November 24, 2019

(JTA) — Organizations representing three streams of Judaism in a joints statement called on President Donald Trump to fire Stephen Miller as his senior policy advisor over his support for white supremacists.

The statement also expressed concern about “the disturbing ways in which his dangerous views have influenced U.S. immigration policy. Such views have no place in the White House or as a basis of American policy.”

The groups signing on to the statement are the Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism. Orthodox Jewish groups do not appear on the list.

Southern Poverty Law Center earlier this month published hundreds of emails sent by Miller to a reporter at the conservative Breitbart News, many of them racist and anti-immigrant in nature.

“This nation was founded and has been strengthened by immigrants seeking religious freedom and opportunity. Indeed, some of our country’s lowest moments have been when we have excluded or discriminated against groups based on their nationality or heritage,” the statement said.

(JTA) — A regional office of the U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration should be opened in Israel, a bipartisan group of lawmakers says.

The letter sent Friday to the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, said that “as a global leader in innovation, Israel’s world class medical research programs have spurred breakthrough developments in medical technologies, pharmaceuticals, and other advancements in medicine that have positively impacted the global health system. We believe establishing an FDA office in Israel would facilitate collaboration in life-saving research and is a natural step for strengthening the special relationship between our countries.”

The FDA currently operates 13 regional offices around the world, in China, India, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Jordan.

“Some of Israel’s largest exports to the United States are pharmaceuticals and medical instruments, which accounted for approximately $5.3 billion in 2018. Agricultural exports total an additional $400 million annually. We believe placing a regional FDA office in Israel would build on this mutually beneficial cooperation by improving avenues for communication between researchers and regulators and shortening the application process for Israeli companies interested in exporting these goods to the United States,” the letter also said.

The letter was spearheaded by Reps. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Florida; and Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina. It also was signed by Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Florida; Yvette Clarke, D-New York; Ted Deutch, D-Florida; Lois Frankel, D-Florida; Grace Meng, D-New York; Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida; Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pennsylvania; Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington; Darren Soto, D-Florida; W. Gregory Steube, R-Florida; David Trone, D-Maryland; Ann Wagner, R-Missouri, Michael Waltz, R-Florida; Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida; Frederica Wilson, D-Florida; Ron Wright, R-Texas; Ted Yoho, R-Florida; Lee Zeldin, R-New York; and Charlie Crist, D-Florida.

(JTA) — A Lebanese-Swiss businessman purchased ten items belonging to Adolf Hitler that were sold at an auction last week so that they didn’t “fall into the wrong hands.”

Abdallah Chatila, a Geneva businessman who made his fortune in diamonds and real estate, purchased items including Hitler’s top hat, cigar box and typewriter, and a silver-plated copy of “Mein Kampf” that once belonged to senior Nazi Hermann Goering, for about $601,000 at last week’s auction at Hermann Historica auction house in Munich.

“I wanted to buy these objects so that they couldn’t be used for neo-Nazi propaganda purposes,” said Abdallah Chatila in an interview with Swiss Sunday newspaper Le Matin Dimanche. “Far-right populism and anti-Semitism are advancing throughout Europe and the world. I didn’t want these objects to fall into the wrong hands and be used by people with dishonest intentions.”

Chatila, who is estimated to be worth about $200.5 million, said he would donate the objects to Keren Hayesod-the United Israel Appeal.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, had appealed to the auction house to cancel the sale.

In a statement he praised Chatila’s decision to purchase the items: “We were not prepared, however, in this cynical world in which we live, to expect an act of such kindness, such generosity and such solidarity as demonstrated by Mr. Chatila. It is clear he understood our aggravation and hurt at the sale and decided to do something about it in a way that nobody foresaw. We greatly appreciate his understanding that such items have no place on the market and should ultimately be destroyed. But that he chose to give the items to Jews shows a remarkable conscience and understanding.”

(JTA) — More than 100 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, calling on him to “immediately” reverse the decision to declare that West Bank settlements are not illegal.

The letter, led by Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan, was signed by 106 congressmen, including 12 committee chairs.

“This announcement, following the administration’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem outside of a negotiated agreement; its closure of the Palestinian mission in Washington, D.C. and U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem; and its halting of aid Congress appropriated to the West Bank and Gaza, has discredited the United States as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, severely damaged prospects for peace, and endangered the security of America, Israel, and the Palestinian people,” the letter said.

“The State Department’s unilateral reversal on the status of settlements, without any clear legal justification, therefore has offered a tacit endorsement of settlements, their expansion, and associated demolitions of Palestinian homes,” the letter also said. The decision, it added, undermines America’s “moral standing.”

The letter is backed by the liberal Jewish organization J Street.

(JTA) — The parents of Jewish American college student Otto Warmbier are working to find and shut down illicit North Korean business assets around the world in order to hold its government accountable for widespread human rights abuses.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier also called for the Trump administration to raise North Korea’s human rights problems while negotiating the country’s disarmament from nuclear weapons.

Otto Warmbier was detained in North Korea for over a year and died shortly after his return home to Cincinnati, Ohio, in June 2017 in a coma. He was 22.

The Warmbiers were speaking last week at a forum hosted by a Seoul-based group representing the families of South Koreans abducted by the North during the 1950-53 Korean War, the Associated Press reported.

In December 2018, a U.S. federal judge ordered North Korea to pay a $501 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the Warmbiers, which they are unlikely to collect.

In July, they filed a claim in federal court in New York for a North Korean cargo ship seized by the U.S. The vessel was detained in May because it was carrying coal to be sold in other countries in violation of United Nations sanctions.

