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Jewish Journal

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April 5, 2016

Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s newspaper says it will stop helping the candidate

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, United States /

The New York Observer said its editor would no longer consult with the campaign of Donald Trump, whose son-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns the weekly.

The statement Tuesday, reported Monday by the Huffington Post, came a day after a New York magazine profile of the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nod said that Observer editor Ken Kurson had assisted Kushner in writing Trump’s speech last month to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“A recent report about Observer Editor Ken Kurson’s input on a speech delivered by Donald Trump before AIPAC has resulted in new scrutiny of our newspaper’s relationship with Mr. Trump, who is the father-in-law of our publisher, Jared Kushner,” the newspaper’s political editor, Jill Jorgensen, said in the statement. “Going forward, there will be no input whatsoever on the campaign from Mr. Kurson or anyone on the editorial side of the Observer.”

The statement said the Observer would start covering Trump as it would any other candidate. The paper had held back from some reporting about the candidate because of his family tie to Kushner.

Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, is married to Kushner, who is Orthodox Jewish. Kushner has been the subject in recent days of multiple profiles because he is in the small circle of advisers to his father-in-law’s campaign, albeit in an informal capacity.

The scion of a real estate family that has given heavily to Jewish and pro-Israel causes, Kushner has advised his father-in-law to pivot to a more traditional campaign, Reuters reported this week, and to reach out to establishment Republican donors. Kushner and his father, Charles, are prominent givers to AIPAC, and Kushner arranged for Trump to travel to Israel last December to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders.

Trump canceled the trip after Netanyahu criticized the candidate’s call to keep Muslims from entering the United States. His campaign denied a report Trump reprimanded Kushner for suggesting the visit.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s newspaper says it will stop helping the candidate Read More »

For parents of soldiers lost in Gaza, the war never ended

Leave a Comment / Israel /

One family lost their son in late July 2014. The other lost theirs on the first of August in the same year.

One family has lobbied the United Nations and crossed an ocean in hopes of bringing their son’s remains back. The other mostly stays home.

One family is sure their son is dead. The other is plagued by uncertainty.

But one thing unites the Goldin and Shaul families: Of the 67 sets of Israeli parents who lost sons in the Gaza War two years ago, only theirs have not returned.

Now, Leah Goldin and Zehava Shaul look burned out and constantly on the verge of tears as the two mothers separately talk through their ordeals. By their sides, their husbands, Simcha Goldin and Herzl Shaul, look dejected.

“They say we’re not normal,” said Leah Goldin. “We have to talk about the first of August. It’s like returning to the scene of the crime. We can’t leave the place of our mourning.”

Oron Shaul, then 20, was engaged with his unit in a brutal battle over the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya on July 20, 2014. He had left his armored personnel carrier to repair a broken part when Hamas militants began firing on the vehicle, taking him prisoner. Five days later, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that he had died based on evidence at the scene. The battle claimed 12 other Israeli soldiers.

Herzl Shaul accepts the army’s conclusion about his son. But because his body wasn’t recovered, Zehava Shaul believes he is still alive. She says Oron is being held captive by Hamas like Gilad Shalit, the soldier captured in a 2006 raid and returned in a hotly debated 2011 prisoner swap that saw 1,000 Palestinian prisoners go free.

“As a mother I feel he’s alive,” she said. “How can you determine death when he’s in the hands of Hamas? In any case, I want Oron. The government and the defense minister sent him to this operation. They need to bring him back.”

About two weeks after Shaul’s capture, Hadar Goldin was taken during the collapse of a cease-fire. In response, the IDF employed the controversial Hannibal Directive, which calls for the army to use any means necessary to ensure a soldier isn’t taken prisoner. Some 150 Palestinians and three Israelis died in the ensuing fight.

The IDF was able to recover enough of Hadar’s body to declare him dead. The family held a funeral, and since then has engaged in an unending quest to return the rest of their son’s remains.

Though both parents work, the Goldins’ campaign takes up all their energy. They have traveled from their home in this central Israeli city to the United States three times in their so-far failed attempt to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and lobby for the return of Hadar’s body. They hope for a deal to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza in return for the bodies of their son and Oron Shaul. They confer on the campaign regularly with the Shaul family.

“We have no time to be sad,” said Leah Goldin. “We have no time to get angry. We must act. We need energy to speak, to influence.”

