By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
INTERNATIONAL
U.S. President Donald Trump told a meeting of his Cabinet on Thursday, monitored by reporters: “I personally asked [Russia’s] President [Vladimir] Putin not to fire on Kyiv [Ukraine’s capital) and the cities and towns for a week during this … extraordinary cold.” Putin has “agreed to that.” On the preceding Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned that Russia planned to time a massive attack with a cold stretch beginning on Friday in which predicted temperatures will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit). Trump elaborated to reporters and his Cabinet: “A lot of people said, ‘Don’t waste the call. You’re not going to get that’ And he did it. And we’re very happy that they did it.”
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Japan, Canada, and nine European nations issued a joint statement on Thursday condemning Israel’s demolition of the East Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Foreign ministries of Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, and Spain also signed the letter, calling upon “the government of Israel, a member of the United Nations, to halt all demolitions.”
The letter also demanded that Israel facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. “Despite the increase in aid entering Gaza, conditions remain dire and supply is inadequate for the needs of the population,” the 11-nation letter to Israel went on to say.
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Israel’s Prime Miniter Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday many Israeli soldiers died during the war in Gaza because former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration embargoed heavy arms in its pressure campaign on Israel to not go into Rafah, a city in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt. Amos Hochstein, Biden’s Middle East envoy, fired back in a statement to Axios: “Netanyahu is both not telling the truth and ungrateful to a president that literally saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment.
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Daniel Aghion, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has issued an e-booklet explaining the nature of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre. Here is a link.
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Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum told her daily news conference on Thursday, Jan. 29, that Canada’s Olympic snowboarder and alleged drug smuggler Ryan Wedding surrendered himself at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, CNN reported. On Friday, Jan. 23, the day after his surrender, the FBI escorted him to California, where he pleaded “not guilty” to drug trafficking charges on Monday, Jan. 26. FBI Director Kash Patel, in a statement Jan 23, had thanked Sheinbaum, military and law enforcement officers for working “hand-in-glove with our teams on the ground there.” Sheinbaum, at her news conference, commented: “We are never going to accept joint operations or operations by US federal or state forces on our territory. If we collaborate, they give us information and we also give them information, but the operations on our territory are Mexican forces, that must be very clear … I’m not going to get into further discussions with the FBI director but let it be clear that we are not going to accept operations. We always say this to President Donald Trump, and they have seen that we have been making progress.”
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Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, on Thursday said the EU foreign ministers who voted overwhelmingly to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terror organization, sent “a clear unmistakable message that Europe, now united with governments around the world, will not tolerate terror.” The IRGC “is the long arm of a regime that thrives on terror, repression, and destabilization, exporting its violence far beyond Iran’s borders and responsible for unthinkable horrors inflicted on the Iranian people, the Jewish people, and communities around the world.”
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NATIONAL
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and President Donald Trump have negotiated a deal to fund the government. Schumer announced that the agreement calls for five bipartisan bills funding most of the government would be approved as is, while the bill allocating funds to the Department of Homeland Security would be approved with a two-week continuing resolution, allowing Republicans and Democrats to work out some details about funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whose anti-immigrant enforcement policies have been at the center of the controversies in Minnesota and elsewhere.
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Sacha Roytman, CEO of Combat Antisemitism Movement, said in a press release that Wednesday’s repeated car ramming of Chabad’s international headquarters in Brooklyn, in which, thankfully, no one was injured, is “only the latest grim example of the growing normalization of violence targeting Jews. When civic leaders refuse to denounce the ‘Globalize the Intifada’ ideology, scenes like last night’s in Brooklyn, all too familiar from the Middle East, are the inevitable consequence.” However, two Chabad rabbis familiar with the case, Mordechai Lightstone and Motti Seligson, said the suspect had been rebuffed in his attempts to convert to Judaism. Mental health issues also may have been at play, sources told eJewish Philanthropy, pointing out that as he was taken into custody, the alleged car-rammer, was wearing shorts in single digit weather.
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NBC News reported on Thursday that Anthony Kazmierczak was the man who allegedly sprayed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) with apple cider vinegar at a Minneapolis Town Hall meeting Tuesday, Jan. 27. The FBI said in a charging document that he “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated an officer and employee of the United States” while she was engaged in official duties. Omar, at a lectern, Kazmierczak had called for Kristi Noem to resign or be impeached before Kazmierczak sprayed her with a syringe and saying: “She’s not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart.” Omar said later that “every time the president of the United States has chosen to use hateful rhetoric to talk about me and the community that I represent, my death threats skyrocket.”
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The Nexus Project, which has been critical of the Anti-Defamation League’s approach to reporting rates of antisemitism, nevertheless has appointed Aryeh Tuchman, a senior ADL antisemitism researcher, to be the first director of its own Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports.
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STATE & LOCAL
Terra Lawson-Remer, chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, said Thursday there are openings on the following five panels: Arts & Culture Commission, Social Service Advisory Board; Military and Veteran Advisory Council, Parks Advisory Committee, and Environmental Health & Quality Advisory Board. She urged citizens of San Diego County to fill the vacancies. “You don’t need to be an insider, just someone who cares about your community and wants to make a difference,” Lawson-Remer said.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World