Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, decried the phrase “pro-Israel, pro-peace”—a motto closely associated with J Street—as “blasphemous.” “Pro-Israel and pro-peace sounds like a completely reasonable position,” Friedman said Tuesday addressing the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “My friends, it is not. Using that praise plainly implies that there are people who are pro-Israel and anti-peace.” Friedman, formerly a lawyer for President Donald Trump, came under fire during his...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel's border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials. "Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don't suggest anyone test us," he said Tuesday in a video message he posted on Twitter, the sound of helicopter blades whirring in the background. The mixed message signaled Israel's ambivalence about taking on the terrorist group...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When candidate Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC’s Policy Conference in 2016 and said Barack Obama may be the worst thing that ever happened to Israel, many cheered, many choked and the organization apologized. The fallout from that event will haunt the proceedings when 18,000 activists, including 3,500 students, attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference here this week. Navigating an increasingly polarized political landscape is the new reality for the lobby, which remains pre-eminent among pro-Israel groups and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Sheldon Adelson’s offer to help pay for the new US Embassy in Jerusalem is getting a thumb’s down from a range of observers who support the embassy’s relocation. The Associated Press had the exclusive on Friday morning, and JTA confirmed it with sources who have been apprised of the State Department’s deliberations. State Department lawyers are poring over the law books to determine how to pull off America’s first privately funded embassy. Why the Trump administration would want this? Well, no one’s saying, but cost-cutting...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Billy Graham, the giant of American evangelism who was exalted by Jews for his championing of Israel at its hour of need and then condemned when a nasty anti-Semitic streak was revealed, has died. Graham, 99, died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, media reported. He was a counselor to Democratic and Republican presidents and, with his massive arena appearances, was a precursor of the Protestant televangelism that helped reshape the American religious and political...
ARLINGTON, Va. (JTA)-Jews don't serve in the military. Jews shouldn't serve in the military. Forget about being Jewish-the mission comes first. Like a lot of other Jewish dilemmas, what's old for Jews who serve in the US military is new again, and the organization established in 1896 to dismantle myths and anxieties about Jews in uniform is still confronting them. Jewish War Veterans, a group that advocates for Jews in the military and for the military in the Jewish community, set aside a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-There's a battle going on among pro-Israel leaders, and it's over Qatar. It's like watching ice hockey players clear the bench for a brawl, only the antagonists are all on the same team. The folks lining up to praise or bury the emirate are best known for sharing the same stages, and often the same opinions about their overarching concern: Israel. But here they are, old friends at odds over another small Middle Eastern state surrounded by hostiles. What's going on? Here's a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass a law that would extend foreign assistance only to “friendly” nations, a dig at the countries that voted in the United Nations to censure the United States for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said Tuesday in his State of the Union address to Congress to a standing ovation from Republicans, as well as his Jewish daughter, I...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—If there’s overlap between Hillel and the National Council of Jewish Women, it’s in two areas: defending Israel and combating violence against women on campus. Leaders of the campus Jewish organization took a look at the record of Kenneth Marcus, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run civil rights at the Department of Education, and liked what they saw. NCJW leaders decidedly did not. Now the groups are on the opposite sides of a nomination that has set off a quiet intra-Jewish argument over what matters more: the hostili...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-When Mike Pence moved to Washington earlier this year, he and his wife took with them a framed phrase they had for years hung over their fireplace in their Indiana home, and then over the fireplace in the governor's mansion in that state. Now it hangs over the mantle at the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The words, from the Book of Jeremiah, read: "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Oslo Accords? “Killed,” the Palestinian Authority president says, blaming Israel. The Israeli prime minister says the Palestinians are now “unmasked”—but naturally he blames the Palestinians. Notably, the United States is silent. The P.A. president, Mahmoud Abbas, delivered a rambling address of more than two hours this weekend to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council. “Today is the day that the Oslo Accords end,” he said. “Israel killed them.” Abbas blamed the restrictions under which his Palestinian...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump waived nuclear sanctions against Iran for what the White House said was the final time under the current deal. By the time the next waiver signing rolls around in 120 days, Trump wants a new deal in place that removes “sunset clauses” allowing Iran to resume enhanced enrichment of fissile material within a decade, three senior administration officials said Friday. Trump wants the bans to be permanent. “He wants to deny Iran access to nuclear weapons forever and not just for 10years,” one of the officials...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Iranians are taking to the streets in spontaneous demonstrations across the country to protest government corruption and a failing economy. The depth and breadth of popular Iranian anger have taken the West by surprise, nowhere more so than in Washington, where the focus on Iran since Donald Trump assumed the presidency has been on whether he would preserve the 2015 nuclear deal. Until Dec. 28, this was the calculus: Would Trump kill the agreement or be content with dismissing...