By RON KAMPEAS WASHINGTON (JTA) – A Republican running for the Virginia state legislature removed from his Facebook campaign page a meme that mocked comparisons of migrant camps to concentration camps. Paul Milde, running to be a delegate in Virginia’s 28th district, encompassing the town of Fredericksburg about halfway between Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Va, on Saturday, June 29, posted […]

DC Report By Douglas Bloomfield If Donald Trump is being truthful when he says he doesn’t want war with Iran, and I for one believe him, he needs to fire his chief warmongers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, before they push the launch buttons. While he’s at it, he should consider sending calls from his pals Benjamin Netanyahu and Muhammad […]

By RON KAMPEAS WASHINGTON (JTA) – An array of pro-Israel groups are backing a bipartisan bill that would seed investment in the Palestinian areas and restore funding to peace dialogue programming that the Trump administration removed as a punitive measure against the Palestinians. A Rebuke? The bill reads in part as a rebuke to the administration for ending funding for […]

NEW YORK CITY (JTA)  – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been getting plenty of criticism since referring to migrant detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border as “concentration camps.” “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are,” the freshman New York Democrat said June 17 in an Instagram Live video. “If that doesn’t bother you […]

By MARCY OSTER JERUSALEM (JTA) — A new Jewish community in the Golan Heights to honor Donald Trump will be called Ramat Trump, translated as Trump Heights. A sign was unveiled during the recent weekly Cabinet meeting held in the Golan Heights at the site of the new community. The sign says Ramat Trump in Hebrew and Trump Heights in […]

By BEN SALES NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – Eric Fingerhut believes in the “big tent.” But is the tent collapsing? For six tumultuous years, he has served as the president of Hillel International, the umbrella group for more than 500 Jewish centers on college campuses across the country. He is leaving that position on July 1 to become the president […]

By RON KAMPEAS WASHINGTON (JTA) – David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, said Israel “has the right to retain” some of the West Bank. Palestinians fumed, Jewish settlers rejoiced, and the punditocracy predicted gloom and doom. What was it exactly that Friedman said in a New York Times interview. And what happens next? War, war crimes trial, one state, […]

By GABE FRIEDMAN NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – David Draiman, the Jewish singer of the chart-topping hard rock band Disturbed, called Roger Waters “ridiculous” for promoting a cultural boycott of Israel. Disturbed, which has sold millions of albums, is set to play in Israel for the first time on July 2. “Boycotting an entire society, an entire people, based on […]

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel initiative” June 13, 2019 US Ambassador David Friedman’s June 8 interview in the NY Times was inconsistent with the worldview of the State Department establishment, but quite consistent with Middle East reality and US national security interests. Ambassador Friedman stated: “The absolute last thing the world needs is a failed Palestinian state […]

By BEN SALES NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – Launched in 2017, a weekly newsletter from a coalition of establishment Jewish and pro-Israel groups has been providing talking points on anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel to a select list of Jewish influentials. The Focus Project, according to its director of strategic communications, Scott Piro, provides “collective, nonpartisan guidance to members of […]