Almost 400 members of Congress wrote a letter to President Donald Trump Monday warning him of the myriad threats Israel currently faces.
The letter, which was signed by Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.), among others, argued that “ungoverned space” in Syria is allowing terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to fester. The letter also warns that Iran and Russia are both aiming to establish a “permanent military presence” in Syria.
“In the past year alone, an Iranian-armed drone infiltrated Israeli airspace and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) fired dozens of missiles toward Israel from Syria,” the letter stated. “Additionally, Iran continues its program to pursue a direct overland route from Iran to Lebanon. That connection would better facilitate Iran’s supplying of Hezbollah terrorists and other Iranian-backed militias with deadly weapons.”
Similarly, Russia’s military assets in Syria are aiming to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, including providing the Assad regime with anti-aircraft capabilities that are “complicating Israel’s ability to defend itself from hostile action emanating from Syria.” Additionally, Russia has shown “no willingness to expel Iranian forces from Syria,” the letter argued.
The letter also noted that Hezbollah is becoming “more potent,” pointing that “Hezbollah has aimed more than 100,000 rockets and missiles at Israel that are increasingly more precise and of longer-range, giving the terrorist group the capability to strike anywhere in Israel.” Additionally, Hezbollah has been attempting to create “a terror network on the border between Israel and Syria.”
The members of Congress concluded the letter by urging Trump to reiterate Israel’s right to self-defense and ramp up sanctions against Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.
A 19-year-old American woman serving as a combat soldier in the Israeli army died by suicide last week.
Michaela Levit, 19, is the third Israeli “lone soldier” to die by suicide this year. Lone soldiers are largely expatriates who serve in the Israel Defense Forces while their parents live overseas.
Levit, whose parents reside in Miami, moved to Israel in 2017 and served in a mixed-gender combat battalion.
An Israeli relative, Shlomit Levy Tsamir, wrote on Facebook that Levit was “full of motivation and excitement, she wanted to serve in a combat unit as a fighter and commander, and quickly became an outstanding soldier in Caracal,” her unit. “Mika was a smiling and strong girl, always ready to help and give of herself, and despite hardship in a stressful military system like the IDF, took everything upon herself with love and by choice.”
Tsamir said Levy left a note saying that she was “dealing with hardships,” according to The Times of Israel, but did not specify what they were.
The Israeli military and soldiers’ advocates denied reports of a “worrying trend” of rising suicide rates among the lone soldiers following two suicides and a deadly drug overdose this year. Advocates, soldiers and army spokespeople have said that over the past decade, there has been a significant improvement in how the military cares for such troops.
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Al Jazeera announced on May 19 that they are suspending two journalists due to a since-deleted video posted to the network’s Arabic Twitter account stating that “Israel is the biggest winner from the Holocaust.”
The Al Jazeera AT + Arabic account reportedly tweeted out the video with the caption, “Gas ovens killed millions of Jews, that’s how the novel says. What is the truth of the #holocaust and how did the Zionist movement benefit from it?” The video, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, features host Muna Hawwa stating, “The narrative that six million Jews were killed by the Nazi movement was adopted by the Zionist movement, and it is being reiterated every year on the so-called ‘Holocaust Memorial Day.’”
She goes on to state that Jews weren’t the only victims of the Holocaust, but the focus is on the Jewish victims because “Jewish groups had financial resources, media institutions, research centers, and academic voices that managed to put a special spotlight on the Jewish victims of the Nazis. Nevertheless, the number of victims of the Holocaust remains one of the most prominent historical debates to this day.”
Hawwa then says that there are some “who accuse the Zionist movement of blowing [the Holocaust] out of proportion in the service of the plan to establish what would later be known as the ‘State of Israel.’” She concludes the video by saying that “Israel is the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and it uses the same Nazi justifications as a launching pad for the racial cleansing and annihilation of the Palestinians.”
According to The Wrap, Al Jazeera issued a press release May 19 stating two of their journalists had been suspended over the video and that the video was published due to a lack of “oversight”; the journalists were not identified and the duration of the suspensions was not specified.
“Al Jazeera completely disowns the offensive content in question,” Dr. Yaser Bishr, executive director of Al Jazeera’s digital division, said in a statement.
