
Ron Kampeas is the former Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Ron Kampeas is the former Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As the Burning Bush crackles, God’s name is heard. “Mow-zes,” God says in the mysterious mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood once trained its actors to use — the one Anne Baxter as Nefertiti used to summon Charlton Heston’s Moses in the 1956 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.” “Mow-zes, Mow-zes.” That epic, earnest and seemingly…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Not long ago Yahel Epel, a volunteer with the Israeli American Council, fulfilled her assigned mission: She assembled 200 Jews, half of them Israeli American, in a room in Denver on a Friday evening for a potluck dinner and a Shishi Yisraeli program. Shishi Yisraeli, a program launched by IAC that means…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The United States is ready to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council unless it institutes reforms, including removing Israel as a permanent item on its agenda, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told an Israeli American audience. “The Human Rights Council will either adopt these reforms, or the United States will leave,”…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the Dominican Republic was a fundraiser who helped him win Florida with her campaigning in the Jewish community. And while Robin Bernstein has relevant political and government chops for the role, Tuesday’s announcement didn’t do her any favors: It noted that she “speaks French and basic…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating whether President Donald Trump’s campaign had ties with Russia, issued two indictments this week and unsealed a guilty plea. Paul Manafort, who for several months last year helmed the Trump campaign, and an associate, Rick Gates, who remained with the campaign after Manafort left and worked…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The case of Joseph Jesner v. Arab Bank is a bid by about 6,000 Israelis who have been harmed by Palestinian terrorism to get redress from Jordan’s Arab Bank, which delivered money to the groups carrying out the acts. Yet when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on Oct….
On May 2, Israel’s Independence Day, Texas state Rep. Phil King stood smiling as Gov. Greg Abbott signed King’s bill banning the state from doing business with boycotters of Israel. “Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies, and we will not tolerate such actions against an important ally,” Abbott said of the bill that overwhelmingly passed the…
(JTA) — A rabbi at a suburban Atlanta synagogue apologized for a Rosh Hashanah sermon after congregants complained that he appeared to cast the American left as inimical to the Jews. “The great threat that we face as Americans and as Jews comes not from the ‘alt-right’ but from the alt-left,” Rabbi Shalom Lewis said…