Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—“I was with him when” Ron Dermer laced his address to the 2009 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. Dermer used the phrase five times in the first five minutes of the speech—the “him” being Benjamin Netanyahu. “I can shed a little insight into the mind of the Israeli prime minister,” Dermer told the crowd, “because on that I’m something of an expert.” Two elements of the address, made just weeks after Netanyahu assumed office, explain Dermer’s ascension last week to the country’s most important diplomatic post...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Mikey Weinstein couldn’t be happier to have an amendment in his honor approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. Yes, the amendment, passed June 13 and designed to keep Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation as far away from the Pentagon as possible, is more in his “dishonor.” But Weinstein is the kind of guy who revels in the dislike of his adversaries. “How terrified are these little pu***es in Congress that they have to pass an amendment about me?” he shouted in a phone interview from the foundation...
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA)—The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration—first in leading the resettlement of Jews who arrived here at the turn of the 20th century, then in absorbing hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews in the 1980s and ‘90s—HIAS is making formal its shift to refugee care and resettlement overseas. The vast majority of its work will not be with Jews, and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When it comes to foreign assistance, American law couldn’t be clearer: A coup d’etat suspends funding, period. But the directive, which has persisted for years in federal appropriations bills, is clashing with another congressional priority: the apparent desire to foster an alternative to Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s democratically elected Islamist president who was removed from power this week by the Egyptian military. In recent months, Congress has intimated that it would be happier if Morsi’s secular foes in the military...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—It’s almost boilerplate: The American Jewish community asks a foreign leader with whom it has cultivated a close relationship to kindly tell firebrands in the leader’s government to pipe down and fall in with an established policy that happens to be embraced by the U.S. government. Greece? Romania? Hungary? Russia? Try Israel. In a rare rebuke of a sitting Israeli minister, three major centrist Jewish groups in recent weeks have criticized Naftali Bennett, the economics chief in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governm...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Reps. Eric Cantor and John Lewis stood together recently at a Montgomery, Ala., memorial to martyrs of the civil rights struggle, joining hands to sing “We Shall Overcome.” With the Supreme Court decision two weeks ago gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act—one of the landmark pieces of legislation from that era— Virginia’s Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Georgia’s Lewis, a Democrat and civil rights hero, now have that to overcome. The June 25 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder inv...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A slight bump up on affirmative action, a plunge on voting rights, and on gay marriage, the mountaintop: federal legitimacy. It’s been a week of roller-coaster highs and lows at the Supreme Court for liberal Jewish groups. Their collective pledge: Stick it out. “These are critical decisions and it’s going to be a fight” on voting rights, said Sammie Moshenberg, the director of the National Council of Jewish Women, one of several groups that had weighed in on the recent cases with friend-of-the-court briefs. The same tone—vigi...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Liberal Jewish groups fired a verbal barrage against a restrictive abortion bill passed by the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives, calling it “egregious,” “outrageous,” “an affront,” and “deeply disappointing.” Such strong language is unusual in any case for groups that must engage with Congress, but especially when a bill is dead in the water. The bill, passed last Tuesday in a 228-196 vote, would ban abortions after 20 weeks, a time when the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), says the fetus feel...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—How do you confront hatred when it has no fixed address? Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League national director, attempts to pin down an answer to the question in his latest book, “Viral Hate.” Co-authored with privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf, the book chronicles the complications of countering hate on the Internet. The takeaway? It’s up to us. “Let’s take back responsibility for our culture—both online and off” is the book’s main conclusion. “Public involvement, concern, action, and, when necessary, outcry are key.” Ca...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have much in common. Both are longtime U.S. senators, Democrats, Jewish and fiercely independent West Coasters. They’ve also both been members of the Senate Intelligence Committee since before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and privy to classified materials that describe how the government systematized radical changes in intelligence gathering in their wake. Now the two lawmakers are on opposite sides of the debate over the massive information-gathering machine developed by the intelligence com...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Former national security adviser, former nuclear negotiator, a decades-old friendship with the supreme leader—Hassan Rohani is as Iranian establishment as it gets. Which is why, some Iran watchers say, he may be an invaluable asset in the quest to reduce tensions between the Islamic Republic and the United States. In his first remarks following his election to the Iranian presidency last week, Rohani sustained the moderate image that helped sweep him into office with more than 50 percent of the vote, obviating the need for a r...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Susan Rice has said that a “huge” portion of her work at the United Nations was defending Israel’s legitimacy. Her new job will likely be no less Israel-centric. President Obama named Rice June 5 his national security adviser and replaced her at the U.N. with Samantha Power, one of his top White House advisers. Rice succeeds Tom Donilon, who has been in the post since 2010. Rice has scored mostly high marks from Jewish groups for her defense of Israel at the United Nations, although right-wing groups were furious with her in...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israel’s settlement building is increasingly isolating the country in Europe, leading to European Union policies that could reinforce Israel’s delegitimization, according to the top EU representative to the peace process. Andreas Reinicke, the EU’s special envoy for the Middle East peace process, said increasing frustration with the settlement movement is leading Europe to adopt policies that single out Israel for punitive measures. In an interview June 5 at the EU’s Washington mission, Reinicke, in town for meetings with count...