Mehdi Hasan, a presenter for Al Jazeera’s English network, tweeted, “As someone who has spent my life slamming antisemitic Holocaust denialism, esp in Muslim communities, glad to see Al Jazeera bosses taking disciplinary action against 2 of their journos for a ridiculously offensive and dumb video – and disowning it, too.”
As someone who has spent my life slamming antisemitic Holocaust denialism, esp in Muslim communities, glad to see Al Jazeera bosses taking disciplinary action against 2 of their journos for a ridiculously offensive and dumb video – and disowning it, too. https://t.co/hj6AgDseAy
Here is an example of AJ English trendy faces. Also here is an example of the stuff he pretends they do not exist in Al-Jazeera ! #AntiSemitismpic.twitter.com/ZJ3rVABEZu
Seth Frantzman, the Jerusalem Post’s Op-ed editor, wrote in a May 20 piece that Twitter has disabled the video from all accounts that shared it, “claiming it infringes Al Jazeera’s copyright.”
President Donald Trump tweeted out a warning to the Iranian regime May 19 stating that it “will be the official end of Iran” if the mullahs attack the United States.
The tweet came in response to a rocket falling nearby the U.S. embassy in Iraq May 19; the rocket was purportedly launched from the East Baghdad region, where various pro-Iran terror groups reside group. The aforementioned groups have reportedly distanced themselves from the rocket launch.
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” Trump tweeted. “Never threaten the United States again!”
If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!
Trump followed up by tweeting Monday, “Iran will call us if and when they are ever ready. In the meantime, their economy continues to collapse – very sad for the Iranian people!”
….Iran will call us if and when they are ever ready. In the meantime, their economy continues to collapse – very sad for the Iranian people!
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted in response to Trump Monday that “EconomicTerrorism & genocidal taunts won’t ‘end Iran.’ NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect – it works!”
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated in recent days after the U.S. deployed warships and bombers to the Persian Gulf in response to U.S. intelligence that “Iran is threatening American interests in the Middle East,” according to Politico. The U.S. has also ordered all non-essential personnel to evacuate Iraq.
(JTA) — Netflix has dropped an Australian comedian who made jokes about the Holocaust and insulted a Jewish audience member who later complained in an email.
Last month, Isaac Butterfield asked his audience at the Melbourne Comedy Festival to “imagine the joy of people when they heard the Jews were sent to the gas chambers,” the city’s Herald Sun newspaper reported. The email sent to Butterfield from a Jewish woman said the joke was “not remotely funny.”
He responded: “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the oven.”
Butterfield had what the London-based Daily Mail described as “a lucrative comedy special deal” with Netflix to air his comedy stand-up special “The Butterfield Effect.” But the video streaming company canceled the deal following the offensive riposte.
Butterfield has nearly 1 million subscribers on YouTube.
In a video posted April 24 to YouTube, he pretended to apologize for his comments and then walked it back, accusing the mainstream media of “an all-out assault on me.” Butterfield also defended his right to free speech as part of the 16-minute video.
(JTA) — Two Hasidic teenagers were harassed with anti-Semitic epithets in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
The boys were walking home at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday when a car with four men pulled up next to them.
One of the men reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic, which caused the boys to run from the car. The vehicle followed them, with another man shouting “Do you know Hitler? We love Hitler!”
Former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind tweeted Sunday that he accompanied the boys to the 66th Precinct of the New York Police Department, PIX11 reported.
“We must deal with the source of anti-Semitism,” Hikind said in the tweet.
Danny Kortchmar – also known as “Kootch” – is in rare company as a musician, producer and songwriter. Over the past 50-something years, his performing and/or production credits have included work with Carole King, Neil Young, Linda Rondstadt, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Cheech & Chong and Hanson. Meanwhile, Kortchmar-written songs have been recorded by the likes of Don Henley, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Hall & Oates, John Waite and members of Crosby, Stills & Nash.
These days, beyond the occasional session or sideman gig – including recent recording with the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins – Kortchmar keeps busy with the band Danny Kortchmar and His Immediate Family. Featuring fellow legendary players guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Russ Kunkel and guitarist Steve Postell, The Immediate Family recently performed at The Mint in Los Angeles on May 4. Following the show in L.A., The Immediate Family will be doing a tour of Japan in support of its Honey Don’t Leave L.A. album.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Danny Kortchmar by phone leading up to the performance and highlights from the chat are below. More of the conversation will be featured on a future episode of the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz podcast.
