Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—Democrats in Congress passed a resolution on Friday saying that only a two-state outcome would bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. The nonbinding resolution approved largely on party lines has been subject to considerable behind-the-scenes drama since its introduction in the spring by Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif. The only Democrats who voted against were the Squad, the grouping of four freshman congresswomen who to varying degrees have been critical of Israeli government policies. Lowenthal cast the resolution as a m...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Allan Gerson, a lawyer who made it easier for the families of terror victims to sue foreign governments, has died. His daughter Daniela told family and friends that he passed away Sunday, Dec. 1, 2019, at his Washington, D.C., home. His wife, Joan Nathan, the cookbook author and authority on Jewish cuisine, told The Washington Post that Gerson, who was 74, died from complications from the degenerative brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob. In 1992, by his mid-40s, Gerson had already made a name for himself as a member of the U.S. Dep...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Last month, Bernie Sanders wrote about his support for Israel, calling the nation an “enormous achievement” and “a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.” A few weeks later Linda Sarsour, a prominent Arab-American activist and an official Sanders campaign surrogate, said that support for Israel as a state is unacceptable in the progressive movement. The contrast is sharp and, one would think, irreconcilable. Neither Sarsour nor the Sanders campaign has answered the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment. Le...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—It’s the perennial anomaly of Jewish voter surveys: Vast majorities feel an attachment to Israel, but relatively few are thinking about the Jewish state when they cast their vote. On the day of last year’s midterm congressional elections, J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, asked Jewish voters to name their two most important issues. Just 4 percent chose Israel. The same survey found that 65 percent said they were somewhat or very emotionally attached to Israel. The J Street survey is not an outlier. The A...
ATLANTA (JTA)-For Jewish voters, Bernie Sanders mentioning the Palestinians seemingly out of nowhere during last week's presidential debate here was a striking moment. But for some Jews in this state, what resonated most was the applause from a majority black audience. The setting for the most recent Democratic debate was a gleaming symbol of African-American success: film mogul Tyler Perry's new studio complex in the southwest part of this city. Much of the crowd in the soundstage named for Opr...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Nita Lowey, who is retiring after 32 years in Congress, fields a question about her legacy as a Jewish lawmaker. No trouble there-she talks about Israel and her Jewish pride all the time. Then there's one about her legacy as one of the pioneering women in Congress. That one goes down easy, too: Her office is plastered with photos signifying how far women have come in American politics. But when a reporter asks a question combining the two-about her legacy as a female Jewish lawm...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, is making conditioning U.S. aid to Israel on halting settlement expansion a plank ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. “Our aid is not intended to be a blank check,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group’s president, said Sunday evening, at the group’s annual conference, ahead of the first appearance at the conference of a Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Ben-Ami called on candidates to reverse Trump administration policies that have favored I...
Taking a turn on J Street J Street convened its eighth annual conference this week, its 11th year of existence. The gathering attracted 4,000 activists and marked a major turning point in how Democrats treat Israel: Withholding aid to pressure the Jewish state to comply with policy is now an idea that is very much on the table. More accurately, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group delivered its partial OK to action that’s already well underway because of pressure from groups sharply critical of Israel, including IfNotNow. Plenty of t...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When it comes to pressuring Israel, Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have a specific plan. The senator from Massachusetts, who has caught up in polling with front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination, now faces intensified scrutiny as a newly viable contender. And what has emerged is that Warren is vague about how she would pressure Israel if she perceives it to be acting contrary to U.S. interests. In a video submitted to this week’s annual conference of J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, Warren offer...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders earned cheers at J Street’s annual conference when he said some of the money Israel receives from the United States for defense assistance should go to humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip. The liberal Jewish Middle East policy group as one of its conference themes this year wants to press the Democratic candidates on whether they would demand from Israel an end to settlement expansion as a condition of receiving U.S. aid. Among the five candidates to speak in person at the con...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-More than eight in 10 American Jews say that anti-Semitism has spiked in recent years and even more believe it is a problem in the United States, according to an American Jewish Committee survey. Nearly three-quarters of respondents strongly disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling anti-Semitism and significantly more see the extreme political right as more of a serious threat to them than the extreme political left. The telephone survey of 1,283 Jewish adults...
WESTERVILLE, Ohio (JTA)-The fourth Democratic presidential debate revealed fissures among the candidates on whether to keep U.S. troops in the Middle East. The 12 hopefuls on the stage Tuesday night at Otterbein University in this Columbus suburb were unanimous in describing President Donald Trump's pullout of American troops from Syria as catastrophic for the Kurds, U.S. allies in the war against the Islamic State who are now at the mercy of Turkish forces who invaded northern Syria following...
