RSS
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins growing list of progressives who will skip Israeli president’s speech to Congress
(New York Jewish Week) – New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined fellow progressives Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush in saying she will skip Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress next week.
The House member, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, told Jewish Insider her plans on Thursday. Missouri’s Cori Bush revealed her plans to Haaretz.
While the number of Congress members who have announced their plans to skip Herzog’s speech is far lower than the 58 who sat out of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2015, a handful of other progressive lawmakers critical of Israel — including Reps. Andre Carson of Indiana and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin — have yet to make up their minds.
Herzog is slated to speak to Congress on Wednesday, during a short visit to the White House that begins on Tuesday. Per the official statement from the White House, Herzog’s visit with President Joe Biden “will reaffirm the ironclad commitment of the United States to Israel’s security.”
The two leaders will also discuss “opportunities to deepen Israel’s regional integration and to create a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East”; “ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis”; and “Russia’s deepening military relationship with Iran, and Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region.”
Biden has criticized Israel’s plans to weaken its judiciary and said in March that he has no plans to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House anytime soon. Herzog’s role as president is nonpartisan and largely ceremonial, but he has criticized the judiciary proposals, saying that they could spark “a civil war.”
Ocasio-Cortez has made a number of comments critical of Israel and its policies, including calling it an “apartheid state.” However, she has never vocalized support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel, and in 2021, she switched her vote from “no” to “present” during a Congressional vote to approve $1 billion in new U.S. funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
—
The post Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins growing list of progressives who will skip Israeli president’s speech to Congress appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
RSS
Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
RSS
Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.