Jewish Journal: So in terms of your credits, you’ve been there through generations of essential music and I’m curious when you realized that it was going to be absolutely okay if you were a sideman, a session man and a co-writer as opposed to the superstar out front? Danny Kortchmar: Well I never saw myself as a superstar out front. I always wanted to be in a band. I always wanted to be selected to be in the ensemble.So I never saw myself as being that guy. And besides, I knew it was working with so many talented people that I thought, “You know I’d rather work with James Taylor. I’m not gonna be James Taylor as a writer or a singer.”No one is and I’m perfectly very happy too. I was very happy to play music with James, so I didn’t really see it as that sacrificing my “superstar solo career” for working with other people. I thought that was the path that was the right path for me. JJ: But you did write a lot of hit songs or co-write a lot of hit songs even. So did you outright set to be a side person? Or were you always writing music beyond that? DK: I was always writing songs from the time I was 16 or 17. They stunk (laughs), it wasn’t until later that they got better. I’ve always been writing songs. It wasn’t something I thought about, just what I did. So I’m not sure what I can say about that other than that I was always writing songs. JJ: Are you the sort of writer that writes every day like a 9-to-5 job? Or do you have to write when you’re inspired? DK: Oh I only write when stuff comes to me, when the inspiration hits me.I keep notes all the time, and I have a long long long long list of ideas for titles of song titles, lines that could be in song lyrics. Stuff that would fit with other lyrics.So I have a backlog of material to draw from, but I don’t get to write every day. I’m not a journalist, I write songs when the spirit hits me. JJ: For somebody that’s thinking of coming to one of the Immediate Family gigs coming up, what does the setlist look like? DK: Well I introduced the band as being a cover band that covers our own material. And that’s kind of what we are. All the songs we play, we all wrote them played on them, produced them… It’s a lot of hits, a lot of well-known songs that I wrote, that Waddy wrote, and then we’re doing a bunch of new stuff that sounds like the old stuff, that fits very well with the known stuff.So you’ve got a cross section of our versions of well-known tunes and then you get to stuff that no one’s ever heard that are completely original with us and haven’t been recorded by anybody else. JJ: In terms of your career, is the focus of the moment and for the long-term the Immediate Family? It seems like it could be totally like your Ringo Starr All-Starr Band as the thing that you do as a headliner for the rest of your life. DK: Well I would like that to be the case, absolutely. I love these guys, I’ve known them all my whole life practically.We’ve been playing together in just so many different circumstances We all know each other really really well. We all love each other. We’re all family, and I see no reason to not do this as much as possible. We all love it. We have a great time doing it and we all want to do it more and more and more. So yeah, I want to ride this one on out. JJ: So in terms of other projects that you’re working on, are you allowed to talk about anything else? Or is this the main thing that you’re doing? DK: Well I guess it’s the main thing I’m doing. Also James enlisted me to do something called “The Troubadour Reunion Tour” in 2010. That was a James and Carole King tour… That was with the original band Russ, Lee and myself, with the original rhythm section that played with both of them, going back a million years. So they put the original band back together, we went out there, it was great. Anyway, at this point we’re talking about having a making a film out of it, using all the footage for making a concert film out of it and I’m producing the music. So that’s just great. It’s just nice to revisit that great experience of playing with those people. JJ: It’s very refreshing to hear that your take on everything is, “I’m very proud of what I did. I hope to continue to do all that and this is who I am.” That’s not what you hear every day. DK: Well it’s too bad you don’t hear that because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to care, you’re supposed to have an identity and stand by it. You’re supposed to have a sense of authenticity and stick with that. In my opinion, that’s what an artist is supposed to do.
