Jared Kushner, real estate developer and presidential son-in-law, is about to play an important role in peace negotiations in the Middle East. His father-in-law Donald Trump praised him as “a good boy” who will pull off an “Israel agreement that no one else would pull off,” and a prominent New York Times pundit agrees, sort…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Palestinian man who attempted to stab an Israeli soldier at a West Bank checkpoint was shot and killed during the attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The incident occurred Tuesday afternoon in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian city of Tulkarm. No Israeli soldiers were injured in the incident, the…
Conal International Trading is passing the buck after feeling the heat for work boots that leave an imprint that closely resembles a swastika. The firm blamed a Chinese subcontractor for what it called a production error. “We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and the public,” it said in a…
(JTA) — The founder of the popular right-wing blog post The Right Stuff resigned over the revelation that his wife is Jewish. Mike Enoch, who also co-hosts “The Daily Shoah” weekly podcast, was outed over the weekend as Mike Peinovich, a website developer from New York. On the podcast, which has about 100,000 regular listeners,…
(JTA) — President Barack Obama has tapped Ben Rhodes, a White House speechwriter and proponent of the Iranian nuclear agreement, to serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Obama said Tuesday that he had chosen Rhodes, currently the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, to serve on the council, which Congress established in 1980 to…
On Tuesday, the National Book Critics Circle revealed the finalists for its 2016 book awards. Those finalists include Michael Chabon’s “Moonglow” in fiction, former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s “At The Foundling Hospital” in poetry, Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” and Jenny…
A Palestinian official welcomed Donald Trump’s pick of his son-in-law Jared Kushner as Mideast peace envoy, saying he hoped Kushner, an American Jew whose family donated to settlers, would play fair. Husam Zomlot, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Jerusalem Post he saw the timing of Kushner’s appointment before Trump even…
WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Barack Obama said his administration had remained “steadfast” in countering Iranian threats to Israel in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, in their final week in office, marked the anniversary Monday of the implementation of the deal reached between Iran and six…
(JTA) — Last year UCLA launched a Jewish history with an ambitious goal — to be “one of the world’s largest collections of Sephardi Jewish life.” Now, the UCLA Sephardic Archive has made its first major acquisition, obtaining what it says is “one of the most significants collections ever assembled” telling the history of Sephardi Jews…
Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth became the third Jewish House Democrat to announce he would boycott Friday’s inauguration after a spat between the incoming leader and civil rights icon John Lewis. “For the last ten weeks, President-elect Trump has continually denigrated the office of the President by using his bully pulpit for insult and ridicule,” he…
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand in Dallas federal court on Tuesday and denied an allegation by a rival company that Facebook’s virtual-reality technology of its Oculus unit was stolen. Zuckerberg, wearing a suit and tie rather than his typical T-shirt, was still on the witness stand after more than…