Back home, the Goldins and their friends are doing everything they can to keep their son’s memory alive. They held an exhibit of his artwork on the war’s first anniversary at the Ein Hod artists’ village in northern Israel. Twice a year, his classmates organize a day of hiking and study in his memory.

Following Oron’s capture, the IDF offered a headstone for him in a section of a military cemetery reserved for missing soldiers. The Shauls wanted no part of it. Oron has been memorialized at no shortage of events — from official military functions to a marathon to a home match of his favorite soccer team, Beitar Jerusalem. An hour after speaking to JTA at their home, the Shauls would be visited by former Education Minister Shai Piron.

Simcha and Leah Goldin have embarked on a ceaseless campaign to retrieve the body of their son, Hadar, from Gaza. He was captured and killed in a clash at the southern end of the strip on Aug. 1 2014. (Ben Sales)Leah and Simcha Goldin have embarked on a tireless campaign to retrieve the body of their son, Hadar, from Gaza. He was captured and killed in a clash at the southern end of the strip on Aug. 1, 2014. Photo by Ben Sales/JTA

But while the Shauls appreciate the thought behind these gestures, they are exhausted by them. Zehava Shaul doesn’t want to see her son memorialized; she wants him back. Besides, she doesn’t think he’s dead.

“What can I tell you? None of that helps me,” Zehava Shaul said. “The opposite; it makes it worse for me. Sometimes you want quiet, to be with yourself, and they don’t let you. Some minister is supposed to come over. Nothing helps.”

Before last year, says Zehava Shaul, it “didn’t occur to us” to join the Goldins’ overseas trips. Zehava Shaul traveled to London last summer to meet with representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross, to no avail. They planned to join the most recent trip, in February, but Herzl Shaul was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.

Neither Shaul works now. They spend their days on the couches in the living room of their home in Poriya Ilit, a small town near the Sea of Galilee, surrounded by pictures of their son in and out of uniform, tortured by what might have happened to him. Oron’s bed is covered with signs, pictures and gifts sent to the family after his death. Otherwise it remains untouched, his shirts and jeans still sitting in neat stacks in his closet.

“It’s the hardest thing,” said Zehava Shaul. “There’s nothing harder than uncertainty. Every day the hole in my heart gets bigger. Every day I say when I get up in the morning, ‘What have I done to bring back Oron?’ There’s no one to talk to.”

Both families have met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But nearly two years after the war, neither expects much of him or finds comfort in his sympathy. They understand that after the Shalit deal, which saw some of the Palestinian prisoners return to terror, the Israeli public has little appetite for another exchange.

As much as they’re campaigning to get their sons back, the Goldins and Shauls are fighting for something more basic: They just want Israelis to pay attention to their plight.

“When we start talking about bringing back Hadar, they say, ‘Oy oy oy, how much will it cost? The trauma of Gilad Shalit was terrible for us,'” said Leah Goldin.

“So what?” she asked. “You don’t do anything?”

For parents of soldiers lost in Gaza, the war never ended Read More »

Israeli lawmaker rapped for favoring segregation in maternity wards

Leave a Comment / Israel /

A right-wing Knesset member was slammed for saying Arab and Jewish mothers in Israel’s maternity wards should be placed in separate rooms.

In a Twitter post Tuesday, Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home party said, “It’s natural that my wife wouldn’t want to lie down [in a bed] next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby twenty years from now.”

Smotrich added that “Arabs are my enemies and that’s why I don’t enjoy being next to them.”

Soon after their posting, the tweets were criticized by party leader Naftali Bennett.

Smotrich’s tweets — an earlier one said his wife was “no racist” but objects to the post-birth celebrations by many Arab women — also prompted condemnation from other politicians. Abd al-Hakim Hajj Yahya of the Joint Arab List sent a letter to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein calling Smotrich’s comments “racist incitement” and cause for immediate suspension from the Knesset.

Smotrich’s tweets came in response to an Israel Radio report revealing that some Israeli hospitals separate Arab and Jewish patients when requested.

According to the Times of Israel, Smotrich’s wife, Revital, later added to the controversy by telling Channel 10 that she had “kicked an Arab obstetrician out of the [delivery] room. I want Jewish hands to touch my baby, and I wasn’t comfortable lying in the same room with an Arab woman.

