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Jack Lew, Orthodox Jew who led US Treasury, is Biden’s pick for Israel ambassador
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Under President Barack Obama, Jack Lew gained praise for fulfilling both his duties as secretary of the treasury and his obligations as an Orthodox Jew.
Now, President Joe Biden is asking Lew to complete a challenge that could be even harder: helping establish diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Lew, 68, will succeed Tom Nides, who left the post in July, the White House announced Monday morning.
Lew declined a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment last week, as his name solidified among a pack of people in contention.
Lew’s appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, which is led by a Democratic majority. He would be the fourth Jewish man in a row to serve in the role, following Nides, David Friedman and Dan Shapiro.
Lew, who also served as Obama’s chief of staff before leading the Treasury Department, has drawn words of support from Jewish leaders in Washington who pointed to his experience in public office, his skills as a negotiator, his involvement in Jewish life and his close relationship with Jewish organizations.
“He’s a very thoughtful person, and has always been open and accessible,” said Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union. “He has an encyclopedic knowledge of policy issues, starting with budgetary policy issues.”
As Lew’s anticipated nomination neared, he also drew criticism from right-wing activists. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed that Lew’s appointment would be “deeply concerning” because of his involvement in what Klein calls “the Obama administration’s hostility to the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”
If he is confirmed, Lew will take up the post at a time of instability in Israel, which is contending with mass protests of the right-wing government’s actions to weaken the Supreme Court, in addition to a surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Alongside those issues, the Biden administration is pursuing an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that, if reached, would mark a major foreign policy breakthrough in the region. U.S.-brokered negotiations over a potential accord are reportedly underway.
Here’s what you need to know about Lew, his career so far and the challenges he could face in the ambassador role.
He’s a negotiator who could bring his skills to diplomacy.
Lew earned a reputation for resolving complex negotiations during his two stints as director of the Office of Management and Budget, under Obama as well as President Bill Clinton. The OMB director oversees funding for the vast federal bureaucracy and negotiates budgets with Congress.
As OMB director in the last two years of Clinton’s presidency, Lew negotiated a balanced budget with the same Republican leadership that was seeking Clinton’s ouster for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The talks succeeded: Clinton left office with a budget surplus.
As ambassador to Israel, Lew could use that experience in making a Saudi-Israel deal happen. The treaty would follow the agreements Israel signed in 2020 with several Arab countries, known as the Abraham Accords — but it would also be more complex.
As described by Biden in July to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the deal would involve stemming Saudi Arabia’s growing trade ties with China; a pledge that the United States will guarantee Saudi Arabia’s security; and the establishment of a Saudi civilian nuclear program along with the sale of advanced weapons systems. The status of Palestinians is also shaping up to take increased prominence in the negotiations.
That’s a lot of moving parts, and the ambassador to Israel would be key to reassuring the United States’ closest ally in the region that a deal would not endanger Israel.
“He really knows the issues inside and out,” Diament said. “You’re not going to pull the wool over his eyes, which is generally a good thing. But it also means you can come in and make the right kinds of arguments based on the facts and based on the situation, hopefully, you have a chance at having him on your side.”
Lew is also devoted to his bosses and knows when to stand firm. As OMB director under Obama, before he became the president’s chief of staff, he stood firm on protecting entitlement programs — Obama’s top priority — during talks with Republicans in 2011. Lew was furious with Republicans for what he believed was their lack of respect for the president, and in turn, earned the scorn of Republicans who called him the man who “can’t get to yes.”
Biden, who grew close to Lew during Obama’s second term — when Biden was vice president and Lew was Treasury secretary — could expect the same loyalty.
He’s used to defending controversial stances to the Jewish community.
As Treasury secretary, Lew was tapped as Obama’s point man to explain — and defend — the Iran nuclear deal in the Jewish community. The deal, which curbed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, was bitterly opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A range of large Jewish organizations, along with Republicans in Congress, advocated against it.
