John Kerry’s stepson said he was misquoted in a story that said he regarded Israel as the “51st state” of America. Chris Heinz was quoted in Philadelphia Magazine as saying, “One of the things I’ve noticed is the Israel lobby, the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state.” The quote…
WASHINGTON — Tuesday’s Republican blitz triggered a wave of deep disappointment among Jewish organizational officials, who are openly worrying about the fate of their liberal domestic agenda now that the GOP has strengthened its control over the White House and Congress. In particular, several Jewish communal leaders bemoaned the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom…
TEL AVIV — After days of furious maneuvering to prepare for the post-Yasser Arafat era, Israelis and Palestinians were waking up this week to the sobering realization that reports of the Palestinian leader’s demise might have been premature. “Arafat’s prospects for recovery range between full recuperation and death,” Israel’s military intelligence chief, Major General Aharon…
LETTER FROM VITEBSK The town of Vitebsk has been the central character in the work of Marc Chagall. Its people and cityscape maintain a recurring, almost mystic presence. Chagall was intimately familiar with this town. The artist was not only born and raised there, but also came of age as a master in Vitebsk. Although…
Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists and a writer internationally renowned for haunting depictions of a child’s survival of the Holocaust, was awarded the Prix Médicis Etranger, France’s top literary award for a foreign writer and one of Europe’s most important awards, last Wednesday. Previous Médicis prize laureates include John Updike, Philip Roth…
From Morton Steinberg comes this query: “A word in Hebrew that has always troubled me is tsohorayim, ‘noon,’ which is in the dual plural form. Is the proper greeting for ‘good afternoon’ tsohorayim tov [with the adjective tov, ‘good,’ in the singular] or tsohorayim tovim [with the adjective in the plural]? And why is the…
Advised by his Cabinet to strike against a country thought to have had a hand in the murder of Americans, the commander in chief grows indignant. “Are you suggesting,” he sneers, “we use the attack… as a pretext to attack another country we don’t know to be responsible?” A John Kerry daydream? Hardly. The speaker…
When I accompanied George W. Bush on his first trip to Israel in 1998, I had no inkling he would one day lead a global coalition to conquer terrorism. During that trip, we both saw threats that seemed remote to most Americans but were part of daily life in Israel. In the Middle East’s only…
Stepping up his bid for Jewish votes in Florida, Senator John Kerry accused the Bush administration Monday of “dragging its feet” on the contentious Hungarian Gold Train case, a Holocaust restitution suit against America’s government that is moving through federal court in Miami. Hungarian Holocaust survivors brought the class-action case in 2001. They are seeking…
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — With polls showing that this most crucial of swing states could once again determine the presidency, both the Bush and Kerry campaigns are bombarding the region with high-profile emissaries in an effort to boost Jewish support. The frenzied push to harvest Jewish votes comes in a state in which Bush won by…
WASHINGTON — With polls showing Democratic congressional candidates gaining ground in several states, officials at Jewish organizations are quietly rooting for an end to Republican control of the Senate. The focus on the Senate, which the GOP controls with 51 votes, comes as many Jewish communal organizations have voiced strong approval for President Bush’s policies…
