Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Don’t conflate criticism of Netanyahu and Israel
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to Mako, an Israeli news station, during an event in New York. (Screenshot)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said her criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be seen as shots at the Jewish state.
“The Netanyahu administration has been pursuing a lot of extraordinarily concerning policies,” Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., told Israel’s Channel 12 News in a recent media opportunity in New York.
The freshman lawmaker likened Netanyahu to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked her.
“To conflate an individual leader or ego with being against the entire country I think is hallmark behavior of folks like our president,” she said. “Just like we have the ability to criticize our president without being anti-American, I think we can criticize the policies” of Netanyahu without being anti-Israel.
Trump has accused Ocasio-Cortez and three other progressive freshmen congresswomen of being anti-Semitic, apparently based on the fact that two of them, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, back Israel boycotts. (Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts do not.)
Ocasio-Cortez said in the interview that Trump was instrumentalizing anti-Semitism to distract from his policies.
“It’s done completely in bad faith and they can no longer use this allegation of anti-Semitism to defend their unjust and inhumane policies,” she said. “You can’t use this cudgel of anti-Semitism to scare people away from pointing that out.”
Scarlett Johansson on abuse allegations against Woody Allen: ‘I believe him’
From left to right, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen attend the Los Angeles premiere of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" at the Mann Village Theatre in Los Angeles, Aug 4, 2008. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Scarlett Johansson threw her support behind Woody Allen, who has been accused of sexual abuse.
“I love Woody,” the Jewish actress told the Hollywood Reporter in an article published Wednesday. “I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.”
In 1992, Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexual abuse. The Jewish filmmaker denies the claims.
The allegations resurfaced last year with the growth of the #MeToo movement. In December, model Babi Christina Engelhardt said that Allen had a sexual relationship with her when she was 16.
Allen has faced backlash as a result of the allegations. Amazon nixed a $68 million movie deal, allegedly due to the claims. A number of actors who worked on his latest movie, “A Rainy Day in New York,” donated their salaries to anti-rape and harassment organizations in the wake of the renewed allegations.
Others have come to his defense.
Johansson has starred in three movies directed by Allen: “Match Point,” “Scoop” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
Nazi-looted art returned to heirs of German-Jewish art collector
The Clothing of Saint Clare by Saint Francis by Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
(JTA) — Germany returned two Nazi-looted late medieval panels to the heirs of a Jewish art collector.
The predella panels, found at the base of an altar, were owned by businessman Harry Fuld Sr. Dating from about 1455, the works by the Italian artist Giovanni di Paolo depict two scenes of the life of St. Clare of Assisi.
They were in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie (Old Master Gallery) and returned with the assistance of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the artnet website reported.
The foundation also has overseen the restitution to Fuld’s heirs of a late medieval alabaster relief in 2009 and two fabric fragments in 2012, The relief remains hanging in the Bode Museum in Berlin through an agreement with the heirs.
Fuld, who died in 1932, owned a Frankfurt-based company that produced and sold telephones. The Nazis expropriated the company from his wife, Lucie Mayer-Fuld, and his two sons. Mayer-Fuld fled to France and the sons to England.
In 1940 the two panels were bought by what was then called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum and entered the national collection.
More than 500 items in Germany’s lost-art database are listed as belonging to Mayer-Fuld, including 13 paintings, 18 sculptures, and more than 482 craft and folk artworks.
Netanyahu makes first visit to Hebron since 1998 and vows it will never be empty of Jews
Israeli soldeirs secure the area outside the Cave of the Patriarchs before the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the West Bank city of Hebron, on Sept. 4, 2019. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, making his first visit to Hebron since 1998, said Wednesday that the West Bank city “will never be empty of Jews.”
Netanyahu made the remarks at a ceremony to mark the 90th anniversary of the massacre of Jews in Hebron, a mostly Palestinian city about 18 miles from Jerusalem.
His last visit there was before he first became prime minister, according to reports.
“We are not strangers in Hebron, we will remain here forever,” Netanyahu he said at the afternoon ceremony. “We have not come to dispossess anyone, but nobody will dispossess us either.”