Lew had been involved in the issue for years. He oversaw the enforcement of sanctions that helped bring Iran to the negotiating table and used his knowledge of the deal’s particulars — as well as his intimate knowledge of the Jewish community — to pitch the deal to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and others who were deeply skeptical.
He was booed that year at the annual Jerusalem Post conference in New York when he defended the deal. A year after leaving office, and a year before President Donald Trump scuppered the deal, Lew was still defending it to a Jewish audience.
“The idea that somehow the Iran deal was not in Israel’s interest is something I disagree with,” Lew said in 2017 at a conference at Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. “I think Israel is safer today than it was before the deal when Iran was genuinely approaching having a nuclear weapon.”
His continued defense of the agreement especially irks Klein’s ZOA, which accuses him of “shilling” for the deal. Lew “stuck to and trotted out every Obama administration line (and lie) to try to sell the Iran deal to the American-Jewish public,” Klein wrote in his op-ed.
William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Lew’s helpfulness to the Jewish community straddled multiple disciplines and that he “was always very attentive to the Jewish communal agenda.” He praised Lew for stanching funding to terrorists as treasury secretary, as well as for his efforts to aid Holocaust survivors or combat efforts to amend tax laws on charitable contributions.
Lew did not always see eye to eye with his Obama administration colleagues on Israel-related matters. In the administration’s final days in late 2016, Lew and Biden recommended vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning settlement building. In the end, the United States abstained, and the resolution went through.
At the 2017 Columbia University conference, Lew said he understood the rationale behind the decision not to veto. Obama administration officials, he said, used the abstention to leverage a less toxic resolution — but he still regretted it.
“Personally, I wish the resolution hadn’t been there at all. I’m not happy that there was a resolution,” he said. “I’m also happy it wasn’t in its original form where we would have had to veto it, but then the rest of the world would have been voting for this even harsher condemnation.”
He’s an Orthodox Jew who doesn’t place his observance at the center of his public identity.
Unlike Joe Lieberman, the Jewish former senator from Connecticut who was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000, Lew has not placed his Orthodoxy front and center in his political identity.
But he has not been shy about it either, and in 2012, he stumped for Obama among Orthodox Jews and routinely briefed Orthodox Jewish groups about administration policies.
Obama, nominating Lew in 2013 to be Treasury secretary, said he was drawn to Lew in part because of his faith. “Maybe most importantly, as the son of a Polish immigrant, a man of deep and devout faith, Jack knows that every number on a page, every dollar we budget, every decision we make has to be an expression of who we wish to be as a nation, our values,” Obama said.
Stumping for Obama’s reelection in 2012, Lew told JTA that the president earned his loyalty in part by respecting his faith.
“As a father who is at home and has dinner with his girls, he values that Shabbat is my time being with my family,” Lew said then. “I could not ask for someone to be more respectful and supportive, and that’s the reason it works.”
Lew has deep connections to Israel, including as a board member of NLI USA, the American support group for the National Library of Israel.
He likes to advise young Orthodox Jews to consider public service, but he counsels humility. “You can practice your faith openly, but don’t ever take it for granted,” he said in 2019 at a New York forum with Lieberman. “And keep in mind that accommodations are being made for you.”
Lew was not the only candidate for the ambassador post with deep involvement in his Jewish community. Other names floated include Ted Deutch, the American Jewish Committee CEO who retired last year as a Florida Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Robert Wexler, the former Florida Democratic congressman who now leads the Center for Middle East Peace and who was a close contender with Nides for the post in 2021.
Also touted was Kathy Manning, the Democratic congresswoman from North Carolina who is a past president of the Jewish Federations of North America. She would have been the first woman ever to hold the post.
A favorite story about Lew’s Judaism involves his walk home from synagogue on Shabbat when he was Clinton’s OMB director, hearing the phone ring and letting it click through to the answering machine — only to hear a staffer for Clinton, who was in another time zone, relay the president’s apology. After an earlier call, Clinton realized he was disturbing Lew’s Sabbath and wanted to say sorry.