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump's chief Israeli-Palestinian negotiator, has an office just around the corner from the White House. On his computer monitor is a Post-it note, inscribed with a quote from former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo: "At the end of the day, a peace agreement derives its strength from an understanding between peoples, not an accord between governments." It's an appropriate message for Greenblatt, an affable Orthodox Jew who's been tasked by Trump with...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Lawmakers finalizing the proposed tax overhaul reportedly have removed a provision that had sent shivers through the graduate student and Jewish day school communities. The House version of the reform bill, which was drafted by the Republican leadership, had removed the qualified tuition credit. The credit exempts from taxes the free tuition that private schools, including Jewish day schools, often extend to the children of employees. However, the Senate version maintained the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It's lunch break during a one-day conference on "Israeli Cuisine as a Reflection of Israeli Society"-so naturally I'm eating lunch. Everything on my white plastic plate can be considered Israeli food. There is a burek (which originally heralds from Spain, by way of Turkey), a chopped cucumber and tomato salad (Israeli or Palestinian, take your pick) and a quinoa salad (from Ecuador? Peru? Or maybe it's Mediterranean). Small triangles of pita surround the centerpiece of my...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Ilan Mengistu knows his pitch to rescue his brother, Avera, should be a no-brainer to Jews-"pidyon shvuyim," the redemption of the hostage, is among the greatest of commandments. But Mengistu also knows that the story he has to tell is not the straightforward narrative longed for by those who would do good: Avera was not a soldier, nor was he captured exactly. He crossed into the Gaza Strip of his own volition. Mengistu came to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., last week with...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI twice—both times about policy maneuvering with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, during the transition. That last word is key: Flynn twice talked to Kislyak in December 2016 when Trump was president-elect, not president. That was still Barack Obama’s job. One of the things Flynn and Kislyak talked about was Israel. Flynn says that was at the behest of Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kus...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians will be comprehensive and pave the way for stability in the region. That's about all we know concerning Jared Kushner's plan, and he's happy to keep it that way, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior policy adviser said this weekend at a gathering of scholars and policy mavens who deal with the U.S.-Israel relationship. "The best thing about the team is that there's a lot of trust within the team," Kushner said at the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—As the Burning Bush crackles, God is heard. “Mow-zes,” God says in the mysterious mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood once trained its actors to use—the one Anne Baxter as Nefertiti used to summon Charlton Heston’s Moses in the 1956 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.” “Mow-zes, Mow-zes.” That epic, earnest and seemingly endless film has much in common with the Museum of the Bible, the $500 million extravaganza gifted to the National Mall by one of America’s leading evangelical families, the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain....
Not long ago Yahel Epel, a volunteer with the Israeli American Council, fulfilled her assigned mission: She assembled 200 Jews, half of them Israeli American, in a room in Denver on a Friday evening for a potluck dinner and a Shishi Yisraeli program. Shishi Yisraeli, a program launched by IAC that means “Israeli Friday evening,” seeks a happy medium between what those with and without Israeli roots or backgrounds would enjoy on a Friday night. The idea: Get them together. Create community. How did it go? “It was nice,” she said this weekend...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The big post-Election Day headline is the stunning Democratic sweep in Virginia's gubernatorial and House elections, coupled with the predicted Democratic win of the governor's mansion in New Jersey. Republicans are wondering what this says about the train that was Trumpism. In Virginia, Ed Gillespie was an establishment Republican who ran a campaign modeled after President Donald Trump's shocking win a year ago. Gillespie focused on social hot-button issues like preserving...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—What is MBS? Why did Lebanon’s prime minister resign, and why in Saudi Arabia? What’s Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas doing in Saudi Arabia? Where is Jared Kushner in all this? And what does it all mean for Israel? It’s been a busy week in the Middle East and, for a change, the two ground-shifting stories—they may be the same story, but we’ll get to that—don’t directly involve Israel. Mohammed bin Salman (the MBS contraction is so cool, it’s already uncool), the recently minted Saudi crown prince, has place...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-On May 2, Israel's Independence Day, Texas state Rep. Phil King stood smiling as Gov. Greg Abbott signed King's bill banning the state from doing business with boycotters of Israel. "Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies, and we will not tolerate such actions against an important ally," Abbott said of the bill that overwhelmingly passed the Legislature. Less than six months later, King had to explain why his signature pro-Israel policy was not an anti-Texas policy. City...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Supreme Court is back in session with a full bench of nine justices, so expect more momentous decisions after nearly a year of caution. Now that the high court is back to its previous equilibrium—four solid liberals, four solid conservatives and one wavering conservative—expect all eyes to be focused on the waverer, Anthony Kennedy. And after a relatively quiet season, owing to the absence of a ninth justice following the death in February 2016 of Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, Jewish groups are on alert as well....
