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Articles written by ron kampeas


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  • For Jewish Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are a heroic new Black-Jewish duo

    Ron Kampeas|Jan 22, 2021

    (JTA) — Two days after his election to the Senate helped tip the balance of power in Washington, Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff found another historical echo in his victory. In a Twitter thread, Ossoff described his trajectory from a teenage intern for John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights hero who died last year, to U.S. senator. “And now a Jewish man he mentored and a Black man who was his pastor have been elected to represent the State of Georgia in the U.S. Senate,” Ossoff said. “I know Congressman Lewis is looking down on us t...

  • Jewish nonprofits to get advice about securing slices of $284B pandemic relief bill

    Ron Kampeas|Jan 1, 2021

    (JTA) — Nearly a third of the $900 billion Congress is set to approve in a pandemic relief will go to a new round of payroll protection, and the Jewish Federations of North America is set to reprise the role it played earlier this year and explain how nonprofits can get their share. “We are pulling back together again the team of experts both from within the JFNA and lay leaders who train themselves on the program to offer volunteer support to help fill out forms and connect banks and such,” Eric Fingerhut, the group’s CEO, said in an intervi...

  • Kushner kids pulled from school

    Ron Kampeas|Nov 20, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump pulled their children out of a Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., two weeks before Election Day and three weeks after an outbreak of COVID-19 cases in and around the White House. The couple’s children had attended the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital since moving to Washington in 2017 after Donald Trump, Ivanka’s father, became president. Their three kids started a different school, the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in suburban Maryland, on Oct. 19. “They withdrew...

  • Sudan will normalize ties with Israel

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 30, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - Sudan will become the third Arab country in the past two months to normalize ties with Israel, continuing the trend of Arab states' willingness to advance ties with the Jewish state even without a peace agreement with the Palestinians. President Donald Trump announced the agreement on Friday. According to a joint statement released by Israel, Sudan and the U.S., the two countries will "end the state of belligerence between their nations." The statement also noted that the...

  • Hadassah, others block takeover

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 30, 2020

    (JTA) — A coalition of Jewish groups including the likes of Hadassah and B’nai B’rith International has temporarily blocked a plan by Orthodox and right-wing parties to take over top positions throughout the World Zionist Congress, the Jewish National Fund and other crucial groups that spend $1 billion annually on international Jewish causes. Under the plan reported this week in Israeli media, the Likud and Orthodox parties of the World Zionist Congress would have reserved for themselves top positions at these groups, including the Jewis...

  • In an Arab first, Bahraini institution joins with State Dept. to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 30, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - A Bahraini institute has signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and delegitimization of Israel. The memorandum of understanding, signed Thursday in Washington, D.C., marks the first time an Arab country has embraced a key Trump administration agenda item, to get countries to include anti-Zionism and some forms of harsh criticism of Israel in their definitions of anti-Semitism. It comes as the Trump administration has in recent...

  • 4 Jews are running for Senate in 2020 - including 2 who could help turn it blue

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 30, 2020

    (JTA) — Four Jewish candidates are among those vying for 35 open Senate seats this year — and two of them are seen as contenders to convert Republican-held seats to Democratic. All of the Jewish Senate candidates are Democrats or supported by the Democratic Party. (Ten of the 43 Jews in the running for House of Representatives slots are Republicans.) They include a doctor who has killed a bear, a scientist who makes a mean matzoh ball soup, a son of a former vice presidential candidate and a star of the anti-Trump resistance on the cam...

  • Poll: American Jews set to vote overwhelmingly for Joe Biden

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 30, 2020

    (JTA) — Jewish voters are set to vote 75 percent to 22 percent for Joe Biden, according to a poll by the American Jewish Committee. The poll released Monday shows the Democratic nominee expanding his support among Jewish voters from a 67-30 split in a poll last month and it includes other signs that President Donald Trump is faring poorly among Jewish voters. Trump’s record on bigotry may be the animating factor in his poor performance: Asked which candidate in the Nov. 3 presidential election would better handle anti-Semitism, respondents prod...

