Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 401 - 425 of 690
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...
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...
