Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Trump administration is encouraging the Palestinian Authority to assume control of the Gaza Strip and leaving the door open for a role by Hamas in the subsequent Palestinian government. But if such a move was once seen as a traditional predicate to a two-state solution, top Palestinian leaders are hedging their bets, saying they would not rule out a "one-state" solution in which Palestinians have the same one-person, one-vote rights as Israelis. Israeli leaders have long...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A tweet by President Donald Trump on Friday night, with Houston recovering from Hurricane Harvey and his sister Irma set to ravage Florida, is renewing hope among Jewish groups that have long advocated for emergency assistance to houses of worship. “Churches in Texas should be entitled to reimbursement from FEMA Relief Funds for helping victims of Hurricane Harvey (just like others),” Trump said on Twitter, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Attempts in the past two Congresses to extend FEMA prote...
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (JTA)-The white supremacists, for all their vaunted purpose, appeared to be disoriented. Some 500 had gathered at a park here Saturday to protest this southern Virginia city's plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the park. Pressured by the American Civil Liberties Union, Charlottesville had allowed the march at Emancipation Park-or Lee Park, the protesters' preferred name. That worked for an hour or so, and then the protesters and counter...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Palestinian Authority expects the Trump administration to commit to a peace deal endgame before the close of this month and prefers it would be the two-state solution. "We need them to tell us where the hell they are going," Husam Zomlot, the Palestine Liberation Organization envoy to Washington, said Thursday at a meeting in his office with reporters. "It's about time we hear it." Zomlot said a high-level U.S. delegation comprising Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—In an unusual statement, President Donald Trump called his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, “very pro-Israel,” an apparent bid to end a barrage of attacks from the far right that has depicted McMaster as hostile to Israel. “General McMaster and I are working very well together,” Trump said in a message relayed to media outlets late Friday. “He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.” McMaster in recent days has removed from the National Security Coun...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Campaigning last year for the presidency, Donald Trump said the Iran nuclear agreement was the "worst deal" he had ever seen. It was never exactly clear, however, what he intended to do about it: Appearing at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's policy conference in March 2016, Trump said in the same speech that he planned to "dismantle" and "enforce" it. As president, Trump appears to be edging toward dismantling. His administration recertified Iran's adherence to...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Near the end of his first year teaching American studies at the Georgetown University campus in Qatar, Gary Wasserman introduced a dozen Israelis to a dozen undergraduates from across the Middle East. Then he left the room so the students could have an unfiltered discussion. The one-hour meeting was part of what Wasserman calls his "liberal quest" to overcome biases-grounded, he said, in part by his Jewish upbringing. But the encounter wasn't exactly a success. Afterward, a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Barack Obama is gone and the relief among the Christian Zionists and their Jewish friends who peopled certain corners of Washington, D.C., this week was palpable. Gary Bauer, the veteran evangelical activist, laid it out at the opening session of Christians United for Israel's annual conference on Monday. A year ago, "from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the next, we had people who were not blessing Israel, they were cursing Israel," said Bauer, who was recently named...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Alan Gross contacted me a couple of months ago over Facebook Messenger. There was something he thought I should know. I was pleasantly surprised. I’d only exchanged pleasantries with Gross in the several times I’d seen him since his release from a Cuban prison in December 2014, ending five years of imprisonment for his work connecting Cuba’s Jewish community to the Internet. Gross, 68, wanted to tell me his news: He and his wife, Judy, had made aliyah, immigrating to Israel under the Law of Return. “It came through on May 3,...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Carmel Shama HaCohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, is second to none in his admiration for the Trump administration’s United Nations envoy, Nikki Haley. In fact, he’d like to clone her. Shama HaCohen appreciated Haley’s efforts in trying to head off last week’s vote by UNESCO’s Heritage Committee naming Hebron’s Old City an endangered heritage site. And he believes the joint U.S.-Israeli bid to kill a resolution Israel saw as one-sided might have succeeded had a U.S. official of Haley’s caliber been onsite in Krakow, where...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Five Arab nations cut ties with Qatar on Monday, June 5, escalating a long-simmering competition for preeminence in the region into actions that could set the stage for war. Saudi Arabia, which is leading the charge, has cut off Qatar's only land crossing-and what one Saudi-friendly estimate says is as much as 40 percent of the tiny emirate's food supply. The other four nations cutting all ties with Qatar are Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Yemen. Meanwhile, Iran...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The year was 1981 and the director of AIPAC was calling for a "showdown" with the Reagan administration, saying "This country is being held hostage to the whims of the Saudis." At issue was the sale to Saudi Arabia of AWACS, aircraft with radar-enabled surveillance capabilities that at the time were state of the art. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, then helmed by Tom Dine, famously lost the battle but won the war: President Ronald Reagan got the necessary...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—It’s not quite schadenfreude, but some Jewish organizational officials are sighing in relief at President Donald Trump’s cascade of domestic woes, saying it may present opportunities for their relatively liberal agenda. Domestically, some Jewish groups are welcoming the prospect that scandals and distractions besieging the White House could delay—if not scuttle—what they fear as radical changes in immigration, education and health care. On foreign policy, a president wounded by domestic scandal is working all the harder to...