview. “We’re seeing a clear rise in the calls f...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden will name Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, to be his ambassador to Israel. The Times of Israel first reported the decision. Multiple sources close to the Biden administration confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Nides was the pick for ambassador and would be announced soon. The White House said it had nothing yet to announce. It was down to Nides and Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman who for years has...
(JTA) — The Biden administration increased its assistance to Palestinians by $38.5 million in the wake of the latest Gaza war and pledged to abide by U.S. laws that would keep the money from going to terrorists. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the additional funds that the administration plans to steer to the Palestinians. His statement came a day after Blinken concluded his trip to Israel and the Palestinian areas to discuss sustaining the ceasefire that ended the 11-day rocket exchange this month between Israel and H...
(JTA) — As reports of attacks on Jews broke into the news late last week, Democratic lawmakers moved quickly to condemn antisemitism — but they didn’t stop there. “We’ve recently seen disturbing antisemitic attacks and a troubling rise in Islamophobia,” Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermont senator who is a leader of American progressives, tweeted Friday. “If you are committed to a future of equality and peaceful coexistence, please stand united against anyone who promotes hatred of any kind.” Numerous other progressives soon followed suit,...
(JTA) - In the seven years since the last war in Gaza, Israel and Hamas have repeatedly come close to reigniting the conflict. But the peace on the Gaza border has largely held - until this week. Since the end of Israel's last major offensive in the summer of 2014, there has been unrest in Jerusalem and elsewhere, terror attacks across Israel and protests on the Gaza border that turned deadly. Many of the tensions that have bubbled up in recent weeks between Israelis and Palestinians are not new...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Saying that Israel has a right to defend itself, President Joe Biden has sent his top Israeli-Palestinian negotiator to the region in a bid to deescalate the deepening conflict there. During a White House news conference Wednesday (May 12) afternoon, Biden said he had just spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had an “expectation and hope” that the conflict would end soon. “My national security staff and Defense staff has been in constant contact with their counterparts in the Middle East — not just with...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last year, when AIPAC wanted a Democrat to sponsor the pro-Israel lobby’s signature legislative effort, it turned to one of its most reliable partners in the Senate, Chris Coons of Delaware. Coons contributed to a result the group wanted: having the $3.8 billion in U.S. defense assistance Israel gets each year codified into law. Yet on Monday, as fighting between Israel and terrorist groups in Gaza escalated, Coons took to Twitter to commit what at an AIPAC conference would certainly elicit boos: He said in specific and har...
(JTA) — Tensions among Jewish groups allied with the Biden administration blew into the open this week when a Democratic pro-Israel group briefly called a longtime Jewish leader an enabler of antisemitism — a sign of how potent a debate over a definition of antisemitism has become. Nancy Kaufman led Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council for 20 years, from 1990 to 2010. She has also led the National Council for Jewish Women. Many progressive Jewish leaders have said she would be a good choice for President Joe Biden’s antisemitism monitor...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — One Wednesday in October 2007, seven Jewish lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee did something extraordinary: They ignored the pleas of the Jewish establishment. Jewish politicos were often happy to advance the agenda of the Jewish groups because it lined up with their ideals. On this occasion, several powerhouse lobbying groups in the Jewish community were pressing the committee not to advance a bill that would recognize as a genocide the 1915 Ottoman massacres of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during W...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Washington's National Cathedral, known for its role during presidential inaugurations and other days of national import, is honoring Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust memoirist with a bust, making him the first Jew to be so honored. Or maybe not the first, depending on where you sit. "I would say he is the first 20th-century Jewish person," the cathedral's dean, Rev. Randy Hollerith, said when asked how Wiesel came to be the first Jew to earn a sculpted depiction at the cathedral. Asked if he was referring...
(JTA) - Walter Mondale, the former vice president who represented a time in American history when being pro-Israel and progressive were often synonymous, has died at 93. He passed away Monday at his home in Minneapolis, multiple sources reported. From the launch of his national political career, Mondale was close to the national Jewish and pro-Israel communities. He found in those organizations willing partners in his endeavors to expand civil rights, and they found in him an avid advocate of...