“I refuse to have an Arab midwife because for me giving birth is a Jewish and pure moment,” she said.

Bennett, Israel’s education minister, on Twitter quoted a passage from the Mishnah stating that “every human created in God’s image is favored,” adding that the text refers to “every human, Jewish or Arab.”

Bennett linked his tweet to a 2015 post in which he said, “In a hospital there is no significance to race, religion, skin color, sexual orientation or political views.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog of Zionist Union condemned Smotrich on Facebook, according to The Jerusalem Post, saying the lawmaker “does not care if people get a taste of racism. A baby born is pure, he does not know hatred. He should get a hug, warmth and love from the first moments in the world. Not racism.”

The Israel Radio report noted that since the wave of violence that began in October, both Jewish and Arab women have avoided hospitals in diverse areas out of fear of being in a mixed ward. All the hospitals mentioned in the report said they do not separate Jews and Arabs as a rule, though some said they would if a patient requested it.

The Health Ministry said in the report that “no separation on a discriminatory basis is allowed in hospitals. Health Ministry guidelines state that no separation by population is to be made — not by race, ethnicity, country of origin or any other factor.”

According to The Jerusalem Post, Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa were the only two hospitals who told Israel Radio that separation between patients in the maternity ward is not possible.

Israeli lawmaker rapped for favoring segregation in maternity wards Read More »

Hoenlein cautions against ‘obsession’ with presidential election

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, United States /

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, cautioned against becoming obsessed with the 2016 presidential election on Monday.

“The obsession, I have to say, with the presidential election is, to me, one of the most dangerous things that is happening,” Hoenlein remarked during a forum hosted by JP Updates and moderated by New York City Councilman David Greenfield in Brooklyn. “We have nine months still to go where these issues are going to be in play. People are not talking about it. They’re not thinking about it. All they are thinking about is watching the circus of the political realm.”

Instead, Hoenlien suggested, the American Jewish community should keep an eye on President Barack Obama as he may refocus his attention, during the final year of his presidency, on the failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

According to Hoenlein, Obama is not going to end his presidency as a lame duck, rather as an activist president “who has made clear that he has a legacy agenda that he wants to implement.” In addition to improving relations with Cuba, Hoenlein sees the president aiming to “create the predicates” for the creation of a future Palestinian state.

“I’m telling you, we’re going to all look back in a few months and say, ‘How did all of these things happen?’ The government in Washington is not stopping. They’re going ahead, and on critical issues to our future,” he alerted the crowd of 40, consisting of many local Orthodox Jewish leaders. “These issues are not going to be decisions for years. They’re going to be things that will affect your grandchildren and their grandchildren. These are decisions of generations.”

Hoenlein also addressed the U.S.-Israel relationship over the past seven years, recalling comments he had made to President Obama about creating daylight in the relationship with Israel. (According to Hoenlein, the comments published in the NY Times were leaked by the White House). “There is an important message that when the relationship with Israel is bad, the Arabs look at this and take this as a measure of the confidence they can have in their relationship,” Hoenlein explained. ”They say if Israel, with the Jewish lobby and all the Jewish support, can’t rely on America, what chance do we have?”

Comparing Obama to previous Republican presidents, Hoenlein said that while Ronald Reagan, George H. and George W.  Bush had their moments of tension with the Israeli government and the American pro-Israel community, “nobody doubted where they stood.” Whereas with Obama, “It’s just that there’s a lack of confidence; that people aren’t sure.”

On the Iran nuclear deal, Hoenlein maintained that the campaign against the deal did not go to waste despite the outcome. “The image is created that somehow we lost on the Iran deal. It’s a lie. We won,” he said. “In the Senate, 58 voted against it. What was the vote in the House? Overwhelmingly against it. Because the president was able to pull a parliamentary maneuver, it wasn’t because he won. A majority of Americans still say this is a bad deal. So the educational efforts and all the work that people put in, one should not think that it was in vain. It accomplished something.”

Hoenlein said the next president will have to push for tougher policies and sanctions on non-nuclear areas while enforcing the nuclear deal. He also advised the Israeli government and the administration to finalize negotiations and sign the 10-year “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) security package. “I think it’s much better to do it now than wait because you never know what will come next,” he said. “But I think it has to be on the right terms. Hopefully, the United States and Israel will work together, get it done, and be able to enact it.”