JJ: Moving on a little bit because this is for the Jewish Journal, a lot of your fellow session musicians, including some in the Immediate Family are also Jewish and I’m wondering if that ever comes up. DK: Well I must first in the Immediate Family, four out of five of us are Jewish, and three of us grew up in Manhattan, in New York City. So we love our Jewishness… I’m culturally certainly very Jewish.I love the Jewish culture… I was brought up to appreciate art and literature and theater and all that, the way a lot of young people in Manhattan were around the time that I grew up. So there’s a cultural thing that I’m very proud of and delighted with. JJ: Were you bar mitzvahed? DK: No… I guess that makes me a fake Jew, but whatever. My family was not religious and I’m not religious. JJ: So finally, any last words for the kids?
DK: For the kids? Play. Kids that are interested in music, play your heart out, put passion and blood and guts into it, mean it. When you play or write for sing or perform, think high, aim for the stars, you know? Don’t aim for the gutter, aim for the stars.
(JTA) — An arsonist attempted twice to set fire to a synagogue building in downtown Chicago.
Meanwhile, on the city’s North Side, vandals smashed the windows of cars parked outside of a synagogue.
Deputy Police Superintendent Anthony Ricci ordered that synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish-owned businesses receive “special attention” while the suspected hate crimes are investigated, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told reporters on Sunday.
Two attempts were made at around midnight Saturday to set alight the Anshei Sholom B’nei Israel synagogue in the Lakeview neighborhood. The remains of several Molotov cocktails were found outside the building. There was no damage.
The synagogue’s surveillance cameras filmed the arson attempts. Police told the local media that they have identified two suspects.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld wrote a letter to his congregation.
“Someone attempted to violate the sacred space that serves as the beating heart of our vibrant community,” he said. “Our response must be to rededicate ourselves to honoring the sanctity of our shul. We will celebrate Shabbat as a community, and take advantage of other times to engage in prayer during the week. We will stand together and support one another when we are frightened or in need of help.”
In the other incident, police are investigating the rash of vandalism early Sunday morning outside at least one synagogue in the West Rogers Park neighborhood, including the smashing of windows of the cars.
In 1976 there was a movie called Network with one of the top 100 quotes I often think about, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Well that’s how I feel right now, outraged as I listen to the news with reports of one state after another attempting to work its way up to the Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning Roe vs Wade. One can barely distinguish between the religious right and the majority of the judges who sit on the highest court in the land. In fact the majority of the Republican party has passively capitulated to whatever Trump encourages and this was one of the promises he made when he ran for the office of President. Politics and religion seem grotesquely intertwined.
It is a terrifying proposition that we can be controlled by the Christian view of what and when life begins. The same bible that is the foundation of all the Abrahamic traditions is being used to limit and control the rights of all women. What happened to the separation of church and state? Let’s not be blind to the fact that it is religion, the Evangelical Christian view of religion, that is attempting to take the power away from woman, even those whose religious beliefs are in complete contrast to what they espouse. The Jewish belief is that life begins at birth and not conception. So what right do they have to affect my choices, or any woman’s for that matter? Even though the many streams of Judaism view abortion differently, no one movement has the right to control another’s actions. It is also my personal view that their essential belief that ‘Eve,’ the first woman of the Bible, is the cause of all sin, lies deep beneath their actions. It is all about punishing the woman for their view that she is the cause of bringing humanity down low and in need of constant absolution. My bible sees Eve as an Ezer K’negdo, a complementary partner with her opposite, Adam, and both of them choose to disobey G-d.
As a Jew, with the right to live out my own values and beliefs in this country, I call out their manipulation and efforts to control a woman’s body. What is even more infuriating is that the same people who espouse such ardent views to save the life of a fetus refuse to save the life of the living, their children and grandchildren who are innocently gunned down in schools across this country. They are the living. Don’t they deserve to be protected? These holier than thou people are hypocrites. They won’t support legislation for gun safety and the removal of ‘army’ style semi-automatic weapons off the streets and out of the hands of civilians. Do they really care about ‘life?’
It is truly frightening times. We see Anti-Semitism grow exponentially and now we see that our own beliefs and values can be dismissed and ignored when men and women with power are willing to influence and change laws based on their religious beliefs that run counter to ours and in fact are guaranteed by the constitution, “…all people are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Pursuit of happiness…nor shall any State deprive any person of Life, Liberty…” As a woman, as a Jew, as a rabbi, and as an American, I feel compelled to speak up and find a way to join with others to protect and fight for these rights, particularly the right to ‘life.’ I am Pro Life – the life of the living.
