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Jared Sichel

Jared Sichel

Frank talk about Middle East issues

International policy talk met fundraising recently as former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton joined a discussion with Israeli Brig. Gen. Relik Shafir, one of eight Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilots in the 1981 bombing raid of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

Anything-goes Comikaze expo has its serious side

Stormtroopers, the Joker, Gandalf the Grey, Data from “Star Trek” — no, this wasn’t West Hollywood on the night of Oct. 31, although it looked pretty similar. It was “Stan Lee’s Comikaze” — a sort of Comic-Con for Los Angeles.

Rabin’s grandson remembers losing a great leader

The night Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in downtown Tel Aviv, his grandson, Jonathan Benartzi, was two weeks away from completing his three years of duty in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a paratrooper.

UC holds forum on statement against intolerance

Five weeks after the University of California’s Board of Regents rejected the “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” drafted by UC President Janet Napolitano’s office, a UC-appointed “working group” held a forum Oct. 26 at UCLA, where the public was free to comment on the proposed principles.

At Israeli-American Council’s second national conference, more people and less politics

As about 1,300 Israeli Americans convened from Oct. 17-19 in Washington, D.C., for the Israeli-American Council’s (IAC) second annual national conference, anxiety and anger over the recent wave of Palestinian stabbings in Israel was a much-discussed topic during a weekend that was otherwise less flashy, less political and more formal than the group’s flashy inaugural conference a year ago.

At Politicon, diversity and polarity make for entertaining (and loud) political fare

The two-day conference, which ran Oct. 9-10, attracted about 9,000 attendees, according to event organizers, and brought together some of the nation’s most recognizable figures in politics, media and entertainment, including “The Daily Show” host, Trevor Noah, who performed a stand-up routine followed up by a conversation with Carville, the political commentator who helped Bill Clinton win the presidency, as well as Paul Begala, former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), John Avlon, editor in chief of the Daily Beast, with Edward Snowden, who became famous for leaking classified information from the NSA, appearing via live video from Russia.

UC Regents reject statement of principles of intolerance

After months of anticipation over whether the University of California’s Board of Regents would adopt a formal definition of anti-Semitism in the wake of several anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents across its campuses, the UC’s governing arm rejected the “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” drafted and submitted by the office of UC President Janet Napolitano at its Sept. 17 meeting in Irvine.

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