(JTA) — On Fridays at sundown, the Jewish residents of this village set amid the lush hills of eastern Uganda gather in the synagogue to greet Shabbat. The room is bare, the light is dim and the Conservative prayer books are worn. But the spare surroundings do little to diminish the enthusiasm of the men,…
Demonstrators in Nairobi, Kenya rally against wave of anti-gay legislation in Africa. Getty Images. The ancient rabbi Hillel famously asked: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” I feel it is important to answer the first two questions…
Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday likened new anti-gay legislation in Uganda that imposes harsh penalties for homosexuality to anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. “You could change the focus of this legislation to black or Jewish and you could be in 1930s Germany or you could be in 1950s-1960s apartheid…
The American Jewish World Service called on the Obama administration to pull ambassadors from Uganda and Nigeria because of what it says are escalating anti-gay and other repressive measures by those governments. In a statement, AJWS asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to bring ambassadors from those two African countries back to…
The following is an open letter to Uganda President Yoweri Museveni Dear President Museveni: This week I received a call for help from your people that I cannot ignore. My lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender friends and colleagues in Uganda are frightened, and I am concerned that they have every reason to be. Over the…
Human rights activists were unsuccessful in their attempt to deliver a letter to the Ugandan embassy in Washington signed by more than 400 rabbis protesting that country’s anti-homosexuality policy. Monday’s protest in Washington coincided with similar events in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and was organized in part by the American Jewish…
The East African nation that will take in tens of thousands African migrants living in Israel is Uganda, a gag order lifted on Thursday revealed. Uganda will either accept the migrants, or serve as a transit station to their own countries. Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Hagai Hadas, the prime minister’s special envoy, had…
Robert Maimoni watched with tears in his eyes observing the moments of national ecstasy that were generated by Operation Entebbe. On July 4, 1976, a commando unit of the Israel Defense Forces rescued 105 of the passengers of an Air France airliner − Israeli citizens whose plane had been hijacked by terrorists a week earlier,…
100% of profits support our journalism