The University of Virginia student had been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster on what North Korea claimed were orders from an Ohio Methodist church. Upon his release, North Korea said Warmbier’s health had deteriorated after a bout of botulism. Warmbier’s doctors in the U.S. said he suffered extensive brain damage. Warmbier was traveling to Hong Kong for a study abroad program when he decided to visit North Korea on a guided tour.

(JTA) — Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire media mogul, officially entered the 2020 presidential race.

His first campaign video, dropped on Sunday, called him a “middle class kid who made good.” The video cited the 9-11 attacks and said he “brought a city back from the ashes,” and also talked about his work on gun control, climate change and affordable housing. Bypassing the other Democratic candidates Bloomberg would have to defeat for the party’s nomination, the video notes that “now he is taking on him,” while flashing a photo of President Donald Trump. The ad promises that Bloomberg will make the wealthier pay higher taxes, offers anyone without health care to get it and anyone who likes theirs to keep it, and vows to create jobs.

The Bloomberg campaign has reserved more than $31 million in television ad time to air the spot, the single largest single week expenditure according to Advertising Analytics, NBC News reported.

Advisor Howard Wolfson told the Associated Press on Saturday that Bloomberg will not accept campaign donations, and instead will pay for his run out of his own personal fortune.

Bloomberg on Thursday filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission to declare himself as a Democratic candidate for president.

Earlier this month he registered to run in the Democratic primary in Alabama.

Bloomberg is a centrist who was a Democrat before running for New York mayor as a Republican,later switching to independent. He recently returned to the Democratic Party.

Bloomberg served as mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013.

He founded Bloomberg LP, which would grow to become a business media empire that stood out by providing up-to-the-minute stock information through specialized computer terminals. His net worth is valued at $52.4 billion, according to Forbes.

(JTA) — A professor at Syracuse University was threatened by an anonymous email containing anti-Semitic language and Holocaust references.

The email sent on Tuesday morning to Genevieve García de Müeller, a professor of writing, rhetoric and composition, the campus student newspaper, The Daily Orange, reported.

The subject line of the email was “JEW.” It told her to “get in the oven where you belong” and ended with an anti-Semitic slur, according to the newspaper, which did not disclose the slur.

Mueller is Jewish and Mexican.

“Immediately, I thought of the safety of my family,” Müeller told the newspaper. “I don’t know who would’ve sent it. I don’t know who knows I’m Jewish. It’s not something I talk about in class necessarily, but it was very personal to me.”

She said she tweeted a screenshot of the email to the Syracuse Police Department.

A day later, a white supremacist manifesto was air-dropped to students’ cellphones at Syracuse’s Bird Library.

It is the 16 racist or bias-related incident reported on or near the campus since Nov. 7, according to The Daily Orange. Most of the incidents are against black and Asian people

A week ago, the university cancelled all fraternity activities for the rest of this semester after racist activities were reported.

(JTA) — A Hasidic man in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, New York was the victim of an unprovoked sucker punch in the face.

The attack late on Thursday night on the 19-year-old man was captured on video.

The attacker was identified by the New York Police Department as Steven Sotomayor, 32, the Yeshiva World News reported. The men did not exchange any words before the attack.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force announced Friday that the attack was being investigating as an “anti-Semitic assault”.

(JTA) — The stabbing attack on a 29-year-old Orthodox man in the Town of Ramapo, New York is not being classified as a hate crime.

“Although there are those who believe that this was a hate crime, the official position of the Town of Ramapo Police Department is, that at this time, there is no evidence to support that contention,” Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said in a statement posted on Facebook.

Weidel said in the statement if anyone has facts that the attack on Wednesday morning was a hate crime, “we strongly encourage them to come forward and report this information to our agency.”

Weidel said the police department’s Patrol Division has increased patrols in the community, using both marked and unmarked cars as well as police bikes for patrol purposes.

The victim, a teacher and father of four young children, was approaching the synagogue, Toshnad Heichel Torah Utfila in Spring Valley, New York, when at least one man got out of a car, began beating him and stabbed him multiple times.

The victim on Thursday underwent a second surgery on his fractured skull. He is scheduled to have a third surgery on to try to save his eye that was seriously injured in the attack, the Vos Iz Neias news website reported.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Lawmaker Gideon Sa’ar asked the Likud Party’s Central Committee to schedule leadership primary elections within two weeks.

Sa’ar in an official request on Sunday asked that the primaries be held soon so the winner would still have time to form a government before the 21 days now counting down for Knesset lawmakers to choose a colleague to form a majority coalition government after first Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Blue and White head Benny Gantz failed to do so.

Sa’ar’s latest bid to lead the party comes days after Netanyahu, who heads Likud, was indicted on charges of bribery and breach of public trust in three different corruption cases against him.

In late 2014 Sa’ar took a hiatus from politics, returning in 2017 and rentering the Knesset in 2019.

Likud has been led by four men since its founding in 1973: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Gantz on Saturday night called upon the Likud leadership to join him in a unity government.

“Even if we do not agree on everything, you, like my friends and myself, share the Zionist values of partnership and unity, security without compromise, a strong economy and a united society. This is your moment to put the fears and threats of the past aside and to lead all of Israeli society into a new era of recovering and healing,” he said.

Gantz offered a deal under which he would serve as prime minster for the first two years, “during which time Netanyahu will be able to focus on his legal affairs. In the event that he is acquitted, he will then be able to return to serve as prime minister.” This has been a non-starter in past negotiations.

He also called on Netanyahu to “resign from office and fight for his innocence.”