International

Israel’s organization turned ‘flytilla’ into a non-event

By Yaakov Lappin    WASHINGTON, D.C –At the start of this week, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists planned to board passenger planes and fly to Israel. Their plan, according to Israeli intelligence assessments, was to join Palestinian demonstrations in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, events that had a high potential to turn violent.   The activists,

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Middle East

Let’s be the ‘village’ that supports Israel locally

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal SAN DIEGO — On Tuesday night I shared a fascinating lesson plan from Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority) with my Community Jewish High students. The lesson juxtaposed two reports from a transport that carried Jews from Dusseldorf, Germany to Riga, Latvia that left on December 11, 1941.

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International, Jewish History, Middle East

Yom HaShoah and the Iran threat

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –The full Hebrew name of Holocaust Memorial Day is yom hasho’a v’hagvurah, the day of catastrophe and heroism. The commemorations in Israel tend to put at least as much stress on the heroism as on the catastrophe. Thus the annual state ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial complex, in

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Middle East

U.S. should put conditions on its military aid to Egypt

By James Colbert WASHINGTON, D.C. –Providing the Egyptian military with unrestricted military assistance no longer serves American goals. While conditional aid is a relatively weak diplomatic tool, it is the only approach left to the United States to alter meaningfully Egypt’s negative trajectory that is propelled by an economy nearing collapse, ongoing human rights abuses,

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USA

AMCHA’s open letter to CSU Chancellor Reed

Dear Chancellor Reed, Over two months ago, 1,800 members and supporters of the California   Jewish community — including hundreds of CSU students, parents, alumni, and   donors — signed a letter to  you expressing their outrage over the University-hosted web pages of CSU  Northridge Mathematics professor David Klein, which include anti-Semitic material promoting the economic, cultural and academic boycott of the  Jewish

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USA

U.S. should oppose Islamic dictatorships as it did Soviet ones

By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — A lick of historicism would serve the Obama administration well in its much-too-friendly relationship with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and other manifestations of the Arab uprising.  There is a political space between going to war with countries that do not share our democratic norms and principles, and embracing them

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Shoshana Bryen, USA