Hoenlein revealed that the Conference of Presidents had invited all of the 2016 presidential candidates to a forum focused on foreign affairs. He joked that if the presidential candidates were to follow through on their promises once they’re in office, “we would have had 47 embassies in Jerusalem.”

Hoenlein cautions against ‘obsession’ with presidential election Read More »

Chametz: The Good, the Bad and the Holy

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Can we claim we don’t want something in our lives when we still own it?

When my wife Rebbitzen Rachel asked me to write something about selling chametz on Passover, I realized that if I don’t try to explain chametz in all it’s perplexing glory and ignominy, I would be letting down those who are determined to understand Passover and Jewish tradition better. So what follows is an exploration of our relationship with chametz – the good, the bad and the Holy.

Is it possible for us to believe our friend Jack who says he has sworn off alcohol for good — but we see two 40oz beers tucked into his back pockets? No, we’ll think Jack is still a lush, not serious about quitting or delusional.

If our friend Jill tells us she has broken it off for good with her boyfriend Jack — but she still has a picture of them together arm in arm on the beach in Malibu on her cell phone, Facebook profile, and car dashboard. Is she over him? Unlikely.

For us to believe that Jack has given up his boozing ways or that Jill has dumped her impaired beau, we are going to require they demonstrate a thorough elimination from their lives of alcohol and mementos of the past relationship. It’s not enough to say a relationship is over. The words ring hollow. You, as their friend, are going to require much more than just a verbal statement. You will want to see real and permanent action.

I hope this analogy of Jack and Jill will be helpful to teach about chametz,  fermented or leavened grain products such as bread made from wheat, barley, spelt, rye and oats, that we cut out of our lives on Passover entirely. Hear me out; (and feel free to reassign the gender of the two main characters in the analogy if it bothers you, it makes no difference to the basic point of the story)  For us to truly relinquish something from our lives, we can’t own it, or have it in our possession. We saw this with Jack and Jill and their disastrous relationship.

Integral to the mitzvah to eat matzah on Passover is to refrain from eating chametz for the duration of the holiday. You have to give up one for the other. In order to drive this point home, the Torah requires that we not only stop eating chametz, but that we cannot own or possess any chametz during Passover.

Why is it so critical that we don’t even own or possess chametz on Passover? Isn’t it enough that we just lay-off the beer and bread?

Apparently not.

The Torah teaches in Exodus 12:19, “For seven days no leavened matter shall be found in your houses.” Then a chapter later in Exodus 13:7,  “And no leavened matter shall be seen by you, nor shall any leaven [itself] be seen by you, in all your borders, for seven days.”  We refer to this in rabbinic literature as “bal yera'eh u-val yimatzeh” – “[chametz] may not be seen and not be found.”

As by Rabbi Asher Meir explains: “The properties of being “found” and “seen” are qualified by the phrase “by YOU,” making this prohibition, for all practical purposes, basically one of OWNING chametz. Chametz not belonging to a Jew is NOT part of the prohibition, and chametz which DOES belong to a Jew is subject to the prohibition even when it is not in the Jew's house.”

On Passover, chametz is serious business.

This is why starting a month before Passover, many Jews start a kind of chametz drawdown, the gradual reduction in possession of chametz and the compartmentalization of chametz in the home and workplace leading up to holiday. Then as we prep our homes in the world’s original spring-cleaning, we isolate any remaining chametz to be either eaten, destroyed, or sold before Passover begins.

What is so bad about chametz that we treat it like asbestos? What harm will chametz cause us? Chametz is a physical representation of pride, egotism and arrogance – some of the most destructive personal traits on the planet. Without going into explicit details about how harmful an out-of-control ego can be, consider for a moment that someone who is really full of themselves is easily angered, selfish, giving only in order to get something better in return, and believes that they are the sole reason for their success — not God or anyone else.

The Jewish people’s miraculous journey to freedom is what we celebrate and exalt every year during Passover.  It is not freedom to dominate others with our will, but the freedom to choose a good and holy path, through sublimation of our will to the will and wisdom of our Creator. Freedom isn’t simply “another word for nothing left to lose” but a path made by our choices to invest in creating healthy lives in sync with humanity, Hashem, and the planet.

