A foundation that works to support industrial research and development to benefit the United States and Israel will invest more than $8 million in nine new projects.
A delegation of Americans visiting Cuba met with jailed American contractor Alan Gross. The group met for two hours with Gross, 62, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for \”crimes against the state\” for distributing laptop computers and connecting Cuban Jews to the Internet, on June 10 in Havana. They delivered a letter to him from his Washington-area synagogue, according to Reuters.
Iran blames Israel and the U.S. for trying to provoke a military conflict in the region, Israel Army radio reported on Wednesday. According to the report, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the two countries are conspiring against Iran.
American Jews strongly believe in Israel\’s commitment to peace, and largely think the Palestinian leadership and people are opposed to it, according to a new poll.
Holocaust survivors and members of the public are reading the names of Holocaust victims at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The reading at the museum\’s Hall of Remembrance began Sunday and will last through May 8.
Hardly a week goes by that the Israeli Knesset doesn’t receive a delegation of visiting American Jewish VIPs. They come from Jewish organizations, federations and communities, sometimes with U.S. politicians, business leaders or big donors in tow. There’s a lot less traffic in the other direction.
Jewish groups and a key Jewish lawmaker condemned the U.S. House of Representative\’s budget proposal for 2012, saying it will hurt the Americans most in need. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs said in a statement released Wednesday that the Republican-backed budget proposal unveiled the previous day, which slashes nearly $6 trillion from federal spending over the next 10 years, \”relies on cuts which will be harmful to many of those in America who are most in need.\”
European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton joined the United States and the United Nations in condemning a Jerusalem committee\’s approval of new housing in Gilo. Ashton said Wednesday that she was \”deeply disappointed\” in the initial approval Monday by the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee of the construction of 942 housing units in Gilo, a residential district in mostly Arab eastern Jerusalem. Other committees already had approved the plan. The units would be built on privately owned land as well as land owned by the Jewish National Fund, Haaretz reported.
The White House on Friday condemned Syria\’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters and urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to promptly take concrete steps toward meaningful reform.
The United States under President Obama is \”dominated by a secular, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish elite,\” Newt Gingrich said. Gingrich, the onetime speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a likely presidential candidate for 2012, spoke on March 25 at a meeting in Iowa of the American Family Association, Politico reported.
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