(JTA) - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he was ready to "remove obstacles" to renewing U.S.-Israel ties, apparently signaling a willingness to stop the payments to the families of Palestinians who have killed Israelis that have proven to be a stumbling block. Speaking Sunday to J Street's annual conference, Abbas also urged the participants of the liberal Middle East policy group's forum to lobby Congress "to repeal all laws that block the road toward enhancing...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Days after resuming U.S. funding for the troubled U.N. agency that administers to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the Biden administration says it has the commitment of UNRWA to “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism, racism or discrimination. “UNWRA has made clear their rock-solid commitments to the United States on the issues of transparency, accountability, and neutrality in all its operations,” a senior U.S. official said in an interview this weekend, describing the process that led last week to the administr...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations are by their nature calls for accountability for atrocities past and present. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, used the occasion to take his own department to task for its neglect of Jews during the Nazi era, and to call for action on behalf of the persecuted today. Blinken, delivering the keynote address Thursday at the event organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, savaged the World War II-era assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, for blocking the entry...
(JTA) - Prince Philip, perhaps the closest member of the British royal family to Jews and Jewish causes, has died at 99. Buckingham Palace announced his death on Friday, April 9. Philip, who had been married to Queen Elizabeth II for 74 years, since five years before she ascended to the throne, had been in declining health for some time. Also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, Philip's support for Jewish and pro-Israel causes ran deep. His mother, Princess Alice of Greece, sheltered a Jewish...
(JTA) — Drawing a line between its mission of Holocaust remembrance and the ravages inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, the March of the Living honored Dr. Anthony Fauci with an award for “moral courage in medicine” on the eve of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust commemoration day. The award to Fauci, who for decades has been the top U.S. official handling infectious diseases, culminated in an online program on Wednesday called “Medicine and Morality.” In his acceptance remarks, Fauci referred to Maimonides, the medieval Jewish scholar and...
(JTA) — Iran and the United States will join talks in Vienna next week that aim to return all parties to the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. There will not be direct contact between Iran and the United States at the in-person meeting, according to a European Union statement issued after a virtual meeting Thursday of the countries left in the deal — China, Russia, Iran, Britain, Germany and France. Instead, a coordinator will make “separate contacts” with “all JCPOA participants and the United States.” The Trump administration pulled the Un...
(JTA) — The Biden administration removed sanctions that President Donald Trump had imposed on International Criminal Court officials while continuing to decry the ICC’s work targeting U.S. and Israeli personnel. “These decisions reflect our assessment that the measures adopted were inappropriate and ineffective,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday in a statement. “We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations,” Blinken said, referring to separate investigation...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nancy Kaufman, the former CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, said this week that she had been in touch with the Biden administration about becoming this country’s newly empowered anti-Semitism monitor. Kaufman revealed her contact in the Forward in a story about how progressive Jewish groups appear to be coalescing around her candidacy. She confirmed it on Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying that a number of people outside the administration urged her to apply for the job, so she made her int...
(JTA) - When Rayhan Asat attended a Passover seder last month, its contours seemed familiar and different at once - especially the tradition of leaving a seat empty at the table. It reminded Asat, a lawyer, of leaving a seat empty for her brother, Ekpar, at her graduation from Harvard Law School in 2016. Ekpar, a member of China's Uighur minority, had been "disappeared" by the Chinese government. Jewish World Watch, an anti-genocide group that hosted the online seder for Uighurs on March 30,...
(JTA) — Steven Spielberg is donating his Genesis Prize earnings to Jewish and non-Jewish groups working to promote racial and economic justice. The prize’s foundation on Thursday announced that the film director would double the $1 million prize with his own money and split it among 10 organizations, including Black Voters Matter and the Jews of Color Initiative. “Judaism and Jewish history begin with two narratives: Genesis and Exodus, stories about creation and liberation from oppression, about the discovery of the moral voice and of human...
(JTA) — Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman known for his firebomb rhetoric, is in big trouble — in part because of the alleged foibles of a Jewish buddy, Joel Greenberg, who has earned criticism previously from his local Jewish community. The U.S. Justice Department reportedly is investigating Gaetz’s alleged sexual relationship with a girl who was 17 years old when the affair took place about two years ago. The investigation, anonymous officials told The New York Times, stemmed from a feder...
(JTA) — There was virtual wine spilled and nostalgia for gefilte fish, as well as a serious message to consider the role of women in the bible. Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’s Jewish husband, hosted the White House’s first-ever online Passover seder on Thursday, two nights before the holiday formally begins. “We are gathered today for the first Passover celebration of the Biden Harris administration, and I’m excited to join you as the first-ever second gentleman, married to the first woman to serve as Vice President of the Unite...
