Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 576 - 600 of 690
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Bernie Sanders' best friend is a Zionist who teaches Jewish philosophy, he had a formative experience on a kibbutz and "Saturday Night Live" dubbed him the "old Jew." Still, Sanders can't get away from the inevitable "But where is he on Israel?" question, especially now that the Democratic presidential contender, an Independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, has pulled ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, the first primary state. "Do you view your... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The dredging up of the dual loyalty charge-that lawmakers who reject the Iran nuclear agreement and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is lobbying against it, are more closely aligned with Israel than the United States-illustrates just how tense the debate over the deal has become. The charge came to the fore after Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the highest-ranking Jewish Democrat in the Senate, announced last week that he was opposing the deal reached July 14... Full story
(JTA)-Got questions about the Iran nuclear deal? Too bad, if you were an AIPAC activist at a briefing this week with top Obama administration officials. At the briefing Wednesday, Howard Kohr, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's director, stopped the proceedings before his activists could ask questions. Why? And what does the leak of the story mean? Did the Obama administration bigfoot AIPAC and muscle into the pro-Israel group's lobbying session only to disingenuously complain when a... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Congress has until mid- to late September to consider whether to reject the nuclear restrictions for the sanctions rollback deal reached by Iran and six major powers on July 14. Some of the debate is over the meaning of certain provisions in the accord. Here's a breakdown of differences in how the sides interpret parts of the deal. The 24 days All sides agree that the deal has a rigorous inspections regime for Iran's known sites: "24/7" scrutiny, as President Barack Obama has... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Turn off the ads, turn down the noise and read, listen and consult. That's what five key Jewish lawmakers say they are planning for the five to seven weeks they have to contemplate their vote on the Iran nuclear deal. There are 28 Jews in Congress, but seven are undecided and in positions of influence as lawmakers consider an agreement that grants Iran sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear restrictions on its nuclear program. Republicans are mostly against the deal, so the... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Call it a double miracle for the pastor who would be president: Mike Huckabee managed to unite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama while grabbing the spotlight from Donald Trump. Netanyahu's ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, slammed Huckabee, a Republican candidate for the White House in 2016, for saying that Obama will march Israelis "to the door of the oven" as part of the Iran nuclear deal. And Obama has mocked Huckabee's remarks,... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-President Barack Obama will not alter the terms of Jonathan Pollard's parole once he is released, a signal that Israel's struggle to bring him to the country whose citizenship he has assumed will outlast his November release date. "Mr. Pollard will serve his sentence as mandated by statute for the very serious crimes he committed," Alistair Baskey, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a statement emailed to JTA. "The president has no intention of altering the terms of... Full story
By WASHINGTON (JTA)—Vice President Joe Biden had an intimate phone call this week with about a thousand Jewish leaders, beseeching, teaching and preaching the Iran nuclear deal. Biden’s imploring hour-long call on Monday typified how personal the campaign for and against the Iran nuclear deal is becoming. President Barack Obama, speaking to veterans on Tuesday, cast the deal as one that would save American troops from dying in a fruitless war. The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, a deal opponent, is bringing in its members for face-to-face meetings wit... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The nuclear deal with Iran, 20 months in the making, is now done-at least as far as negotiations go. The accord, announced early Tuesday, still faces hurdles, although they likely won't keep the deal from going ahead. So what happens next? We read the laws, perused the speeches, scanned the deal, canvassed congressional insiders and Iran experts, and here's what we found out. The U.N. Security Council Action: The U.N.'s sole lawmaking body must now endorse the deal. Likely... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Cancel your summer vacations. That was the order AIPAC’s executive director, Howard Kohr, gave his employees in a staff meeting convened this week at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after the United States announced the Iran nuclear deal. With the influential pro-Israel lobby group pushing for Congress to reject the deal negotiated by the Obama administration, it’s all hands on deck. Lay leaders, too, are canceling their summer plans, and AIPAC activists already are calling lawmakers and hitting synagogue lists... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—AIPAC called on Congress to reject the Iran nuclear deal, saying it does not meet critical markers that the influential pro-Israel lobby outlined in recent weeks. But the liberal Jewish Middle East lobby J Street announced a multimillion-dollar campaign to support the agreement. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee made its case against in a statement Wednesday delivered after President Barack Obama conducted a news conference of more than an hour defending the deal achieved a day earlier. “We strongly believe that the... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The name that keeps coming up when Orthodox Jewish groups consider the consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court decision extending same-sex marriage rights to all states has little to do with Jews or gays. Bob Jones University, the private Protestant college in South Carolina, lost its tax-exempt status in 1983 when the Supreme Court ruled that its policies banning interracial dating on campus were “wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption.” Orthodox Jewish organizations, several of which publicly disse... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-How often do you get the opportunity to pack "109 years," #LoveWins and the rainbow colors into 140 characters? That's how the American Jewish Committee celebrated the Supreme Court ruling Friday extending marriage rights to gays throughout the United States. "For 109 years AJC has stood for liberty and human rights," its tweet said. "Today is a happy day for that proud tradition #LoveWins." It was punctuated with a heart emoticon splashed orange, yellow, green blue and p... Full story
