Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: reinstate ‘strong allied’ U.S.-Israel relationship
(JNS.org) Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an expected Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential race, said in an interview with Israel Hayom published Friday that the next president “needs to both symbolically and substantively reinstate the strong allied relationship between America and Israel.”
Walker, who visited Israel for the first time in May, has not yet officially announced his candidacy. He said that although he had “read and talked about” the threats facing Israel before, “to be physically in Israel, I saw and felt the very real threat.”
“I really enjoyed my time with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” said Walker, who did not give media access to his Israel trip, stressing at the time that the visit was educational in nature. “It had a natural feel. There are many things we have in common.”
Iran is “the most dominant threat in the region and in the world right now,” Walker told the Israeli newspaper.
“If any action were to go forward [with a final nuclear between Iran and world powers] they would need to dismantle their illicit nuclear infrastructure, they would need to fully disclose and be fully transparent and submit to immediate inspection,” he said. “They would need to not only deal with Israel and acknowledge it as the Jewish state, but they would also have to deal with other Sunni states in the region with whom there is obvious tension. They would have to eliminate their capacity for intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
Walker also said there is a need to “fix the increasing unrest that this administration has created by pulling out too early from Iraq, creating incredible instability there.” He said he will be “making an official announcement later this summer” about his potential presidential candidacy.
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Reform Judaism confab to feature interviews with U.S. presidential contenders
(JNS.org) This November’s biennial convention of the Reform Jewish movement’s congregational umbrella organization will feature interviews with candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Chuck Todd, moderator of the NBC television network’s popular “Meet the Press” program, will conduct one-on-one interviews with each presidential contender before the audience of the 2015 Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) convention in Orlando, Fla.
“URJ’s biennial, because of its timing, location, and audience, will be a must-attend event for the top presidential candidates,” Todd said Thursday. “Florida has long been a key state in presidential elections, and I am very much looking forward to this unique presidential forum.”
While the 2016 presidential field continues to take shape, the official list of candidates slated to attend the URJ convention remains unannounced. Official presidential contenders on the Republican side include U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.), as well as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are both expected to run, but have not yet announced their intentions. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) are the officially announced Democratic candidates.
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France sets 18-month deadline for peace deal or Palestinian state recognition
(JNS.org) French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says that France will officially recognize Palestinian statehood after an 18-month deadline if no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is reached through an upcoming French-backed United Nations Security Council resolution.
According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, the French resolution calls for two states with borders in line with the pre-1967 lines as well as mutually agreed and equal land swaps. The plan also places Israeli security concerns at the center of peace talks, saying that it “guarantees the security of both Israel and the Palestinians, with effective oversight over borders, and prevents the reappearance of terror and the smuggling of munitions.”
The French plan calls for a “just” resolution to the Palestinian refugee situation and for Jerusalem to be the capital of both states. It also takes into consideration Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, saying a peace agreement should include “the principle of two states for two nations.”
France seeking to submit the plan to the U.N. Security Council for a vote sometime after June 30, when negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are scheduled to be finalized. According to reports, the timeline for the plan was shortened from two years to 18 months due to hopes of seeing the plan make progress before French President Francois Hollande leaves office in 2017.
Late last year, the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies—like a number of other European legislatures—both passed a non-binding resolution calling on the country’s government to recognize Palestinian statehood. But so far in Europe, only the Swedish government has officially recognized a Palestinian state.
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Obama says he speaks ‘honestly’ about Israel, downplays Iran’s anti-Semitism
(JNS.org) In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic that was published Thursday, President Barack Obama attempted to defend his administration’s recent public disputes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Because I care so deeply about the state of Israel, precisely because I care so much about the Jewish people, I feel obliged to speak honestly and truthfully about what I think will be most likely to lead to long-term security,” Obama said, adding that it would be a “moral failing” of his presidency if he did not “protect Israel and stand up for its right to exist.”
Obama noted that despite policy disagreements with Israel, he still enjoys support from a vast majority of American Jews. He called his administration’s criticism of Netanyahu’s pre-election comments on a two-state solution and Israeli Arab voters “fairly spare and mild.”
“When you get in arguments with friends it’s a lot more newsworthy than arguments with enemies,” Obama said, calling the disagreements with Israel “built up” by the media.
On Iran, Obama tried to dismiss the argument that because the Iranian government is “anti-Semitic or racist,” it isn’t interested in survival and cannot be a rational actor.
“It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations,” said Obama.
The president admitted that due to America’s role in world powers’ nuclear talks with Iran, if the Islamic Republic has a nuclear weapon 20 years from now, it will have “my name” on it.
“I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down,” Obama said.
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MK Lieberman apologizes after being called out for ‘autistic’ slur of Netanyahu
(JNS.org) After being called out by a Jewish foundation that advocates for disability inclusion, Knesset member and former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday apologized for comments he made calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “autistic” for supporting a two-state solution.
“Of course, I didn’t mean in any way to offend autistic people, but wanted to illustrate the unwillingness of some people to accept certain realities about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I apologize if anyone was hurt,” Lieberman said.
The Ruderman Family Foundation—which seeks the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish community and has offices in both Boston and Israel—had demanded an apology from Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party. After Netanyahu on Wednesday told European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini that he supports a “vision of two states for two peoples,” Lieberman said on Israel Radio, “Anyone who thinks going back to the 1967 lines will solve the conflict is autistic.”
Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, had said in a statement, “Millions of people around the world and thousands of people in Israel are autistic. By using the word ‘autistic’ as an insult, MK Lieberman has deeply hurt the autism community. The term for a disability should never be used in a crude and derogatory manner. If Mr. Lieberman had an autistic child, how would he like it if his child heard a highly visible public figure like himself use autism as cudgel against an adversary?”
After Lieberman’s apology, Ruderman said, “We hope this was a teaching moment for MK Lieberman that it is highly inappropriate to use a disability in a derogatory manner. We are gratified that he has publicly apologized and distanced himself from the remark.” In the past, the foundation has publicly criticized disability slurs used by White House officials and a CNN anchor.
Lieberman’s initial comments that criticized Netanyahu had also targeted the prime minister’s planned meeting with Ayman Odeh, leader of the Arab Joint List, an alliance of Arab political parties that currently holds 13 seats in the the Israeli Knesset.
“Netanyahu’s meeting with Odeh, one of the sharpest opponents of Israel being the state of the Jewish people, gives legitimacy to forces working to destroy Israel from within and gives a stamp of approval to the fifth column working inside the Israeli parliament,” Lieberman said.
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Workers building sewer line discover ancient Jerusalem aqueduct
(JNS.org) Workers have discovered a part of Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct, which had supplied water to the city more than 2,000 years ago.
The aqueduct was discovered in the Umm Tuba quarter near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa while Gihon Company workers were building a sewer line in the area. The finding was then examined by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
“The Lower Aqueduct to Jerusalem, which the Hasmonean kings constructed more than two thousand years ago in order to provide water to Jerusalem, operated intermittently until about one hundred years ago,” Ya’akov Billig, director of the aqueduct excavation for IAA, said Thursday. “The aqueduct begins at the ‘Ein Eitam’ spring, near Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem, and is approximately 21 kilometers (13 miles) long. Despite its length, it flows along a very gentle downward slope whereby the water level falls just one meter per kilometer of distance. At first, the water was conveyed inside an open channel and about 500 years ago, during the Ottoman period, a terra cotta pipe was installed inside the channel in order to better protect the water.”
The aqueduct was preserved for nearly 2,000 years by various city rulers because it was Jerusalem’s main source of water. But in the early 20th century, the city began to rely on a modern electric water-supply system.
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