So in order to renew or commitment to this freedom from the 40’s of pride shoved in our back pockets and the unhealthy relationship with our ego splayed across our screens — we rid our lives of chametz for Passover. It’s not really like an asbestos or lead removal, because when Passover is over, the chametz becomes permitted and important. However, through the removal of chametz from our lives on Passover, we internalize how to become masters over our egos, not slaves to our pride and poor choices.

Which gets me back to what to do with your chametz during Passover.

Whatever we don’t eat in the time leading up to Passover we need to get rid of. However some people have prodigious amounts of expensive chametz in their possession which makes it very unlikely they will actually get rid of it, such as store owners, Jewish-owned corporations, whiskey producers or collectors. The rabbis wanted to ensure that these businesspeople could fulfill the Torah’s mitzvah to rid themselves of chametz, while not taking a huge financial loss in the process.

Rabbi Yoel Sirkis (1560-1640) created a legal procedure called “mechirat chametz” whereby a Jew could rent out the area of their business or home to a non-Jew during Passover in addition to selling them the chametz. The non-Jew becomes the actual owner of the goods and the areas they are stored. The new owner has the right to visit and check in on their chametz during Passover. After Passover, the chametz is sold back to the Jew and the procedure is financially beneficial for both parties. While originally developed for Jewish tavern owners, today many rabbis act as agents for members of their communities and Jewish businesses to sell their chametz on their behalf for Passover. From a few bottles of old scotch to entire warehouses, the mitzvah of ridding our lives of chametz for Passover is truly really helped by this procedure.

You might be asking, “Can’t I just do this myself and sell my booze to my neighbors? Why do I need a rabbi?”. The answer, as is often the case with any contract, in US civil law or Jewish law, it is good to get a pro to help things go smoothly. The sale of chametz is a complex legal arrangement which has many parts that need to be executed correctly and in the right order for it to be effective. If the sale is not done right, the entire procedure may be invalid and you may end up having owned the chametz for Passover. Which would not be so terrible, except for the issue that chametz owned by a Jew over Passover then becomes forever forbidden to use or to benefit from. Why? If there were no penalty for holding on to the chametz, we are afraid that people’s selfishness will get the better of them, and they will forgo the entire process of chametz removal and ego control. Therefor, if you plan on selling chametz you need to find an expert in Jewish law to execute the transaction on your behalf. Not even all orthodox rabbis will do this and leave it to specialists who have advanced knowledge of the procedures.

Certainly for you to experience whether this chametz removal works on spiritual, personal or collective terms or not — in addition to any mitzvot you achieve for participating — you need to try. It’s not enough to just kind of participate. Or to do it “in the spirit” of the law. You wouldn’t let yourself use that logic in other cases; such as preventing a person from consuming something that you know is harmful for them. “It’s OK kids if grandma has a few cookies, her diabetes isn’t that bad.” Really!?

Truly, it’s a challenge. But then again, anything that we do to fundamentally improve our lives and the lives those around us is going to require effort. There is no quick fix to removing this spiritual chametz and becoming a more sensitive and caring person who thinks about others. Rather, it’s a transformation that we undergo, with Passover playing a critical role in the process, to developing a more meaningful and joyous life.

So now you have it, the good, the bad, and the Holy of chametz on Passover.

God bless you and have a wonderful and fulfilling Passover.

_________________

Sell your Rabbi Yonah Bookstein is Co-Founder of Pico Shul, Alevy Rabbi-in-Residence at USC Hillel, and Director of Shabbat Tent.

Chametz: The Good, the Bad and the Holy Read More »

Drought rules pushed Californians to cut water use by nearly 25 pct

Leave a Comment / California, United States /

Residents and businesses in drought-stricken California cut back water use by nearly 25 percent from June 2015 through the end of February 2016 – enough to supply nearly 6 million people for a year, officials said Monday.

The state's first ever mandatory cutbacks in water use were imposed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as the state entered its fourth year of devastating drought last spring, leading to a savings of 1.19 million acre-feet of water, about the amount used annually by the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego combined.

“Californians rose to the occasion, reducing irrigation, fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, and saving our precious water resources in all sorts of ways,” said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which developed the regulations and is responsible for enforcing them.

Under the rules, California residents and businesses were required to cut back their usage by up to 36 percent over 2013, in a range determined by a combination of geography and past conservation efforts. All told, they conserved by 24 percent, close to the 25 percent goal set by Brown in an emergency order issued by Brown last April.

