(JTA) — The State Department offered $12 million in rewards for the capture of two leaders of Hezbollah. The United States is offering up to $7 million and up to $5 million “for information that leads to the location, arrest or conviction in any country” of Talal Hamiyah and Fu’ad Shukr, respectively, State Department Counterterrorism…
(JTA) — An Israeli lawmaker doesn’t want a trove of Jewish artifacts returned to Iraq, and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pressure the United States to keep them out of the country. Anat Berko, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said the materials belong in Israel. Discovered in the flooded basement of the Iraqi…
Kansas governor Sam Brownback will get a reprieve from his political troubles in his home state as he takes on the position of ambassador at large for international religious freedom at the State Department. Brownback, who also served in the past in the House and the Senate, was tapped for the job by President Trump…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Dozens of Congress members have called on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to say whether the State Department will hire a special envoy for the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. In a bipartisan letter sent last Friday, Reps. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., were among 116 House lawmakers who also…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. State Department’s office to monitor and combat anti-Semitism will be unstaffed as of July 1. A source familiar with the office’s workings told JTA that its remaining two staffers, each working half-time or less, would be reassigned as of that date. The Trump administration, which has yet to name an…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson retreated from his department’s commitment to fill the post of envoy to combat anti-Semitism, saying the effort may be more effective without one. “One of the questions I’ve asked is, if we’re really going to affect these areas, these special areas, don’t we have to affect it…
(JTA) — The State Department called the posting of a video by the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that removed Israel from President Trump’s announcement about his upcoming trip an “inadvertent mistake.” Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter on Monday to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in which he criticized…
Responding to American Jewish anxieties, the Trump administration has indicated it will be filling the post of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism (SEAS). Before popping Champagne corks, we should understand the severe limitations of such a role amid a retrenchment of U.S. diplomacy and serious challenges to civil rights by our own government….
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