By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
The name of this column has been changed from Jewish Political Briefing to Jews in the News to better reflect its content.
INTERNATIONAL
US President Donald Trump covets Greenland for the sake of U.S. national security and for control of Greenland’s natural resources. Stephen Miller, deputy white House chief of staff, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland … It wouldn’t be military action against Greenland. Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?”
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Eyal Ostrinsky, the recently appointed chair of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, prepared for a visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where KKL-JNF already has invested $23.4 million towards that community’s reconstruction since it was hard hit in the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks. He told ejewishphilanthropy he plans to hear “from the management, from the [residents] what else they want to do.” Nir Oz is one of the kibbutzim in Sha’ar Hanegev municipality, sister city to San Diego and a partnership region for the Jewish Federation of San Diego.
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Holocaust Survivor Josef Veselsky died in Ireland, a country that had honored him as its “oldest man,” the Irish Times reported on Sunday. He was 107. A native of the former Czechoslovakia, where he was born as Josef Weiss and fought with Slovakian partisans against the Nazis, he immigrated after the Holocaust to Ireland, where he imported Swiss watches and coached two national table tennis teams, Czechoslovakia’s and Ireland’s.
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk as head of his nation’s security service with Ievehen Khmara, the former head of the special operations center of the security service. Zelenskyy also retained Canada’s former deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, as Ukraine’s development adviser. Of Ukrainian heritage, Freeland had served Canada as minister of international trade, foreign minister, and finance minister.
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NATIONAL
Miriam Elman, executive director of the pro-Israel Academic Engagement Network, announced three winners of the organization’s 2025 Shine A Light on Antisemitism Civic Courage Awards: Professors Keitha-Gail Martin-Kerr of the University of Minnesota; Miri Bar-Halpern of Parents for Peace in Massachusetts; and Amy Milligan of Old Dominion University in Virginia. Martin-Kerr was cited for her inclusion programs; Milligan for continuing to advocate for Jewish students notwithstanding harassment; and Bar-Halpern for her development of programs for the recognition of antisemitism.
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Imram Ahmed is engaged in a legal fight with the U.S. State Department over its plan to revoke his Green Card and send the Afghan descendant back to his former home in Britain. The case has attracted publicity because he is the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Ahmed has “dedicated his career to fighting online hate and extremism” and opined that the Trump administration’s move was “all part of the broader weaponization of the federal government to go after perceived political enemies and advance an extremist agenda, which in this case is to push back against any regulation of tech.” As the case stands now, federal courts have extended an injunction against Ahmed’s deportation to March.
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Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, said, “Military operations to secure our country do not require a ‘declaration of war’ by Congress. They do, however, require a ready, precise, and well-led military to achieve their goals. The United States has such a force. It is a blessing.”
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Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the leading Republican candidate to oppose New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, condemned neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and podcaster Tucker Carlson in an interview with Jewish Insider. Blakeman said, “Nick Fuentes is, in my opinion, a nut but a dangerous one, and he has no place in the Republican party. Tucker Carlson is a big blowhard who has an issue with Jewish people, and it probably emanates from his chameleon-like personality… He’s very unprincipled and think he has biases that probably emanated from his youth.”
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said the closed-door briefing that Trump administration officials provided for congressional leaders on Monday was “very extensive and long [and] posed more questions than it answered.” The plan for Venezuela’s future in the post-Maduro era “is vague, based on wishful thinking and unsatisfying.”
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STATE & LOCAL
San Diego City Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera called on Tuesday for the suspension of parking fees in Balboa Park for city residents. “We need a city that works for the people who live here, not just the people who profit here,” he stated in a press release.
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Retired medical doctor Bill Sperling and retired pharmacist Ken Reifman have expressed concern for the welfare of children who regularly play at Lake Murray Community Park now that the park’s sole port-a-potty has been removed by the City of San Diego with no immediate plans to replace it. Interviewed Tuesday on KFMB-TV, the pair said they noticed the distress of the children and their parents and caretakers because they are part of a group of senior citizens who meet weekly in the park. They said the office of Councilman Raul Campillo, in whose district the park is located, responded to their concern saying there was no money in the city’s budget for the port-a-potty’s maintenance.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World