Ron Kampeas is the former Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Ron Kampeas
By Ron Kampeas
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Fast Forward Bubbe Yetta Wants Her Grandson Joel Rubin in Congress
(JTA) — President Barack Obama used “chutzpah” in a fundraising pitch the other day. Joel Rubin, a Democrat running for Congress in a suburban Maryland district, did Obama one better by bringing bubbe into it. “Today is my bubbe Yetta’s 93rd birthday,” said Rubin, the State Department’s former chief liaison to the House of Representatives….
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Opinion 3 Ways Sheldon Adelson Could Handle Donald Trump
(JTA) — For months, Republican Party insiders have speculated who Sheldon Adelson, the pro-Israel billionaire, will back in the GOP presidential primary. Now there’s a follow-up question: How does Donald Trump’s continued perch atop the polls scramble the casino magnate’s calculations? In 2012, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, backed Newt Gingrich to the tune of $40…
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Fast Forward Israeli President Brings the Cheer to White House Hanukkah Party
(JTA) — Reuven Rivlin toddles up the White House driveway. He is grinning as he shouts in Hebrew to a phalanx of local Israeli reporters shivering in the December chill: “If you must live in a Diaspora, live in this one!” Washington’s Hanukkah week has found an unlikely Santa Claus in Israel’s president: His workshop, where…
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Fast Forward Israeli Arab Leader Comes to Washington With Message for Bibi — and BDS
(JTA) — Ayman Odeh travels the land of his heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but prefers to deliver paeans to their inspiration not in their native English, but in Hebrew and Arabic. Meeting me here last week in the cafeteria of the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill, where he has just completed…
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News The GOP Prez Hopefuls Wish You a Happy Hanukkah
The Republican Jewish Coalition posted on its Facebook page a video featuring 13 out of 14 of the GOP presidential candidates wishing a Happy Hanukkah. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) presumably is missing because he had to opt out last minute from last week’s RJC’s presidential forum due to voting on the Senate floor. (The video…
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Fast Forward John Kerry Warns Israel Heading for One-State Reality
(JTA) — Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at an annual U.S.-Israel confab, said Israel’s government must consider the consequences of evolving toward a single state incorporating the Palestinian areas. “How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish democratic state?” Kerry said Saturday at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C. Would Palestinians “be…
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Opinion 9 Questions Republican Jews Want Answered
It’s going to be a long Thursday. The Republican Jewish Coalition is holding a forum for GOP presidential candidates, and everyone’s invited. Well, everyone in the race. Even candidates who register as barely a blip on the national radar will get 30 minutes to make their case to an audience of hundreds of Republican Jews….
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Opinion 5 Times GOP Bogeyman Sidney Blumenthal Advised Hillary Clinton on Israel
(JTA) Sidney Blumenthal’s name came up 49 times in a hearing convened Thursday by the special congressional committee investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Why? Well, the star witness was Hillary Rodham Clinton — the secretary of state at the time of the attack, whom Blumenthal has advised for…
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Opinion Netanyahu is facing electoral catastrophe — and could place Israel in existential peril
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Fast Forward Trump announces he has ‘largely negotiated’ Iran deal, Strait of Hormuz opening
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Art This Jewish artist hadn’t painted in more than 5 decades. Then came Oct. 7.
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Opinion How can I explain to my 93-year-old mother why it suddenly seems ok to hate Jews?