
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) — The debate has gone on for weeks among rabbis and Jewish leaders: If President Donald Trump does not formally renounce white supremacists, is it still worth engaging in a conversation with him? This was on much of the Jewish community’s mind since Aug. 23, when the leaders of three religious streams —…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, told a Rosh Hashana event packed with U.S. officials that Israel would enforce two red lines in the civil war in neighboring Syria: The transfer of major weapons to Hezbollah and the establishment of a permanent Iranian beach head in the country. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin…
Around the picnic tables at Whitefish City Beach on the final Shabbat eve of last month, the Montana town’s tiny Jewish community shared kosher hot dogs, veggie burgers and memories of terror. In a year when white supremacists have been ascendant, at least in their public profile, perhaps no community has been harder hit than…
The Anti-Defamation League expressed concern that a witness at a congressional hearing on a controversial gun bill wrote a book arguing that gun control rendered Jews defenseless during the Holocaust. Stephen Halbrook, who wrote “Gun Control in the Third Reich” in 2015, is set to appear Tuesday at a meeting of the U.S. House of…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in a comprehensive speech laid out a possible case for the United States to leave the Iran deal, although she said no decision had been made. Haley’s argument, made Monday in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, was…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — An array of Jewish groups and lawmakers attacked as immoral President Donald Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program granting protections to illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. The Trump administration on Monday said it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program launched by President Barack…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, dismissed a bid by Democrats to censure President Donald Trump as a “partisan hack-fest” after a rabbi in his Wisconsin district asked him to join because of what she said was Trump’s condoning of racism. Rabbi Dena Feingold, who leads Beth…
(JTA) — Stephen Bannon, whose advice to President Donald Trump was that “darkness is good,” was thrust out into the light of the sunshiny day enveloping Washington, D.C., on Friday: He is no longer Trump’s strategic adviser. It’s not clear yet what led to Bannon’s departure: He alone among Trump’s senior advisers favored the president’s…