House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in Syria today, a move that has raised the ire of the Bush administration. Interesting for Forward readers, Pelosi’s delegation includes representatives Tom Lantos and Henry Waxman of California, as well as Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota.
As Jews across the country prepare to celebrate the Exodus from Egypt, here are a couple of goodwill messages, from the Commander in Chief and New York’s junior senator: From President Bush: Passover, 5767 This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout…
In his Monday column, Paul Krugman argues that today’s Republican Party is dedicated to a strategy of disenfranchising poor voters in order to protect the gains of the ultra-wealthy. Wonder what Krugman would make of this plank contained in Tom DeLay’s political manifesto: “Senators should again be elected by state legislatures, as they were until…
Jerusalem — Facing mounting pressure from international powers and from members of his own party, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is warming publicly to the Saudi peace initiative, going so far as to call on Arab leaders to meet with him so that a regional peace plan can be discussed. Israel initially shunned the plan…
First quarter fundraising numbers are coming in, and things look good for Senator Hillary Clinton.
Jerusalem – Israel’s finance minister, Avraham Hirchson, was interrogated by police for eight hours straight this week about the apparent transfer of more than $1 million to his personal accounts from a labor union he once ran, and of another sum, which is undisclosed, from the March of the Living, the international Holocaust education program…
Ending nearly two decades of debate, the flagship seminary of Conservative Judaism announced this week that it would now accept gay and lesbian students into its rabbinical and cantorial schools. But a subsequent declaration from the movement’s Israeli seminary upholding the ban on gay rabbinical students made clear that the issue was far from settled…
For months, the controversy over former president Jimmy Carter’s book has generally been fueled by bitter criticism from the Jewish community. In recent weeks, however, the debate has shown signs of evolving into a personal clash between the country’s last two Democratic presidents. Earlier this month, former president Bill Clinton spoke out against Carter’s book,…
Washington – New details are emerging about a secret 2003 briefing that could play a key role in the defense of two pro-Israel advocates charged with passing classified information. Until now, the identities of the participants were not publicly known, except for one of the defendants, Steve Rosen, then policy director of the American Israel…
Stephen Herbits has moved through many halls of power during the past decade: He worked at the side of secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, then jumped into the fray of gay activism in Miami and finally ended up as head of the World Jewish Congress, one of the most storied and influential…
As the controversy over the firing of top officials at the World Jewish Congress entered its third week, much of the focus was on a topic that seems to riddle all national debates these days: the source of a leaked document. The document in question was a letter written March 14 by the president of…