Lew has a mild-mannered sense of humor. When he was attending Beth Sholom, an Orthodox synagogue in Potomac, Maryland, a rabbi jokingly asked him to run for treasurer. Lew rejoined that running the OMB was challenging enough.
And in discussions of Israel, he has displayed diplomatic skills of a sort. In a debate with Tevi Troy, a former senior Bush administration official who is also Orthodox, at a Beachwood, Ohio, Orthodox synagogue during the 2012 campaign, someone asked both men which their candidate would prefer — shawarma or falafel. Troy said Mitt Romney would opt for shawarma. Lew said Obama would happily eat either.
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The post Jack Lew, Orthodox Jew who led US Treasury, is Biden’s pick for Israel ambassador appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Unjustifiable’: Trump Administration Responds to Deportations Lawsuit
FILE PHOTO: People walk on the Business School campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., April 15, 2025. Photo: Faith Ninivaggi via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to deny a preliminary injunction request as part of a lawsuit challenging its attempt to deport pro-Hamas activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and three of its local chapters sued the federal government to halt deportation proceedings involving expatriate pro-Hamas activists enrolled in American institutions of higher education, arguing that the allegedly seditious contents of their speech are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Filed in March, the legal complaint came several weeks after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) high-profile arrest and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University alumnus who was an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover and other disturbances in the New York City area this semester. Similar action has since been taken against others, including Cornell University graduate student Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of Gambia and the United Kingdom, and Columbia University student Yunseo Chung, a noncitizen legal resident from South Korea.
The AAUP and its chapters at Harvard University, Rutgers University, and New York University, along with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), argued in court documents that the Trump administration’s “policy has created a climate of repression and fear,” charging that ICE is “terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors.”
Monday’s filing constitutes the Trump administration’s first challenge to the case.
“Plaintiffs fundamentally misunderstand how the First Amendment applies in this context” government lawyers argued in the pleading. “They conflate the fact that the First Amendment applies at all to aliens, with the First Amendment applying in full to them.”
The government went on to explain that Khalil and other aliens deemed as posing a threat to national security lack complete constitutional protections with which American citizens are endowed by right, noting that past case law has determined that while they are entitled to “freedom of speech and of press,” protections of those freedoms are “less robust.” Responding to the lawsuit’s charge that the deportation of Khalil, and others, is “ideologically motivated” — that is, that the Trump administration aims to purge the country of jihadist supporters — it added that the US Supreme Court ruled in 1951 that the federal government may constitutionally deport aliens who hold seditious beliefs such as communism, as is prescribed by the Alien Registration Act of 1940.
In conclusion, the government argued that pausing the deportation policy would undermine the public interest.
“Plaintiffs seek an injunction that would extend over immigration against all ‘noncitizen students and faculty’ in the country,” the filing says. “That is unjustifiable.”
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, pro-Hamas activists in the US, citizen and noncitizen, have allegedly violated the civil rights of Jewish students, penned extremist manifestos calling for revolutionary violence and overthrowing the government, and contributed to the spread of anti-Western beliefs.
Additionally, pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated gang assaults, threatened to commit mass murders of Jewish college students, and vandalized private property, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Recently, a lawsuit, first reported by the The Free Press, alleged that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the principal organizer of pro-Hamas activities on US campuses, received advanced knowledge of the Oct. 7 atrocities, suggesting a level of coordination between US-based anti-Zionists and jihadist terrorist groups that could pose a danger to national security.
President Donald Trump initiated the removal of pro-Hamas green-card holders living in the US through a January executive order which called for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” A major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses. Trump has also said that foreign students who hold demonstrations in support of Hamas “will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
The policy has many detractors, such as AAUP president Todd Wolfson, who has said that it undermines civil liberties.
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in March that the administration’s actions are legal and safeguard US interests.
