By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
INTERNATIONAL
Although not all information at a closed-door meeting was disclosed, U.S. Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley on Thursday told select senators and congressmen that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not issue explicit “kill them all” orders prior to the second-strike Sept. 2 on an alleged drug-running boat off the Venezuelan coast. The second strike killed two survivors of the first strike.
Sam Crystal, chief of staff of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, issued a statement calling for Hegseth’s resignation. Crystal said killing survivors “is an example of what not to do in the Department of Defense’s own manual on the law of war.”
Prior to the briefing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said even if he didn’t explicitly order the second attack, Hegseth was responsible. “He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop and it was his order that was instrumental and foreseeably resulted in the death of these survivors.”
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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday that he has appointed his military adviser Roman Gofman as head of the Mossad intelligence agency, Ha’aretz reports.
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The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reports the remains of Hamas hostage Sudthisak Rinthalak, a Thai agricultural worker at Kibbitz Beeri, have been turned over to Israel. That leaves Ran Gvili as the single hostage whose remains have not been repatriated. Gvili was a police officer killed while defending Kibbutz Alumim.
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The national broadcasters of Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands announced Thursday that they would boycott the May 12-16 Eurovision song contest, now that the contest’s governing board has decided not to put Israel’s eligibility to participate up to a vote. Boycott decisions by Slovenia and Iceland are pending, Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reports. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar commented: “I welcome the decision of the European Broadcasting Union. I am ashamed of those countries that chose to boycott a music competition like Eurovision because of Israel’s participation. The disgrace is upon them.”
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Pollsters find that opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receiving a pardon without admitting guilt or expressing remorse is 53.2 percent of Israelis, while support for such a pardon is 42.4 percent, The Times of Israel reports.
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Israel Hayom reports that an anti-Hamas militia leader, Yasser Abi Shahab, was shot in a Gaza gunfight and evacuated to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where he was pronounced dead.
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In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, Iran offered to use its influence with Hamas to release Thai agricultural workers it had taken hostage from Israeli kibbutzim—with one condition: Thailand’s government must seek the repatriation of thousands of Thai workers from Israel, while discouraging others from accepting work assignments, The Jerusalem Post reports.
NATIONAL
The Associated Press reports that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the 6-3 minority who voted on Thursday against the Texas redistricting plan, said in her dissent that the decision “ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution.”
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Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York), the Senate Minority Leader, said every Democrat in the Senate will support a “clean three-year extension” of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) tax credits when the measure is put up for a vote next Thursday, CBS Television reports.
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance in an interview with NBC News disputed the assertion by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that conservative Republicans have an antisemitism problem. “Do I think that the Republican Party is substantially more antisemitic than it was 10 or 15 years ago? Absolutely not. In any bunch of apples, you may have bad people. But my attitude on this is we should be firm in saying antisemitism and racism is wrong … I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.”
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Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore is wooing the Jewish community while one of that state’s U.S. Senators, Chris Van Hollen, is in an open dispute with Ron Halber, the Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington D.C., Jewish Insider reports.
Moore, speaking to the Council’s legislative breakfast on Wednesday, said “Today, I want to be loud and clear, that Maryland stands with the Israeli people and we support their right to exist in the region with the same sense of safety and security that we all want.”
Van Hollen’s spokesperson said of Halber: “Instead of representing the diversity of views that, in the Senator’s experience, are held by the Jewish community of Maryland, Ron Halber has become an apologist for the Netanyahu government.” The spokesperson was responding to Halber describing Van Hollen as “the leading senator agitating against Israel in the United States Senate. … I would say the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community feels betrayed by the senator.”
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Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, and Richard Priem, CEO of the Community Security Service, have announced collaboration between their two agencies. Said Priem: “By combining CSS’s grassroots security network with ADL’s intelligence capabilities, we are creating a stronger, smarter, and more coordinated approach to community protection.”
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STATE & LOCAL
Jewish organizations on Thursday denounced anti-Israel demonstrators who broke into a private meeting at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple aimed at building relationships among Israelis, American Jews, and Korean-Americans.
The Wednesday morning meeting took place in the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, a private event space at The Wilshire Boulevard Temple, located in an area of Los Angeles that since has become known as “Koreatown.” Among the speakers was Gordon Saar of Elbit Systems, an Israeli company that supplies high-tech defense systems to the Israel Defense Forces.
Demonstrators pushed their way into the meeting, yelled antisemitic epithets, engaged in physical altercations with people inside, and vandalized the property before Los Angeles police subdued them, making two arrests in the process, according to witnesses.
The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles issued the following statement: “We are outraged and condemn this antisemitic behavior in the strongest of terms. There is no place in our community–or anywhere–for antisemitism and hate disguised as dissent.”
The Israeli-American Council said after the “despicable disruption,” it “reached out to the synagogue and expressed our solidarity with their community. We are aghast that antisemitic attackers continue to target our religious institutions under the guise of anti-Israel protest. As Americans, we should be free to worship as we choose without fear of discrimination and violence. We Israeli-Americans and Jews continue to stand proudly and will not allow such detestable antisemitic attacks to intimidate us.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass messaged on social media: “This behavior is abhorrent and has no place in Los Angeles. I spoke with Rabbi (Joel) Nickerson to ensure he and his congregation know that the city of Los Angeles stands with them and fully condemns these attacks. I am grateful to the LAPD officers who addressed this disturbance. Additional LAPD officers have been deployed to patrol near areas of worship.”
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Seth Brysk, the Northern California Regional Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), said a recent law regulating discrimination in K-12 classes, “is necessary to address the well-documented and widespread antisemitic discrimination in our schools.” Gayle Horwitz, AJC’s Education Policy Director, said K-12 teachers speak on behalf of their schools, not themselves, in the classroom and such speech can be regulated. Their comments came with the announcement that AJC, with the help of attorney Fredrick Levin, has filed a “friend of the court” brief in a case that will be heard Dec. 17 in federal district court in San Jose.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.
Don – Good work on Jewish Political Briefing. I like the roundup.