Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 651 - 675 of 691
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The “credible military threat” against Iran that Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to hear while he was in the United States this week eventually emerged—from his own lips. The Israeli prime minister, in a blunt speech to the United Nations General Assembly, warned that Israel was ready to go it alone against Iran should it come close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. “I want there to be no confusion on this point,” Netanyahu said. “Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will s... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The good news for Israel in President Obama’s speech at the United Nations was his insistence that any steps Iran might take to solve the standoff over its nuclear program must be transparent and verifiable. The bad news was that Obama wasn’t clear about what those steps should be. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a one-minute video posted online Tuesday after the Obama speech to the General Assembly, welcomed the parameters outlined by the president and made clear he wanted to know more. But he also reite... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Jewish groups backing President Obama’s call to strike Syria militarily are citing moral outrage and U.S. national security as primary considerations, but concern for Israel—however muted—also looms large in their thinking. A lingering sensitivity over misrepresentations of the role of the pro-Israel community in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 kept Jewish groups from weighing in on Syria until it was clear that President Obama was determined to strike. Now that same sensitivity is leading them to downplay any mention of Is... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli settler leader Dani Dayan has made it his mission over the years to warn members of Congress, particularly Republicans, of the perils of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Dayan has been a regular visitor to Washington, his trips often coinciding with developments in the peace process. During the Annapolis talks in 2007-08, Dayan would watch Israeli officials as they met with the media in the lobby of the venerable Mayflower Hotel, just blocks from the White House, and then move in to offer his own spin. In June, Dayan m... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The election for Massachusetts governor is still 16 months away—too soon to know what the issues are or who the viable candidates will be. But apparently it’s never too soon for tikkun olam. Four of the declared candidates are Jewish, and all are grounding their campaigns in the religious imperative to repair the world. Steve Grossman, the state treasurer and a past chairman of the Democratic National Committee, quotes from Isaiah in describing his ambition to close the gap between rich and poor. “I received my Jewish heritag... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—After 20 years of stops, starts and a bloody intifada in between, John Kerry believes he can pull out a final status Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in nine months. What clock is the U.S. secretary of state trying to beat? According to his aides, the one ticking down as Syria and Egypt roil into unknowable futures and Palestinians fume at the prospect of never achieving sovereignty. “It’s becoming more complicated on the ground, and a feeling of pessimism is settling in among Israelis and Palestinians,” said a State Departm... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The guy with the socks up. The guy with the pants down. The guy with the headlocks. The guy who tweets and deletes. What is it with these male politicos? And why are they all Jewish? The cloistered community that is Washington’s Jewish elite collectively choked a little July 20 as it progressed through a column in which Gail Collins of The New York Times named the protagonists of what she dubbed the “Weiner Spitzer summer.” “Ever since the Clinton impeachment crisis, we’ve been discovering how much personal misbehavior... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Michael Oren was deep inside the State Department, relaxed and taking on all comers: He had the facts on his side. It was 2004 and the department was reviewing newly declassified National Security Agency evidence reinforcing Israel’s longstanding claim that its 1967 air attack on the USS Liberty spy ship was a mistake. The attack killed 34 American personnel. Oren, a preeminent historian of the Six-Day War, was not suffering gladly those at the State Department conference who continued to insist, despite all evidence to the... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the incoming Iranian president’s plea for engagement with the United States and called for ratcheting up military pressure, a bipartisan letter circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives is urging President Obama to test Hassan Rohani’s offer. The letter, spearheaded by Reps. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and David Price (D-N.C.), had garnered 118 signatures by the afternoon of July 18, more than a quarter of the House. The bulk of the signatories are Democrats, but 1... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
