Senators and members of the House of Representatives are calling on the Bush administration to oppose Saudi Arabia’s admittance into the World Trade Organization unless the kingdom clearly renounces its support of the Arab boycott against Israel, aggressively cracks down on terrorist financing and improves its human rights record. In two separate letters sent last…
Several Jewish groups last week welcomed the Senate’s approval of a bill that would broaden the federal government’s authority to prosecute criminals who commit acts of violence or intimidation against individuals because of the victim’s gender, disability or sexual orientation. The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, which passed the Senate last week by a margin…
WASHINGTON — A former undersecretary of defense is saying that Israel is missing an opportunity to leave the territories and has tried the patience of an extremely sympathetic president. In his first interview since leaving the Bush administration, Dov Zakheim’s take on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was grim. “It’s a huge mistake,” Zakheim said, referring to…
Bill’s Bigs: “The American-Jewish community has been very good to me,” former President Clinton writes on Page 947 of his new memoir, “My Life.” You know it, baby. Without American Jews, Clinton couldn’t have funded his campaigns or run his administration. But what’s more, he genuinely has an affinity for Jews, as many of his…
At first glance, Donovan Reed and Kalman Katz have very little in common. Though both are from New York State, Reed is an African-American from Mount Vernon, while Katz is an chasidic Jew from Borough Park. But both Reed and Katz are devoutly religious, and both were put in the untenable position of having to…
Among the audience members at Guest Night at the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring lodge in August 1987 was Shaia Sheinkman — a talented sculptor, painter, poet and play producer who, in later years, was known as the father of Jack Sheinkman, who was president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. To lift the downcast mood…
TEL AVIV — Israelis cheered silently Tuesday when the government published its latest terrorism statistics, holding their collective breath lest their streak of good luck run out. For the Israeli Defense Forces, the announcement was an occasion for a careful pat on the back, a sign of a job well done. The announcement of the…
I had never heard of an Italian Renaissance book entitled “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,”a Greco-Latin title rendered into English by the its recent translator, Joscelyn Godwin, as “Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream,” until I read a front-page article about it in the New York Times. Published in Venice in 1499, the Times said, the “Hypnerotomachia”…
In a sign of the growing personal and emotional dimensions of the Swiss bank settlement, the federal judge overseeing the case, Edward Korman, fired off an unexpected attack at a prominent lawyer who has had little to do with the case, and who, even the judge called a “latecomer to the proceedings.” Korman filed a…
The report of the the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission) on why and how America was drawn into a war in Iraq compels some critical rethinking. This is no ordinary commission. When it was named, the almost universal feeling was that the commission members were…
UNITED NATIONS — Secretary General Kofi Annan’s speech here this week, delivered to the first seminar on antisemitism held at the U.N. headquarters, is being seen by some as a sea change in the way the organization has dealt with Israel and Jews internationally. Acknowledging that the U.N.’s record on antisemitism had fallen short of…