(JTA)—At least two gunmen opened fire on a synagogue during Yom Kippur services and a kebab shop in Halle, a town in eastern Germany. The shooters reportedly were from the far right. The masked gunmen reportedly were repelled by the synagogue’s doors, secured shut during the services Wednesday on the most solemn day of the Jewish year. There were 70 to 80 people in the synagogue at the time of the attack. One of the gunmen shot a woman dead at a nearby Jewish cemetery and a gunman threw a grenade at the kebab shop, and then fired at it, kil...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Here's the sad paradox of the shooting nearly one year ago at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue: The killing of 11 worshippers, the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history, hit a community that was one of the best prepared to handle such an assault. In the year or so prior to the attack, Jewish community security officials had run dozens of training sessions that reached as many as 5,000 Pittsburgh Jewish residents. Many of the Tree of Life congregants knew not to stay in place...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A week ago, impeachment was not the flavor of the season. The interest in Robert Mueller’s special counsel report into Russian election interference had waned, and the testimony by Mueller before Congress in July failed to advance the narrative much. President Donald Trump seemed to have come through the controversy politically unscathed. Then came reports over the past week about the president involving a phone call, an intelligence community whistleblower and an allegation that Trump extorted a U.S. ally for political gai...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump, speaking to nearly a thousand Jewish leaders to wish them a Happy New Year on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, said he would be tough with Iran but did not want military conflict. “Our country is reminded of the infinite ways Jewish families uplift our nation,” Trump said in the 13-minute call early Friday afternoon. “You embody the American dream.” Trump introduced Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitor, who gave a brief accounting of his work combating anti-Semitism on the far left, the f...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump's top Middle East peace negotiator, is leaving the White House. Although the "ultimate" deal he helped craft has yet to be fully announced, the Trump administration suggested in the announcement that Greenblatt was leaving now that it had been written. A senior White House official said the plan is done. "The vision is now complete and will be released when appropriate," the official said in an email. Greenblatt said in a statement: "It...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-A decade after the Bernie Madoff debacle-one so serious that Hadassah officials refuse to even utter the Ponzi schemer's name-the women's Zionist organization is back. The finances are robust-2017 tax returns show $108 million in assets-and a staff of about 200 works at its New York headquarters and eight regional offices. To build membership, Hadassah is targeting younger women, recognizing that the stay-at-home mothers who made "Hadassah lady" a cliche in the postwar years...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-In its 10 years of placing young Palestinian and Israeli leaders with Congress members, no lawmaker asked New Story Leadership for one of each-until Jamie Raskin did. This summer, Eran Nissan and Mohammed Ahmad have been interning in the office of the Maryland Democrat, bonding over constituent work. No one knew until well into the summer, however, that the two young men had a deeper connection than they realized: When Ahmad described the unsettling nightly intrusions by...
LANSING, Michigan (JTA)-Tom Dalton could be the poster boy for Elissa Slotkin's path to a second term and, she would argue, to Democrats keeping the U.S. House of Representatives. The 67-year-old Vietnam navy vet routinely votes Republican-but says he would not hesitate to vote for Slotkin, a Democrat, if he had the opportunity. "Seeing what's happening today in the news, all you hear is negative this and negative that, I would love to know if there's a lot more of what I saw today," he said,...
DETROIT (JTA)-For any reporter, careening in a year from reviewing restaurants to covering the presidential debates would be a pretty fast rise. But then again, Jefferson Henry Kraft is only 10 years old. Kraft is the KidScoop Media correspondent covering the Democratic presidential debates, taking place here last Tuesday and Wednesday night. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was fortunate enough to be assigned the "spin room" seat right next to his, and in one of those conversations typical of the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives this week approved a nonbinding resolution that condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. Much was made of the 398-17 vote, one that earns the hoary journalist adjective “overwhelming.” Democrats and Republicans at long last could bond on an issue, rejecting attempts to boycott Israel. “It’s that bipartisan support for Israel that means the world understands that the United States is strongly in support of Israel,” Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill, the resolution...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly condemned the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. The House vote Tuesday, July 23, on the non-binding resolution was 398-17. Opposing were 16 Democrats, including two who back BDS, Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The resolution, backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also enshrines the two-state outcome to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at a time that the Trump a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Palestinians may aspire to a capital in Jerusalem, but do not have a right to one, President Donald Trump’s top Middle East peace envoy said. Jason Greenblatt on Tuesday was previewing the political segment of a long-awaited peace plan. “It is true that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority continue to assert that East Jerusalem must be a capital for the Palestinians,” Greenblatt said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Middle East peace. “But let’s remember, an aspiration is not a right.” Greenblatt cautioned the diplomats...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Turning Point USA, a conservative student group that is most notable for its vocal advocacy for President Donald Trump, is hosting a conference here for young Jewish leaders that includes an address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair. Netanyahu, 27, is one of the more youthful speakers at the three-day Young Jewish Leadership Summit taking place through Wednesday. He's known as a strident defender of his father, who is mired in corruption scandals. The son's...