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-"You make us better," James Comey told the Anti-Defamation League in his final public speech as FBI director. Judging from the applause in the conference room at the venerable Mayflower Hotel here, the feeling was mutual. Mired in investigations of the scandals of 2016 (Hillary Clinton's relationship with her email server) and 2017 (Donald Trump's relationship with Russia), not a lot of love ended up being lost between the FBI director and either party. Democrats called for...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-President Donald Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks would help bring about the defeat of the Islamic State terrorist group. "I know President Abbas has spoken out against ISIS" and other terrorist groups, Trump said Wednesday at a White House ceremony welcoming Abbas, using one of several acronyms for the Islamic State. "We must continue to build our partnerships with the Palestinians' security forces to counter...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump said his first overseas trip as president would be to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican—a triad that signals his plan to join the three Abrahamic faiths in the fight against terrorism. Trump’s announcement and how his aides framed it to reporters sought to allay concerns stoked during his presidential campaign and the first weeks of his presidency that he is anti-Muslim. “My first foreign trip as president of the United States will be to Saudi Arabia, then Israel and then to a place that my cardina...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-In an appearance on Al Jazeera, Bernie Sanders defended Israel's right to exist, rejected BDS as a tactic and assailed the United Nations for singling out the country for condemnation. The Vermont senator's interview Wednesday on the Qatar-based network, known for its often hypercritical coverage of Israel, was consistent with a style that Americans came to know last year during his run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination: Sanders does not modify his messaging...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-President Donald Trump got the memo on the Holocaust and the Jews. In a barrage of statements this week from the president and his aides, the Trump administration wants you to know, he gets it, he really gets it: The Holocaust describes a genocide committed only against one people, the Jews. It's a radical departure from the first days of the Trump administration, when a statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day omitted any mention of Jews. That was made worse,...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Iran is not living up to the “spirit” of the nuclear deal, President Donald Trump said, the latest in a flurry of mixed messages on the deal his administration has relayed in recent days. “As far as Iran is concerned, I think they are doing a tremendous disservice to an agreement that was signed,” Trump said Thursday in a joint appearance at the White House with Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy. “They are not living up to the spirit of the agreement, I can tell you that, and we’re analyzing it very, very carefully, an...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Trump administration will not allow a repeat of last year's United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its settlements, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told AIPAC. "Never again do what we saw with resolution 2334 and make anyone question our support" for Israel, Haley said Monday at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, where she earned the warmest reception of any speaker with an extended standing ovation. The Obama...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-"Many voices, one mission." If AIPAC's 2017 annual policy conference slogan, popping up on the conference app on activists' smartphones, isn't clear enough, the morning pick-me-up video it runs before conference business begins is pretty straightforward. In the video, activists are gravitating through sunny streets here toward the convention center, and titles float above them: Democrat, Republican, Independent, country music, classic rock, straight up coffee, triple-shot...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The U.S. Senate confirmed David Friedman, a confidante of President Donald Trump who outraged some Jewish groups with his broadsides against liberal Jews, as ambassador to Israel. The 52-46 vote on Thursday afternoon hewed mostly to party lines. Only two Democrats-Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Joe Manchin of West Virginia-backed the nomination among the 48 senators who caucus with the party. Friedman, a longtime Trump lawyer who is heavily invested philanthropically in...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-One state. Flexibility. Two states. Hold back on settlements. Stop Iran. When President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What a press conference! But wait. In the Age of Trump, every post-event analysis requires a double take. Not so much "did he mean what he said?"-he appears to mean it, in real time-but "will he mean it next week? Tomorrow? In the wee hours, when he tweets?" This is a president who, after all, speaks of a "ban" on travelers from...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have been talking each other up plenty since the latter’s election upset in November. But those expecting Trump to turn his kind words and pledges on Israel into fast action may have to be patient. The starkest example of Trump walking back concrete promises is his retreat from what he had indicated during the transition period would be an accelerated push to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Asked Thursday on the Fox News Channel about whether he would mov...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—“Five million non-Jews died in the Holocaust.” It’s a statement that shows up regularly in declarations about the Nazi era. It was implied in a Facebook post by the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson’s unit last week marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it was asserted in an article shared by the Trump White House in defense of its Holocaust statement the same day omitting references to the 6 million Jewish victims. It is, however, a number without any scholarly basis. Indeed, say those close to the late Na...