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—With its talk of signal books, sketches and photographic negatives, the Espionage Act suggests a period long ago consigned to Cold War-era thrillers. In fact, the law is even older, first drafted in 1917, at a time when secret orders were conveyed by telegraph and semaphore codes were bound in pocket-sized books weighted with lead so they could be thrown overboard at the approach of the enemy. The era also was the beginning of the Red Scare, the belief that the socialist revolution in Europe soon would infect the United S...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—In 1982, Frank Lautenberg was running for New Jersey’s U.S. Senate spot at a time when Democrats in the state were down on their political fortunes. The Jewish community knew and liked Lautenberg, a data processing magnate who died Monday at 89 after serving more than 30 years in Washington. Lautenberg had been chairman of the United Jewish Appeal in the previous decade and turned the charity around during a parlous economy. But Jacob Toporek, who managed Lautenberg’s Jewish campaign that year, recalls that New Jersey Jews...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Poland is a stalwart American ally in Europe, a bulwark against an increasingly belligerent Russia and, with the recent opening of a major new Warsaw museum, is enjoying a flush of accolades for its belated embrace of its Jewish roots. But there’s a thorn in the bouquet: Poland is seen as having the world’s worst record on the restitution of Jewish property lost during the Holocaust. Officials of Jewish groups seeking restitution say they will be making a renewed push to put the restitution issue on Congress’ agenda and exp...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—What happens when the rabbi who delivered the invocation at your nomination inveighs against you? Three controversies in quick succession have earned President Obama opprobrium from some of his most steadfast liberal supporters, including Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. The controversies besieging the White House in recent weeks have included State Department emails suggesting the White House tried to change the administration’s talking points concerning the deadly attac...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When it comes to the latest Arab peace initiative, two questions are circulating in Washington: Why Qatar? And why now? The three answers: Because Qatar is rich; it is scared; and why not? Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, in recent weeks has driven the revivification of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, moderating it slightly to hew closer to the outlines touted by the Obama administration since 2011. The updated version, outlined by Hamad in remarks to reporters f...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (JTA)—The thick scent of a peppery rub wafted through the Margolin Hebrew Academy and Corky the Pig embroidered his chef’s hat with a K and became a cow. Just before Purim, the famed Memphis barbecue joint Corky’s, with a hog for its mascot, koshered one of its smokers for a brisket fundraiser on behalf of the city’s Orthodox Jewish day school. Organizers explained that the unusual marriage of brachas and BBQ was a product of a parlous economy, a small school in need of refurbishing with a limited fundraising base and the laid-ba...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A same-sex Israeli couple struggling against U.S. immigration laws are set to become the faces of the fight to extend one of the foundations of immigration policy to gays and lesbians. Adi Lavy and Tzila Levy have been caught in the bureaucratic red tape of the American immigration system since Lavy, who suffers from a kidney ailment, arrived in the United States in 2011 to seek treatment. The couple, whose New York marriage is not recognized by the federal government, have been able to stay together during Lavy’s illness and...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—He had them until abortion. U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) was addressing the Reform movement’s Consultation on Conscience conference about his passion, human rights and success in creating mechanisms to combat human trafficking and shine a light on global anti-Semitism. The crowd that gathered in a large Capitol Hill conference room on the afternoon of April 23 was transfixed, laughing along with Smith’s practiced self-deprecation and applauding his commitment. Until Joanna Blotner, a reproductive rights activist, asked him a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—In the battle to end the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, it’s all hands on deck. Increasingly for the Obama administration, which is deadlocked over the budget with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, that means reaching out to Jews. In conference calls and in appearances at Jewish events, administration officials are soliciting Jewish support in their bid to end the congressionally mandated budget cuts that kicked in March 1 and which critics warn could have a dramatic impact on vital gov...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A legislative effort led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to enable Israelis to enter the United States without visas may be stymied by the government—Israel’s government. The hitch is Israel’s inability or unwillingness to fully reciprocate, something required for visa-free travel to the United States. Israel, citing security concerns, insists on the right to refuse entry to some U.S. citizens. AIPAC is pushing for an exemption for Israel from this rule. But congressional staffers say Israel is unlikely to get...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—If you have nuclear weapons, all sorts of bad behavior will be tolerated. That’s the lesson some are worried Iran may be learning from North Korea’s increasingly confrontational stance against South Korea and the United States. Pyongyang has stepped up its belligerent rhetoric in recent days, threatening to strike targets in South Korea and America, shuttering the joint North-South industrial park at Kaesong and warning foreigners to leave South Korea to avoid possible nuclear war. The Obama administration has scrambled to ta...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—History will remember former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for relentlessly facing down communism and helping to turn back more than three decades of socialist advance in her country. But it was Thatcher’s embrace of British Jews and insistent promotion of Jews in her Conservative Party that inspired an outpouring of tributes from Jewish and Israeli leaders following her death April 8 at 87. Thatcher, who suffered from dementia in her later years, died peacefully after suffering a stroke, her spokesperson said. Tha...