“The Trump administration’s new policy of deporting pro-Hamas demonstrators who are not citizens is an important step toward addressing problems related to Hamas in America,” he explained in a statement. “The Immigration and Naturalization Act clearly gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport aliens on a variety of grounds, including endangering public safety and national security.”
A Louisiana immigration judge, Jamee E. Comans, recently agreed with President Trump, as well as Mr. Joffe, ruling that the federal government has “established clear and convincing evidence that [Mahmoud Khalil] is removable” due to “severe, adverse foreign policy consequences” carried by continued residing in the US. Khalil’s attorneys have until April 23 to petition the appeal his deportation.
If they do not do so, Khalil will be repatriated either to Syria or Algeria, two countries in which he reportedly holds citizenship.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Unjustifiable’: Trump Administration Responds to Deportations Lawsuit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Rescued and Reunited: Dog Kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 Returns Home
Billy was taken by Hamas from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Screenshot
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) helped reunite Billy, a dog kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with her family on Wednesday after discovering her in the southern Gaza Strip.
The three-and-a-half-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was identified via a microchip which helped reunite the animal with its owner, Rachel Dancyg. She is the ex-wife of Alex Dancyg, who was abducted by Hamas during the Oct.7 massacre and later killed in captivity. The IDF confirmed his death last year.
Rachel survived the Oct. 7 atrocities and managed to save her two granddaughters. However, her brother, Itzik Elgarat, was also abducted by Hamas and murdered in Gaza.
Months after Hamas’s onslaught, Rachel and her family continued searching for Billy, but they believed the dog had been killed after finding a blood stain in the house.
“My brother Itzik didn’t come back. And Alex didn’t come back. And here, this little dog, survived,” Rachel said after being reunited with Billy. “I hadn’t managed to get her into the safe room and I imagined that they’d [Hamas] killed her, because they killed all the dogs at Nir Oz.”
According to Israel’s Channel 12 news, Aviad Shapira, a reserve soldier in Golani’s 13th Battalion, found Billy when she emerged from the rubble after hearing soldiers speaking Hebrew.
“We had just conquered the Morag corridor in order to encircle Rafah. I went to the Namer [armored personnel carrier] and saw lovely Billie walking toward me,” Shapira told Channel 12, recounting her experience.
“She just ran up to me and jumped on me. I told myself that she would come with me to Israel and I really fought for her to come with me,” she continued.
Rachel’s family and friends were murdered on October 7.
Her dog Billy was kidnapped to Gaza.
For a year and a half, Rachel didn’t know if he was alive.
This week, an IDF reservist found him in Rafah.
Today, they were reunited.
pic.twitter.com/xfiKyGNUur
— Tamar Schwarzbard
In a statement, Rachel and her family expressed their gratitude to the IDF soldiers for bringing Billy home.
“We thank, from the bottom of our hearts, the Golani Brigades reservist who insisted on taking Billy with her and returning her to Israel,” the statement reads. “Thank you to all the heroic IDF combat soldiers, you showed us light amid the great darkness.”
A spokesperson for Nir Oz also praised Aviad and “all the heroic IDF soldiers” for bringing some hope and light to the community.
“Dogs are a family, and many of the dogs and other animals in our kibbutz were also kidnapped and murdered on Oct. 7,” the spokesperson said. “The great joy of the people of Israel in Billy’s return proves more than anything else how much we all need and wait for such miracles.”
“We still have 59 abductees in Gaza, 14 of them from Nir Oz, and we hope that the next miracle will come with the return of all of them.”
Since Hamas’s attack — in which the Palestinian terrorist group led the massacre of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 hostages — well over 100 captives have been released through negotiated ceasefire deals in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian detainees. The Israeli military has also rescued a smaller number through special operations
There are currently 59 hostages still in Hamas’s captivity in Gaza, with over half believed to be dead. As the second phase of the ceasefire agreement was never launched, Israel resumed its military campaign in the enclave to press Hamas into freeing the remaining Israeli hostages.
