August 29, 2021
By RON KAMPEAS
(JTA) — California’s parole board recommended the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Jerusalem-born assassin who changed history when he shot to death Robert Kennedy in 1968 just as he appeared set to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
The board said Friday that Sirhan, 77, was repentant and unlikely to re-offend. Sirhan’s death sentence was commuted in 1972 to life after the state abolished the death penalty.
The...
August 24, 2021
(JTA) — The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged two former police officers with vandalism for allegedly spray-painting a swastika on the back seat of an impounded car.
The investigation into the vandalism also uncovered messages exchanged between the two former officers in Torrance, a city in Los Angeles County, and at least another 13 officers that included racist, homophobic and antisemitic statements, CBS2, the local CBS affiliate, reported last...
August 22, 2021
By RON KAMPEAS
(JTA) — President Joe Biden has nominated Rahm Emanuel to be the next ambassador to Japan.
Emanuel, 61, who was Chicago’s mayor from 2011 to 2019, previously served as a congressman and Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff. He has attracted opposition from progressives due to how he handled the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager.
“I would proudly represent our nation with one...
August 22, 2021
By BEN SALES
(JTA) — A popular, vociferously anti-Semitic promoter of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory was identified as an evangelical Christian man from Florida.
The man, who goes by GhostEzra on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, has more than 300,000 followers and posts “explicit Nazi propaganda, including outright Holocaust denial and a slew of conspiracy theories that often range from obliquely to explicitly antisemitic,” according to Logically, an organization that...
August 18, 2021
(JTA) — A 19-year-old student at an Orthodox yeshiva in Denver was shot and killed while standing outside his school building early Wednesday morning, according to reports in the local and Orthodox media.
The shooting came shortly after two attempted carjackings near Yeshiva Toras Chaim.
“At this time, it does not appear that it was a bias-motivated incident, but we are still in the early stages of the investigation,” a...
August 17, 2021
By BEN SALES
(JTA) — The Daily Beast has edited an article to remove the word “genocidal” as a description for Israel’s military.
Criticizing the choice of Mayim Bialik as a host of the game show “Jeopardy!”, the article, published Thursday, said that in 2014, the Jewish actor had “proclaimed her donation toward bulletproof vests for the genocidal Israeli Defense Forces.”
Accusations that Israel is committing a genocide of the...
August 17, 2021
By RON KAMPEAS
(JTA) — Arizona has become the eighth state to begin reviewing whether Ben & Jerry’s plans to withdraw from doing business in the West Bank merits sanctions under its law targeting the Israel boycott movement.
In emails obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the state’s treasurer last week asked Unilever, the ice cream manufacturer’s parent company, to comply with its 2016 law. It requires state entities, including...
August 13, 2021
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. (JWV) will hold its 126th Annual National Convention in New Orleans from Sunday, August 15 through Thursday, August 20, 2021.
“Our convention is where Jewish members of the uniformed services and veterans come together to solve issues within their community. From fighting anti-Semitism in the military, to speaking with Jewish youth about the...
August 13, 2021
By BEN SALES
NEW YORK (JTA) — When the school year ended two months ago, Rabbi Bini Krauss allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief.
His Modern Orthodox day school, SAR Academy, had been perhaps the first Jewish school in the country to close due to COVID when the virus hit its New York City neighborhood in early March 2020. The school rapidly pivoted to remote learning, and last...
August 13, 2021
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, is one of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Congress — and he thinks Republican attacks on one of President Joe Biden’s nominees as anti-Israel is “ridiculous.”
Dilawar Syed, a longtime business leader, would be the most senior Muslim official in U.S. history if Congress confirms him to be the No. 2 person at the Small Business Administration. GOP attacks aimed at blocking...