Regulators are weighing whether to lift or adjust the cutbacks following a wet winter that has left the northern part of the state with a plentiful water supply.

Regulators are set to reconsider the orders at a series of meetings later this month, as consumers and water utilities chafe under the continued burden.

One water district, responding to consumers who are irate that they must continue to conserve even as their local reservoir is reaching flood-control levels, has on its own told residents that they will no longer require cutbacks.

“It's very hard to maintain your credibility when residents can see the lake spilling for flood control purposes,” yet stringent cutbacks are still being enforced, said Keith Durkin, assistant general manager of the San Juan Water District, which serves the community of Granite Bay and other suburbs east of Sacramento with water from Folsom Lake.

Drought rules pushed Californians to cut water use by nearly 25 pct Read More »

Bernie Sanders: Israel’s ‘positive’ U.S. ties hinges on bettering relations with Palestinians

Leave a Comment / United States /

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Israel must improve relations with the Palestinians in order to maintain good relations with the United States.

Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont who is mounting a strong challenge against Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the Democratic race, also said the Palestinians must condemn terrorism and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Speaking this week with the New York Daily News editorial board ahead of the state’s April 19 primary, Sanders said Israeli behavior with the Palestinians would be linked to U.S. policy toward Israel.

“To the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think they’re going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians,” he  said.

He noted at the outset of the foreign policy portion of the interview his own time spent on a kibbutz in Israel in the mid-1960s, and that he still had relatives in the country.

“I lived in Israel. I have family in Israel,” said Sanders, the first major party Jewish candidate to win nominating elections during the primaries. “I believe 100 percent not only in Israel’s right to exist, a right to exist in peace and security without having to face terrorist attacks.”

He said recognizing Israel involved its recognition as a Jewish state, calling that “the status quo.” Israel wants an explicit recognition of its Jewish character as part of any peace agreement, which the Palestinians have resisted in talks.

His criticisms of Israel included its settlement building and what he depicted as a disproportionate response to Palestinian attacks.

“From the United States’ point of view, I think, long term, we cannot ignore the reality that you have large numbers of Palestinians who are suffering now, poverty rate off the charts, unemployment off the charts, Gaza remaining a destroyed area,” Sanders said.

“And I think that for long-term peace in that region, and God knows nobody has been successful in that for 60 years, but there are good people on both sides, and Israel is not, cannot, just simply expand when it wants to expand with new settlements.

“I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate,” Sanders said, although he could not specify where such withdrawals should take place,.

When the editorial board continued to press him on settlements, Sanders emphasized that he also had “baseline” demands of the Palestinians.

“The absolute condemnation of all terrorist attacks,” he said. “The idea that in Gaza there were buildings being used to construct missiles and bombs and tunnels, that is not where foreign aid should go. Foreign aid should go to housing and schools, not the development of bombs and missiles.”

Sanders said he opposed bids by the Palestinians to try Israelis for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, but also suggested that Israel’s response to Hamas attacks on Israel during the 2014 Gaza Strip war was disproportionate.

“Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it’s drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology,” he said. “And I think there is a general belief that with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.”

Israel has said it took care to avoid killing civilians during the 2014 war.

Bernie Sanders: Israel’s ‘positive’ U.S. ties hinges on bettering relations with Palestinians Read More »

Poll: Cruz threatens Trump’s nationwide lead

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, United States /

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has pulled into a statistical dead heat with front-runner Donald Trump, a new Reuters/Ipsos national poll showed on Tuesday, as the Texas senator appeared poised to pick up a key victory in Wisconsin's primary.

Cruz's recent gains mark the first time since November that one of Trump's rivals has threatened his lead in support among Republicans, coinciding with missteps by the New York real estate mogul that include a gaffe about abortion and the arrest of his campaign manager on battery charges.

Cruz got 35.2 percent of support to Trump's 39.5 percent, the poll of 568 Republicans taken April 1-5 found. The numbers put the two within the poll's 4.8 percentage-point credibility interval, a measure of accuracy.

Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Trump were also briefly in a dead heat early last week. But as recently as a month ago, when Senator Marco Rubio was also still a candidate, Cruz trailed Trump in Reuters/Ipsos polling by about 20 points. Ohio Governor John Kasich, the only other Republican now remaining in the race for the party's nomination, placed third in Tuesday's poll with 18.7 percent.