  • State Department to label 3 human rights groups anti-Semitic

    Ron Kampeas and Ben Sales|Oct 30, 2020

    By Ron Kampeas, Ben Sales WASHINGTON (JTA) — In an unusual move, the State Department is planning to formally identify three large international human rights organizations as anti-Semitic, citing disputed aspects of the groups’ agendas. Elan Carr, the department’s anti-Semitism monitor, is planning to release a statement calling on governments not to support Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam, congressional sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The planned statement was first reported by Politico on Wednesday, just as as...

  • Federations and Orthodox groups call for quadrupling security funds for nonprofits

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 23, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two Orthodox umbrella groups and the Jewish Federations of North America joined a faith groups’ letter to congressional appropriators asking them to quadruple funds for security grants for vulnerable nonprofits, to $360 million. The letter, also signed by Christian, Sikh and Muslim groups, says the $90 million available has run out. “At a time of increasing extremism and antagonism towards different religious groups and religion in general, we believe significant increased funding for this important government program in fi...

  • US sanctions cut Iranian banks off from the world

    Ron Kampeas|Oct 23, 2020

    (JTA) — New U.S. sanctions on Iran, which target 18 Iranian financial institutions and penalize non-Iranian institutions who deal with them, effectively cut the Middle Eastern country off from the world finance system. The sanctions deprive “the Islamic Republic of Iran of funds to carry out its support for terrorist activities and nuclear extortion that threatens the world,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. The sanctions effectively cut off Iran from world markets because of the preeminence worldwide of the U.S. dolla...

  • White House ceremony celebrates new era for Israel, UAE and Bahrain

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 25, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - Benjamin Netanyahu has complained for years about Arab leaders telling their people one thing in Arabic and diplomats saying another to Western audiences in English. Not on Tuesday. Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, was on the White House lawn speaking - in Arabic - about the "innate principle" of peace and thanking the Israeli prime minister for helping to bring it about. If the agreements signed Tuesday by leaders of t...

  • Biden leads Trump 67-30 among Jewish voters, survey finds

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 25, 2020

    (JTA) — A survey of Jewish voters shows 67 percent plan to vote for Joe Biden in November and 30 percent plan to vote for Donald Trump. The numbers in the survey released Monday by the Jewish Electorate Institute broke the same way when voters were asked about President Trump’s performance: 67 percent said they disapprove and 30 percent said they approve. The survey suggested gains for Trump among Jewish voters since 2016, when Hillary Clinton won 71 percent of the vote to Trump’s 24 percent. Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in 2012, won 3...

  • Jewish umbrella body comes to a decision: Not to decide

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 25, 2020

    (JTA) — The main foreign policy umbrella for the U.S. Jewish community came to a decision to not come to a decision on whether its members inappropriately disparage one another. Earlier this year, HIAS, the Jewish community’s lead immigration advocacy group, accused the Zionist Organization of America, its fellow member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of disparagement. Klein had among other things said HIAS was not a Jewish organization. HIAS sought redress under the Conference’s rules, which could result...

  • Biden says Trump's foreign policy is bad for Israel

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 25, 2020

    (JTA) — At a virtual fundraiser organized by J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, Joe Biden said that President Donald Trump is bad for Israel because he runs a feckless foreign policy. “Trump’s put Israel in danger by tearing up the Iran nuclear deal and replaced it with nothing,” Biden said Thursday. “He’s allowed Israel’s foes to take residence in Syria, a dangerous power vacuum has formed. He’s undermined the stability of self-determination for the Palestinians, undercutting hope for a viable two-state solution any ch...

  • Kamala Harris tells Jewish supporters aid to Israel will not be conditional in a Biden administration

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 4, 2020

    (JTA) — Kamala Harris, the California senator who is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, told Jewish supporters that Joe Biden, the presidential nominee, would not place any conditions on US aid to Israel. “Joe has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes and I couldn’t agree more,” Harris said Wednesday in a call arranged by the Biden campaign for Jewish donors. “The Biden Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented m...

