Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—Days ahead of a workshop where Jared Kushner sought tens of billions of dollars for his Middle East peace plan, the White House unveiled an outline of its economic portion, including proposals, like a Gaza-West Bank travel corridor, that are sure to rattle Israel’s government. The Peace to Prosperity plan authored by a team led by Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, was posted Saturday on the White House website. It does not outline the political portion of the peace plan, which the architects say w...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-After Iran announced that it will abandon further commitments agreed to under the 2015 nuclear deal, President Donald Trump threatened "obliteration" in "some areas" of the country. The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, told the semi-official Fars News Agency on Tuesday that the government will take new action on July 7. He said the other world powers who signed the deal had not done enough to save it in the face of the U.S. pullout last...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reiterated a strong rejection of analogies to the Holocaust in the wake of the debate surrounding the term “concentration camps” sparked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The museum “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the museum said in a statement. “That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter.” The statement linked to one from D...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-President Donald Trump says he is "very prepared" for Iran. "We're looking at Iran," he said Tuesday when a reporter asked him what he had planned beyond sending another 1,000 U.S. troops to the area as tensions there appear to be escalating. "We have a lot of things going with Iran. We have-we're very prepared for Iran. We'll see what happens. Let me just say this: We are very prepared. Regardless of what goes, we are very, very prepared." Trump was short on details, which has...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel, said Israel “has the right to retain” some of the West Bank. Palestinians fumed, Jewish settlers rejoiced, and the punditocracy predicted gloom and doom. What was it exactly that Friedman said in a New York Times interview. And what happens next? War, war crimes trial, one state, two states? What Netanyahu said Before we get to what the ambassador said, we first have to deal with what prompted his comment. The Times asked Friedman to speak on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Everyone started by praising the American Jewish Committee, naturally enough. But in their video greetings to the group’s annual policy forum here, 13 Democratic candidates proceeded to demonstrate a party grappling with what story they should tell to one of its most important demographics: Jewish voters. Some candidates started by decrying anti-Semitism. Others started by holding up the U.S.-Israel relationship. A couple didn’t mention Israel at all. Some remarks lasted under...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-An array of pro-Israel groups are backing a bipartisan bill that would seed investment in the Palestinian areas and restore funding to peace dialogue programming that the Trump administration removed as a punitive measure against the Palestinians. The bill reads in part as a rebuke to the administration for ending funding for dialogue groups last year. It also reinforces backing for a two-state solution at a time when the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named the winner of a redesign competition for its Israeli Lounge, a tribute to the U.S.-Israel relationship that Israel contributed at the 1971 launch of Washington D.C.'s signature performing art space. A team of three women from EYP, an American design firm that focuses on institutions of "higher education, government, healthcare, and science and technology," will lead the redesign of the room, which is expected to be complet...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—An imam who has wished for the end of Zionism, called for a third Intifada and likened Israel to Nazi-era Germany, delivered the opening prayer for a session of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. Omar Suleiman, the founder and president of the Dallas-based Yaqeen Institute, an organization that describes itself as a resource about Islam, referred to recent attacks on houses of worship—which has included synagogues in the United States—in his opening remarks. “Let us not be deterred by the hatred that has claimed...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Israeli ambassador to the United States linked The New York Times to the “Jew-hatred of growing parts of the intellectual class.” Ron Dermer was speaking Monday in the U.S. Capitol at the annual Holocaust Days of Remembrance organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was an unusually political attack on a day and at an event organized by an institution that generally focuses on the historical meaning of the Holocaust. Dermer listed recent lethal attacks against Jews, including Saturday’s deadly shooting at the Cha...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It's not an unfamiliar frame for describing the rise of the new nationalism: There's a bad wind blowing through the West, and nothing less than democracy is at stake. What makes it especially unsettling for Beate and Serge Klarsfeld is that they have lived through it before-and spent a subsequent lifetime trying to make sure the "bad wind" did not return. "There is a bad wind in Europe and democracy is losing its influence," Serge Klarsfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in...
(JTA)-A shooting at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, near San Diego, California, has left one person dead and three injured, including a child. Police in Poway detained a white 19-year-old San Diego man in connection with the shooting on the last day of Passover, and hospitals said they were taking in the wounded people. The suspect left an "open letter" prior to the morning attack, law enforcement said. "A man has been detained for questioning in connection with a shooting incident at the Chabad...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed back against Sen. Bernie Sanders for calling Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “racist.” The pro-Israel lobby, in a tweet that did not mention the Democratic presidential hopeful by name, said it was counterproductive when American leaders used “name-calling” against their Israeli counterparts. “The U.S.-Israel alliance serves America’s interests,” AIPAC said Tuesday on Twitter. “We benefit from the close bonds between the governments and peoples. Name-calling by pol...