Cruz appeared poised for victory in Wisconsin's nominating contest on Tuesday, according to opinion polls in the state. He hopes a Wisconsin victory will deliver a powerful message that he can unite disparate factions of the party and break Trump's momentum.

Facing possible defeat in Wisconsin, Trump proposed blocking money transfers to Mexico by undocumented immigrants as a way to pressure Mexico to pay for a border wall, a key component of his controversial immigration plan, which has won votes in other states.

Trump's campaign said in a memo that if elected, he would use a U.S. anti-terrorism law to cut off remittances from people living in the United States illegally. The memo elaborated on an idea Trump floated in August, when he suggested seizing all remittances tied to “illegal wages.”

Asked about Trump's remittances plan, Democratic President Barack Obama called it unworkable. “The notion that we're going to track every Western Union bit of money that's being sent to Mexico, good luck with that,” Obama said at a White House press briefing.

Trump's support has faltered among women in particular. He said in a March 30 interview that if abortion was illegal, women who end pregnancies could face punishment. He later reversed himself to say doctors who provide abortions should be held responsible.

He was also criticized for standing by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after the aide was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges in an incident with a journalist.

More than 70 percent of likely women voters said they had an “unfavorable” opinion of Trump, according to a rolling poll average for the five-day period ended April 5.

Trump dismissed concerns.

“I think we're going to do very well in Wisconsin,” he told reporters on Tuesday at a diner, where he declined a customer's offer to let him try on one of the dairy state's signature “cheesehead” hats.

Trump also disputes Cruz's claim he can unify the party, saying at rallies that “everybody hates Cruz.”

The role of unifier is an unlikely one for Cruz, who has had a stormy relationship with party leaders since he forced the U.S. government to shut down for six days in 2013 in a budget fight with Obama. But enmity toward Trump among many in the party establishment was enough for five former Republican White House rivals to back Cruz.

In the Democratic race, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a slender lead in opinion polls in Wisconsin over front-runner Hillary Clinton, but she maintained her lead nationally in a Reuters/Ipsos poll also released on Tuesday.

Poll: Cruz threatens Trump’s nationwide lead Read More »

Iceland PM resigns after Panama Papers tax scandal

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson became the first major casualty of the Panama Papers revelations, stepping down on Tuesday after leaked files showed his wife owned an offshore firm with big claims on the country's collapsed banks.

The ruling Progressive Party's deputy leader Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, who holds the fisheries and agriculture portfolio, told reporters that the party had proposed to their junior coalition partner, the Independence Party, that he become the new prime minister himself.

The two parties discussed the matter on Tuesday evening but no agreement was reached. Talks are expected to continue.

The leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in setting up offshore companies have shone a light on the finances of politicians and public figures from around the world, causing public outrage over how the powerful are able to hide money and avoid tax.

An Iceland government spokesman has said the claims against Iceland's collapsed banks held by the firm owned by the prime minister's wife – in which he also temporarily held a stake – totaled more than 500 million Icelandic crowns ($4.1 million). Gunnlaugson has said his wife's assets were taxed in Iceland.

His decision to step down came after thousands of Icelanders gathered in front of parliament on Monday, hurling eggs and bananas and demanding the departure of the leader of the center-right coalition government, which has been in power since 2013.

Opposition politicians, pushing for fresh general elections, also filed a motion of no-confidence in Gunnlaugson and the government on Monday. The parliamentary vote could still take place this week and could trigger elections if the motion is carried.

“It is clear our demand for new elections still stands,” Left Green Party leader Katrín Jakobsdottir told Reuters.

But Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson, from the Independence party, the junior partner in the coalition government which has absolute majority in parliament, said he hoped the coalition would continue.

“We have agreed to start talks with the Progressive Party and to try to continue the co-operation we have had and which has until now been very fruitful for the Icelandic nation,” he told Reuters.

Any new election could see victory for the anti-establishment Pirate Party, according to polls the most popular political force in Iceland, which espouses grassroots democracy and transparency.

Gunnlaugsson's opponents say he should have been open about the overseas assets and the company, and that he had a conflict of interest because the government is involved in striking deals with claimants against the bankrupt banks.

Iceland's main commercial banks collapsed as the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and many Icelanders have blamed the North Atlantic island nation's politicians for not reining in the banks' debt-fueled binge and averting a deep recession.

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