  • Nikki Haley cites Trump's Israel policies in convention speech

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 4, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted President Donald Trump’s Israel policies to make the case he has advanced a robust foreign policy. Haley depicted Joe Biden, the former vice president, and President Barack Obama as practicing a foreign policy of “weakness,” including their administration’s dealings with Iran. “Obama and Biden let Iran get away with murder and literally sent them a plane full of cash,” Haley said. “President Trump did the right thing and ripped up the Iran nuclear deal...

  • Father of daughter killed at Parkland, praises Trump at RNC

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 4, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was among the victims of a gunman who attacked a high school in Parkland, Florida, delivered remarks at the opening night of the Republican convention. Pollack, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, has praised the president in the past for emphasizing school safety instead of gun control. “The president did what he said he would do,” Pollack, who is Jewish, said Monday. “He took action. He formed the School Safety Commission that issued dozens of recommendations to make schools safe....

  • Lee Zeldin, one of the 2 Jewish Republicans in Congress, is in a dead heat in his House race

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 4, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - Lee Zeldin, the Jewish Long Island Republican congressman, made the case for President Donald Trump by talking up his own service to his constituents and telling a harrowing personal story. In getting a good word in for himself, Zeldin's pitch for Trump Wednesday night was affecting and also typical of the genre: He described the premature birth of his twins, and how the expertise of the medical staff who saved them engendered an affection that helped spur him to ask Trump...

  • Rabbis, family, arguments and anxiety: All the Jewish scenes from the Democratic convention

    Ron Kampeas|Sep 4, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - There were rabbis, there were arguments, there was fretting over the future, there was mishpacha, but snacks you had to bring yourself. The first virtual convention, held by Democrats online because of the coronavirus pandemic, had many of the same Jewish moments as real-life conventions of the past. They included both rabbinic invocations from the main stage and side rooms with hobnobbing among Jews from across the country, even if those rooms lacked kosher nosh this time aro...

  • Gun control activists at DNC

    Ron Kampeas|Aug 28, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - Gabby Giffords, the Jewish former congresswoman who became a leader in the gun control movement after being shot by an assailant in the head in 2011, opened the third night of the Democratic convention with an appeal to elect Joe Biden president. "We can let the shooting continue or we can act," Giffords said in a recorded video that opened the proceedings Wednesday at the convention, held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. "We can protect our families, our...

  • John Lewis and the Jews: 6 moments that showcase an enduring alliance

    Ron Kampeas|Jul 31, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — When John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia, died at 80 over the weekend, Jews in America and abroad lost an ally of nearly six decades. Lewis never tired of telling folks to “get into good trouble,” to defy the authorities and the conventional wisdom. It was a creed that guided him as he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington; that led to police severely beating him in Selma, Alabama, in 1965; and that underscored his 33-year career in Congress. He also had a close relationship with the Jewis...

  • Despite pressure from progressives, no major changes in Democratic platform on Israel

    Ron Kampeas|Jul 24, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Centrists on the platform-writing committee of the Democratic National Committee overrode progressives who wanted the platform to condemn Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The 2020 platform only alludes to the occupation, preserves Israel’s defense aid and rejects the movement to boycott Israel. But it does warn against annexation, the move that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering for portions of the West Bank. The platform has not yet been released publicly, but the Jewish Telegraphic Agency obtai...

  • Evangelical says nixing West Bank annexation could cost Trump the election

    Ron Kampeas|Jul 24, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel’s potential annexation of parts of the West Bank may not be a top election issue for American Jews, or even a top issue right now for most Israelis. But some evangelical Christians in America are hoping to make it an animating issue for evangelical voters in this fall’s presidential election. That’s especially true for Mike Evans, the evangelical writer who founded a museum celebrating Christian supporters of Israel, the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem. His “Jerusalem Prayer Team” Facebook page has mo...

  • Chuck Schumer and 2 other key pro-Israel Democrats warn Israel against annexation

    Ron Kampeas|Jul 3, 2020

    WASHINGTON (JTA) - Three of Israel's most stalwart boosters among Democrats in Congress are warning the country against annexing parts of the West Bank. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and Sens. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Robert Menendez of New Jersey released a statement Friday saying they were "compelled to express opposition to the proposed unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank." The three senators are only the latest Democrats in Congress to warn Israel...

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