(JTA)-This time, Israel and its supporters came prepared. Anticipating what they believed would be an unfair U.N. report on last summer's Gaza War, the Israeli government and friendly groups in the United States were ready with at least three reports they say better reflects the reality of the five-week engagement between Israel and Hamas. The U.N. report, released last week, said Israel's military and Palestinian armed groups committed "serious violations" of international human rights law duri... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Israel's former ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, caused a stir this week by publicly accusing President Barack Obama of abandoning the two core principles that undergird the U.S.-Israel relationship: no public disagreements and no surprises. But should there be no public disagreements-"no daylight," in diplomatic parlance-between the United States and Israel, and is that kind of shoulder-to-shoulder closeness even possible between allies? Oren, the American-born diplomat... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in the Supreme Court decision that will keep "Israel" off the passports of Jerusalem-born Americans, begins by calling Jerusalem a "delicate subject." Competing claims to the Holy City were not the only timeworn and sensitive issue the justices contended with in their 6-3 decision on Monday, which upheld the State Department's policy of not allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to list "Israel" as their birthplace. The Supreme... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It's early days for the White House's latest charm offensive among American Jews, but a new poll suggests that the wooing effort is having little effect. The poll, published Wednesday by J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that generally backs President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, shows Obama stuck at the same mid-50s approval ratings he was registering in April, when U.S.-Israel tensions were prominently in the news. Jim Gerstein, whose GBA Strategies conducted the po... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA) – When considering the Vatican’s creep toward recognition of Palestinian statehood, think “Israel-Vatican” and not “Jewish-Catholic,” say Jewish officials involved in dialogue with the church. A May 13 announcement on an agreement regarding the functioning of the church in areas under Palestinian control raised eyebrows in its reference to the “State of Palestine.” The upset was compounded by confusion over whether Pope Francis, in a meeting over the weekend with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, praised him as... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Barack Obama has a message for American Jews: I don’t shy away from disagreeing with Israel publicly, because I care about Israel and our shared values. The president marked Jewish American Heritage Month with a speech last Friday at Washington’s oldest Jewish congregation, Adas Israel. His remarks glided from the triumphs of American Jewish accomplishment to Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement. When it came to Israel, Obama was, as usual, unstinting in his pledge to protect the interests of the Jewis... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Obama administration officials have long contended that the friction between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not personal and that American support for Israel remains as robust as ever—and arguably even more robust by some metrics. But a year of tense and angry exchanges between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu has yielded an atmosphere of deep mistrust, with each side insinuating the other is acting in bad faith. Conversations with current and former officials from both countries, as... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-From roundtable discussions to protests and prayers to candid talk with law enforcement officials, American Jewish communities are joining in the debate about community policing in the wake of several high-profile deaths of unarmed black men while in police custody. Officials were short on specifics, but several told JTA that protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray on April 19 have sparked a determination to confront the tensions between police and minority... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Now that the outline for an Iran nuclear agreement has been released—or, more precisely, two outlines, one by Iran, the other by the Obama administration—major gaps have emerged that will need to be resolved ahead of a June 30 deadline for a final deal, including when sanctions on Iran are lifted. President Barack Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, issued conflicting statements in the past week on the sanctions issue, with Obama suggesting sanctions would be relaxed only once Iran begins to implement its obligations... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Election Day is 19 months away, but the campaign already has begun. Aside from Democrat Hillary Clinton, three Republican candidates with reasonable chances at the nomination have declared and several others are on the cusp. The Republican Party says it's been making inroads with Jewish voters, who traditionally have favored Democrats by 2-to-1 margins. Here's a rundown of the views of three declared Republican candidates-and two likely candidates-on issues of Jewish i... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Jewish leaders expected President Barack Obama to sell them hard on the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, participants in two White House meetings on Monday said he offered a softer pitch on how deeply he cares for Israel and the Jewish people. "He tried to explain he understands Jewish trauma, history, the Jewish feeling of being alone in a bad neighborhood," said a participant in the first meeting, which was attended by 15 top officials from Jewish organizations. Another described... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It was not the first time John Lewis had invoked the Jewish-black alliance that fought for equality during the civil rights era. But it was the first time that the Georgia congressman, a civil rights hero, invoked it to explain why he was skipping a speech by an Israeli prime minister. "In many occasions we have worked side by side to strengthen our democracy and fight for equality and justice in this country," Lewis (D-Ga.) said at a news conference March 3 where several... Full story