The ceremony took place in the plaza in front of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews and Muslims. Half of the site is used for Muslim worship and half for Jewish worship. Some 800 Jews live in their own enclave there among 200,000 Palestinians.
“We have come here to unite in memory, to express victory over the bloodthirsty rioters who committed the horrific massacre 90 years ago today,” Netanyahu said. “We have accomplished historical justice, and returned to the city of the patriarchs,” he also said.
Netanyahu did not announce any new Jewish building in Hebron or suggest applying sovereignty over the city, as many expected he would.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Culture Minister Miri Regev of Netanyahu’s Likud party both called for Israeli sovereignty over Hebron in their speeches.
The Palestinian Authority called Netanyahu’s visit a “dangerous escalation” meant to garner right-wing votes prior to the Sept. 17 election.
Earlier Wednesday at a conference in Hebron on the topic of the massacre, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the cave “was bought for full price” and “our right to this land was established as just and moral, a right to property over which is and will always be uncontestable.”
He called the city a “test of our ability to live together, Jews and Arabs, to live decent lives side by side.”
Benjamin Netanyahu becomes welfare minister, his 4th portfolio in addition to prime minister
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the media after the Knesset voted to dissolve itself, May 30, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will serve as welfare minister in the wake of the resignation of Haim Katz over charges of fraud and breach of trust.
Netanyahu adds the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, generally known as welfare, to three other ministries he now leads: defense, health and Diaspora affairs.
Katz stepped down last month following the announcement by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit of the indictment. The resignation went into effect on Wednesday. Katz remains a lawmaker for Netanyahu’s Likud party, however.
Netanyahu became the defense minister following the November resignation of Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party. Netanyahu dismissed Naftali Bennett, now of the United Right party, from the government in June and took on his Diaspora affairs portfolio. Yaakov Litzman of the United Torah Judaism Party resigned as health minister in 2017 but remains deputy health minister.
Josh Rosen won’t start season as the starting quarterback for NFL’s Miami Dolphins
Josh Rosen of the Miami Dolphins leaves the field following a preseason game against the New Orleans Saints at the Superdome in New Orleans, Aug. 29, 2019. (Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Josh Rosen, the Jewish quarterback traded to the Miami Dolphins this offseason, will have to wait a little longer to get his chance in the Florida sun.
Rosen, the UCLA star who was drafted in the first round by the Arizona Cardinals in 2018, could not earn the starting job for the first game of the National Football League season on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens. Ryan Fitzpatrick, a journeyman brought in from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will direct the offense.
The news is no doubt disappointing plenty of South Florida Jewish fans, who expected they had their heir apparent to Jay Fiedler, the Dolphins’ starter for the better part of five seasons from 2000 to 2004. Fieldler, a Dartmouth graduate, was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
The Dolphins, who have a new head coach in former New England Patriots assistant Brian Flores, had sent second- and fifth-round draft picks to Arizona to bring in Rosen.
Rosen promises no “ayin haras” — evil eyes — for Fitzpatrick.
“I’ll push him every single day for him to get better, and if he doesn’t get better, I’ll hopefully surpass him at some point,” he said via CBS Sports. “We’re teammates. We’re both Dolphins, and I’m rooting for him as hard as anyone because I think – as I said before – a rising tide raises all ships.”
Keep the faith, Jewish fans: Rosen didn’t get his first start for the Cardinals until the fourth game last season.
Tourist pays $2,800 for shawarma platter in Jerusalem
A shawarma platter with falafel and hummus (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Was it the most amazing shawarma platter ever?
At $2,800, one would hope so.
That’s what one tourist was charged for the plate by a Jerusalem restaurant located near the Jaffa Gate.
In a post last week to the Secret Jerusalem Facebook page, Laura Ziff asked for assistance in locating information about the restaurant in order to secure a refund. Her receipt from the eatery, which she identified as Old City Shawarma, showed that Ziff had been charged 10,100 shekels for the meal.
The owner told Israel’s Channel 13 that the transaction was a mistake.