LAS VEGAS (JTA)—President Donald Trump questioned traditional Jewish support for Democrats in a stem-winding speech to Jewish Republicans. “How did you support President Obama, how did you support the Democrats?” Trump said Saturday addressing the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas. “We didn’t,” the crowd replied, twice. “You guys didn’t, probably you guys in this room didn’t,” he said. Jewish voters have for decades favored Democrats in elections, usually by substantial majorities of about 70 percent. Trump received a h...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Trump administration officials have been silent and notably leak-free about what exactly is in the Middle East peace plan that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is shaping-until now. In speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it became clear that the plan will likely not accommodate a Palestinian state, or at least the sovereignty that attaches to statehood. David Friedman, Trump's ambassador to Israel and one of three members of the peace team, in his AIPAC...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Rep. Ilhan Omar hit back at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after they called out the first-year congresswoman at the AIPAC policy conference for her attacks on the lobby and support for the Israel boycott movement. Pelosi, D-Calif., told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual confab on Tuesday that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel was a form of bigotry. Americans must “be vigilant against bigoted or dangerous ideologies masquerading as po...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee wants you to know it will not be silenced. “When they try to silence us, we speak up, and when they tell us to sit down, we stand up, we stand up,” Howard Kohr, the Israel lobby’s CEO, said in his set-the-tone speech at the launch Sunday of this year’s annual conference. “We. Stand. Up.” Mort Fridman, AIPAC’s president, picked up the theme that afternoon. “None of us are willing to be silenced or intimidated,” he said. And Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who has had a long and close rela...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Adam Milstein, a major pro-Israel funder, has withdrawn from speaking at the annual AIPAC policy conference following a series of tweets in which he accused two Muslim lawmakers of clashing with "American values." The American Israel Public Affairs Committee distanced itself from Milstein. Milstein, the chairman of the Israeli American Council, said his views as expressed on Twitter had been "mischaracterized." "My social media postings represent my views-and my views alone,"...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump promoted on his Twitter feed a group founded by Republicans that hopes to draw young Jews away from the Democratic Party. “‘Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party,’” Trump said Tuesday morning on his feed, quoting Elizabeth Pipko, a spokeswoman for “Jexodus,” who appeared the same morning on “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News network. “Jexodus” was launched last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference by Jeff Ballabon, a Republican strategist who advised the Trump presidential ca...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Trump administration ended the policy of referring to the West Bank and the Golan Heights as “occupied” by Israel. The State Department’s annual report on global human rights issues, issued Wednesday, drops the “occupied” language from passages on the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza. It refers to the Golan Heights as “Israeli-controlled.” A State Department official argued that the change did not signal a shift in department policy on the territories. Why it matters: The Trump team has broken from precedent established by...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-An increase in anti-Semitism, an intensification of anti-Israel activity and decades of neglect have created a crisis in the Jewish community relations field, according to the umbrella group for Jewish public policy organizations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. In reports published this week at its annual Washington meeting, the group urged a radical shift among its constituent Jewish community relations councils, which advocate for Jewish issues on behalf of the Jewish...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump called on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to resign from Congress for what he said was her anti-Semitism. “It’s terrible what she said and I think she should either resign from Congress, or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What she said is so deep-seated in her heart that her lame apology, and that’s what it was, it was lame and she didn’t mean a word of it, was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress.” Om...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—AIPAC sounded relieved by the substantive Democratic backing in the Senate this week for a controversial pro-Israel bill initiated by Republicans. The Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act (S.1), which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said “contains critical pro-Israel provisions,” passed 77-23, earning yeas from every Republican but one, Rand Paul of Kentucky. It codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movemen...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. Senate approved in a 77-23 vote a bill that codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and which provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movement. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., had stirred controversy because a number of Democratic senators said that while they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, they were also concerned that state laws aimed at BDS impinged on speech freedoms. Among the Democratic d...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump linked his actions on Iran to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, pivoting during his State of the Union address from his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal to a declaration that anti-Semitism must be confronted “anywhere and everywhere it occurs.” Trump also bookended his speech with references to D-Day, including salutes to troops, among them Jewish-American veterans, who helped liberate Europe, and Holocaust survivors who were liberated thanks to the American-led action. The salutes earne...
