After six weeks of writing only about the coronavirus, finally, I can sink my teeth into a good-old-fashioned Jewish controversy. The controversy, as I see it, is this: For a Jewish organization such as HIAS, what is the appropriate balance between helping Jews versus non-Jews? The issue caught my eye because of a related controversy: […]
This past April 17th, Democratic Party frontrunner and presumptive presidential candidate, Joe Biden, enthusiastically accepted J Street’s endorsement for the upcoming presidential election. The endorsement read as follows: “At a time” when the threats to our core values both at home and abroad have never been more serious, all of us in the pro-Israel, pro-peace community know that […]
Apparently, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is sensitive to criticism. Over the past week, it received enormous – and well-deserved – flak after it announced the decision of its nominating committee to select former HIAS chairman Dianne Lob to serve as the Conference’s next chairman. In what is largely viewed as […]
Opponents of the recent nomination of Dianne Lob as the next chairperson of the Conference of Presidents charge that the nomination of the former HIAS chairwoman to the Conference’s top position was made following multiple violations of both the letter and spirit of detailed organizational bylaws. A widely distributed letter to Conference leadership and member […]
Last week an event occurred will be remembered as a key moment in the disintegration of organized American Jewish support for Israel and American Jewish organizational life itself. Last Friday, the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced that the Conference’s nominating committee had selected Dianne Lob, the immediate past […]
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) spoke out against the nomination of Dianne Lob as the next chairwoman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COP). Lob was previously the chairwoman of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which has worked with anti-Israel groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations […]
ISRAEL – During the final week of February, the Zionist Organization of America held its annual Mission to Israel, which is more security focused than others. ZOA National President Mort Klein opened the inaugural dinner noting the ZOA’s success in getting Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to agree to […]
(March 23, 2020 / JNS) A record-setting 123,000 American Jews voted in the elections for the 38th World Zionist Congress, setting the stage for a potential shift in communal priorities as right-wing and Orthodox groups made surprising gains from the last election five years ago. Of the top three slates, two represent Orthodox Judaism. The other represents the […]
TEL AVIV – The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called on Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to fire newly-appointed senior advisor, Phillip Agnew, for what ZOA calls “maniacal, Jew-hating, Israel-bashing” statements. Agnew has in the past described Zionism as “racist and exploitative.” “The Zionist Organization of America strongly urges presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders to […]
Case in point: the release, without bail, of Tiffany Harris — twice in three days — after Harris’s initial arrest for an alleged unprovoked attack on a group of Jewish women in December. Her case exemplifies the flaws with New York’s Bail Elimination Act (NY Criminal Procedure Law § 510.10 et seq.), which went into effect […]