The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the ceasefire failed to make any progress, as Hamas insisted that any agreement must lead to an end of the war in Gaza, while Israel maintained it would not cease fighting until Hamas is eliminated, with the terrorist group refusing to lay down its arms.
The post Rescued and Reunited: Dog Kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 Returns Home first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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What Western Media Won’t Tell You About Palestinian Paramedics in Gaza
November 2023: An Israeli soldier helps to provide incubators to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Photo: Screenshot
What comes to mind when you think of a paramedic who rushes to save innocent people during a war — only to be attacked and detained?
Most people would envision a peaceful individual devoted to saving lives, and instinctively view those who detained him as brutal and unjust. You’re also far more likely to trust his version of events over those who arrested him.
This is precisely the narrative dominating most Western media outlets in their coverage of Asaad al-Nasasra, a paramedic from Gaza. Readers too easily fall into the trap set by biased journalists at The Guardian and other outlets who, as usual, haven’t done their due diligence.
Because just a cursory check of Asaad al-Nasasra’s public Facebook account reveals someone far from the peaceful medic he’s portrayed as.
His posts are filled with incitement to terrorism and praise for Gaza’s “martyrs.” Here are just a few examples.
In a post from May 2021, accompanied by a poster whose design disturbingly echoes Nazi-style antisemitic visuals, al-Nasasra wrote (translated from Arabic):
Muslims today, due to their weakness and shallow understanding of the true essence of religion, are waiting for a miracle from God to destroy their enemies — while their enemies are growing stronger! This is foolishness…
God Almighty said: ‘And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war.’ After you prepare all that you can, say: O Lord, You are the Supporter, You are the Granter of success, You are the Protector, You are the Sustainer. We must take the necessary means as if everything depends on them, then put our trust in God as if they mean nothing. This is the lesson Muslims need today more than at any time in the past. [emphasis added]
We now know all too well what “necessary means” stands for in Gaza: taking hostages and slaughtering civilians, and sacrificing thousands of Gazans, using them as human shields.
Above is another post from this “peaceful” paramedic, written during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021. The phrases on the rockets read (translated from Arabic):
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- اللهم يبّس عظامهم – “O Allah, dry up their bones.”
- ورمّل نساءهم – “…make their women widows.”
- ويتم أطفالهم – “…orphan their children.”
- وانصرنا عليهم – “…and grant us victory over them.”
And one more, from May 13, 2021 (translated from Arabic): “May everyone who struck Haifa, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Ashkelon, the Gaza Envelope*, and the occupied territories be well every year. #Every_Year_Our_Resistance_Is_Our_Pride”
It’s crucial to remember that many of those who lived — and were brutally murdered — in the Gaza Envelope were known for being among Israel’s most passionate advocates for a two-state solution and harsh critics of the Israeli government. As Douglas Murray noted during his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast (timestamp 01:51:05):
So many of them, particularly the people in the south who were attacked on the morning of the 7th, were literally people who dreamed of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
They were people like Vivian Silver, whose body wasn’t identified for months because there wasn’t enough of her charred remains to even extract DNA from. She spent every weekend, like so many people in the southern communities of Israel, driving Palestinian children with rare medical conditions to hospitals.
So what kind of peace deal exactly is expected from Israel when Gaza’s so-called “peaceful paramedics” openly support Hamas, refer to terrorists as “our resistance,” and glorify rocket attacks on the strongest advocates of coexistence?
And this is likely just the cleaned-up version of al-Nasasra’s profile, which features near-daily posts up until late June 2021. One can only imagine what was posted there on or around October 7, 2023.
While the incident involving the Red Crescent ambulances is still under investigation, most Western media outlets continue to prioritize the narratives of Hamas officials and Gazan eyewitnesses. But after everything found on al-Nasasra’s Facebook, it’s hard not to question whether his colleagues share similar views — views that include denying Israel’s right to exist and supporting terrorism.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post What Western Media Won’t Tell You About Palestinian Paramedics in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.