…This summer, Friedman accused J Street supporters of being “far worse than kapos” — Jews who assisted the Nazis during the Holocaust — in a column for the far-right Israel National News website.
“The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one,” he wrote in June. “But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.”
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is “really troubled” about the state of American Jewry, he said Thursday, warning that if Diaspora Jews don’t “pull themselves together,” their ranks will be greatly depleted in less than two generations.
“One of the things that really troubles me is the whole issue of Judaism, of the Jewish people in exile,” said Liberman, an avowed secularist politician whose Yisrael Beytenu party has long sought to scale back government intervention in religious affairs.
Trump Announces Next US Envoy to Jewish State Will Be Attorney David Friedman, Who Says He Looks Forward to Working From ‘Israel’s Eternal Capital, Jerusalem’
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday evening he will nominate attorney David Friedman to serve as the next American ambassador to Israel.
“The bond between Israel and the United States runs deep, and I will ensure there is no daylight between us when I’m president,” Trump said in a statement published on his transition team’s website. “As the United States’ ambassador to Israel, David Friedman will maintain the special relationship between our two countries. He has been a long-time friend and trusted advisor to me. His strong relationships in Israel will form the foundation of his diplomatic mission and be a tremendous asset to our country as we strengthen the ties with our allies and strive for peace in the Middle East. Nothing is more critical than protecting the security of our citizens at home and abroad.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved up one position to 20th in Forbes Magazine’s newly-published 2016 list of the world’s most powerful people, while Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stayed put at 18th.
Netanyahu’s “positions are unwavering — and with a supportive American president entering office, there will be little reason to bend,” Forbes said. “Though politics remain turbulent in his tiny Middle East country of 8 million people, innovation continues to thrive. Israel is dubbed ‘startup nation’ and boasts the highest number of startups per capita in the world.”
Sanctions against Iran were officially extended for another decade Thursday, even though President Obama did not sign the legislation, a symbolic move intended to show the White House’s disapproval of the bill.
The sanctions renewal, which passed Congress with enough votes to be veto-proof, has triggered complaints from Tehran. The Iranian government views the nuclear agreement as entailing a promise of no new sanctions. The White House, by not signing the bill, is trying to alleviate Iran’s concerns.
By Leon Wieseltier: Contemplating the extermination of Aleppo and its people, I was reminded of a sentence that I read this summer. It appeared in an encomium to Elie Wiesel shortly after his death. It was a sterling sentence. It declared: “We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering.” That was Wiesel’s teaching, exactly. The problem with the sentence is that it was issued by the White House and attributed to President Obama. And so the sentence was not at all sterling. It was outrageously hypocritical.
How dare Obama, and members of his administration, speak this way? After five years and more in which the United States’ inaction in Syria has transformed our country into nothing other than a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time, they have forfeited the right to this language. Their angry and anguished utterances are merely the manipulation of the rhetoric of conscience on behalf of a policy without a trace of conscience. You cannot be cold-hearted and high-minded at the same time. Historians will record — they will not have to dig deeply or interpret wildly to conclude — that all through the excruciations of Aleppo, and more generally of Syria, the United States watched. As we watched, we made excuses, and occasionally we ornamented our excuses with eloquence. The president is enamored of his eloquence. But eloquence is precisely what the wrenching circumstances do not require of him. In circumstances of moral (and strategic) emergency, his responsibility is not to move us. It is to pick up the phone. “Elie did more than just bear witness,” Obama said in his eulogy, “he acted.” And he added: “Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if more people lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.” Just imagine.
By Jonathan S. Tobin: Yesterday, President Obama was not inclined to argue with Congress over Iran. The White House announced that, while the president thought it was unnecessary, he was going to let the Iran Sanctions Act become law without taking any action. The bill, which passed the Senate by a 99-0 vote, was largely symbolic, since everyone knew the possibility of Obama re-imposing the restrictions on economic activity with Iran it promises is an empty threat.
But the significance of the act may become clearer after January 20. If Donald Trump is as serious about revisiting the issue as he has claimed to be, then it may be the starting point for a genuine effort to restrain Iran.
The British government on Monday officially endorsed a recent report on antisemitism in the UK, slamming the country’s largest student union for “failing to take [the phenomenon across university campuses] sufficiently seriously”
In a document presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Crown responded positively to the findings of the report, conducted by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) and released in October. Among its conclusions is that the National Union of Students (NUS) is being remiss in its attitude towards and treatment of Jewish students.
Jerusalem city officials say there’s no need to build a new American embassy in Jerusalem. The Americans built a big new consulate in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Arnona, which had been planned in advance to be converted into an embassy one day. All the Americans need to do is change the sign on the door, they say
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