January 25, 2020

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders launched a campaign video highlighting his Jewish identity and casting President Donald Trump as part of the white nationalist threat.

The four-minute video posted Thursday night on Sanders’ Twitter feed, interpolates excerpts from Sanders’ speech last year to J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, with commentary by Joel Rubin, the campaign’s Jewish outreach director.

It starts with Sanders’ declaration of pride in being Jewish. “I’m very proud to be Jewish and look forward to becoming the first Jewish president in the history of this country,” Sanders says.

During his 2016 run for the Democratic nomination, Sanders at first played down his Jewish background, although he was the first Jewish major-party candidate to win nominating contests. This cycle, he has emphasized his Jewishness.

The video otherwise focuses almost entirely on the threat that Sanders says President Donald Trump poses to Jews and other minorities.

“Jewish values teach us that community matters, that tolerance matters, that engaging the other matters,” Rubin says, and notes his roots in Pittsburgh where in 2018 a gunman killed 11 worshippers at The Tree of Life synagogue complex, “some of whom were friends of my parents.”

“We live in a perilous time where not only are white nationalists attacking our synagogues and raising hate speech on the internet, we have a white nationalist right now sitting in the White House,” Rubin says, referring to Trump’s equivocation in condemning neo-Nazis after a deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

“We need to have someone in office who gets it, gets it in his kishkes, understands what it really means to ensure that we are healing our world,” Rubin says.

The video does not address Israel policy at all. Sanders has said he is pro-Israel and would work to secure the country, but also has sharply criticized its treatment of Palestinians and says he would leverage aid to Israel to make changes.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweeted then removed a Tweet falsely blaming Israelis for the death of a Palestinian child.

Tlaib, a Palestinian American who is a Michigan Democrat and one of only two lawmakers to back the boycott Israel movement, retweeted a tweet by Hanan Ashrawi, a top Palestinian official, who was quote-tweeting an account, realSeifBitar, that accused Israeli settlers of kidnapping, assaulting and throwing into a well a seven-year-old child. “The heart just shatters,” Ashrawi said.

In fact, The Jerusalem Post reported, the boy, Qusai Abu Ramila, appears to have drowned accidentally in a reservoir of rainwater in eastern Jerusalem. Israeli first responders found him on Saturday and tried to revive him.

Tlaib removed her retweet, and Ashrawi eventually apologized for “retweeting something that’s not fully verified.”

Dani Dayan, the Israeli consul general in New York, took Tlaib to task for spreading what he called a “blood libel.”

“I am always extremely cautious in criticizing U.S. elected officials,” Dayan said on Twitter. “However, when an American elected official retweets an unfounded blood libel against Jewish Israelis, I cannot remain silent. Congresswoman @RashidaTlaib just did.”

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor running for president, is launching his Jewish outreach in Miami.

Bloomberg is rolling out “United for Mike,” the name for his Jewish campaign, at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in Miami on Sunday afternoon.

Bloomberg, who is Jewish, in November named Abigail Pogrebin, an author who has written on Jewish issues, as his Jewish outreach director.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benny Gantz, the leader of Israel’s opposition Blue and White Party, has agreed to meet with President Donald Trump to discuss his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, but will do so separately from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Gantz will meet Trump on Monday, his party said and will be back in time for the first vote on Tuesday in a process in which the Knesset will decide whether Netanyahu as prime minister is immune from corruption charges.

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday invited Netanyahu and Gantz to meet Trump on Tuesday, and Trump later confirmed that his long-awaited peace plan would be a topic of discussion, and might be released before the meeting.

Netanyahu immediately accepted, but Gantz delayed his response, reportedly because he suspected that Trump was releasing the plan to boost Netanyahu’s electoral chances ahead of March 2 elections, and as a distraction from the corruption charges.

Gantz’s compromise solution allows him to treat Trump’s peace plan seriously while maintaining pressure on Netanyahu to go to trial on the corruption charges.

On Saturday, Gantz spoke in English and in Hebrew to praise Trump and his unseen peace plan. He said he had held “many” meetings in recent months to discuss the plan with Trump’s advisors, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

“The content of our conversations, just like the details of the plan, will remain secret for now,” he said. “I can, however, tell you that the ‘Peace Plan’, devised by President Trump, will go down in history as a meaningful landmark, mapping the way for different players in the Middle East to finally move ahead towards a historic regional agreement.”

Netanyahu will meet Trump as planned on Tuesday. Kann, an Israeli broadcaster, cited sources close to Netanyahu who said the prime minister would also meet Trump on Monday.