A former employee, however, told the morning news program on Israel’s Channel 12 that the owners had used the tactic several times before. He said that sometimes the owner would quote the price in shekels but then charge the number quoted in dollars or euros. The employee added that some tourists gave up trying to recover the money that they were overcharged.
On Monday, Ziff posted in the comments section of her original post that she had been contacted by the restaurants owners, who apologized for the misunderstanding.
“I am confident that they are trying to do the right thing,” she wrote. “I am hopeful that within the next day or so everything will be resolved.”
One of the commenters on her Facebook page wrote: “100 people should go and have shwarma there and when he comes with the bill they can tell him that Laura Ziff already paid!”
Argentina’s former president under fire for ‘consuming oranges from Israel’ comment
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, seen in 2015, is taking a hit from a Jewish group in her country for comments it called ironic. (Mauro Rico via Flickr)
(JTA) — Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the former president of Argentina who was indicted while in office for allegedly covering up Iran’s involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center, is under fire from a Jewish group in her country.
The Argentine Zionist Organization took aim at Kirchner, now a candidate for vice president, for using the import of Israeli oranges into the country to target the free trade practices of the current president.
“[President Mauricio] Macri allowed the free import of anything you can think of,” Kirchner said. “With Macri we ended up consuming oranges from Israel, apples from Chile, wines from I don’t know where,” adding that Macri “agreed to everything that the economic sectors demanded.”
The group saw the comment as ironic since Kirchner as president signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran in 2013 to jointly investigate the alleged involvement of senior Iranian officials in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center. In March 2018, she was indicted for covering up Iranian officials’ involvement in the attack.
“It is a paradox of fate that Mrs. Fernandez, promoter of the cover-up Memorandum with Iran, used the example of Israeli oranges,” the Argentine Zionist Organization said in a statementreleased Tuesday.
The statement suggested that Kirchner not make her political comeback with misleading statistics, “as if buying Israeli oranges were the root of all the ills of our country.”
Kirchner currently serves as a senator representing Buenos Aires. As long as she remains a sitting senator, she has immunity from prosecution in the Iran cover-up case.
The decision to put Kirchner and the former government officials on trial dates back to the accusation made in 2015 by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who claimed that Kirchner had set up a “parallel communication channel” with Iran in order to avoid incriminating senior Iranian government officials in the bombing. Nisman, who was Jewish, was shot to death just before he was to present his evidence to lawmakers.
Chabad opens its first center in Rwanda
Rabbi Chaim and Dina Bar Sella and 8-month-old Shneur Zalman arrive in Kigali, Rwanda, to set up the country's first Chabad center. (Courtesy of Chabad)
(JTA) — Chabad has opened its first center in Rwanda, which becomes the African nation’s first synagogue served by a permanent rabbi.
Rabbi Chaim and Dina Bar Sella, and their 8-month-old son, Shneur Zalman, arrived last week in Kigali and managed to gather a minyan for Shabbat prayers, Chabad.org reported.
They will serve under the auspices of Chabad of Central Africa led by Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
In the past, yeshiva students have made visits to Rwanda to run occasional Jewish events as part of Chabad’s “Roving Rabbis” program.
Rabbi Bar Sella said the new Chabad center will serve Jewish humanitarian workers and visiting businesspeople.
“We look forward to meeting the needs of everyone here,” he said.
The couple recently hosted a Jewish youth group from Great Britain that was touring Rwanda.
Jewish man and teen son stabbed with box cutter outside Brooklyn synagogue
(JTA) — A Jewish man and his teenage son were seriously wounded when they were stabbed with a box cutter outside a synagogue in Brooklyn.
The father, 45, and his son, 18, got into an argument early Sunday morning with three men who were drinking outside the synagogue in the Kensington section bordering the heavily Jewish Borough Park. One of the men stabbed the father in his arm and neck, and the son in the neck and stomach. They were taken to Maimonides Medical Center in serious but stable condition, the New York Daily News reported.
One of the men, Vinesh Marajh, 42, was taken into police custody and charged with assault, disorderly conduct and harassment. The other two men were not apprehended.
Police do not believe the attack was a bias crime, WABC-TV reported.
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