Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(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...
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...
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...
(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...
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...
(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...
(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...
(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...
(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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 2015, the Zionist Organization of America gave John Bolton a standing ovation when he said he wanted to be U.S. president. In 2018, the ZOA gave him its Defender of Israel Award. This week, Bolton is about as far away from the presidency as he’s been in his life, and the ZOA doesn’t appear interested in defending him. Nor does the broader centrist and right-wing pro-Israel community, which lobbied for Bolton just 3 1/2 years ago to be secretary of state. Bolton is dominating headlines this week with his new tell-all book,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - House Democrats have put together a letter that they hope will unite their entire caucus in warning Israel against annexation of part of the West Bank. The letter, now circulating among the party's House caucus and obtained exclusively by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, warns Israel about the dangers annexation would pose to Israelis and to the region. But it does not hint at any danger to the U.S.-Israel relationship and restates the signers' commitment to the relationship....
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Four Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives — Jan Schakowsky, Ted Deutch, David E. Price, and Bradley S. Schneider — are circulating a letter among their colleagues that would warn Israel of the perils of annexation. The full text is below. Dear Colleague, Recent reports indicate the Israeli government may soon consider annexation in the West Bank. We believe unilateral annexation, and unilateral action by any side, would jeopardize long-standing efforts to achieve a viable two-state solution that addresses the aspira...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - As many Jewish organizations across the United States sent out statements decrying racism over the past week, the head of the Zionist Organization of America took a different approach. Black Lives Matter "is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative-Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros-funded extremist group of haters," ZOA President Mort Klein tweeted on Saturday. That tweet, expressing anger as others sought to show solidarity with nationwide...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - The leading pro-Israel lobby in the United States is telling lawmakers that they are free to criticize Israel's looming annexation plans - just as long as the criticism stops there. Two sources - a congressional aide and a donor - say the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is delivering that guidance in Zoom meetings and phone calls with lawmakers. The message is unusual because the group assiduously discourages public criticism of Israel. But these are...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Israel's announcement last week that an Israeli consortium would build Sorek 2, the world's largest desalination plant, surprised many who had been watching the deal: The contract had been expected to go to a Hong Kong-based company. But that was before the Trump administration ramped up pressure on Israel to diminish its ties to China. For years, Israel has been working to dramatically expand trade with China, one of the world's largest markets. That push is suddenly running...
