RSS
Before they hit the National Mall, these pro-Israel rally-goers stopped for lox and prayers
WASHINGTON (JTA) — After 12 hours on the bus, Dan Kenem appreciated the breakfast at Ohev Sholom Congregation.
“The lox really hit the spot,” he said, seated at a table in the synagogue’s social hall, just minutes after getting off the bus that had started out from Lakefield, a Chicago suburb, the night before.
David Wolkenfeld, the rabbi at this modern Orthodox synagogue in a leafy neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., had moved here six months ago from Chicago. So when he heard a week or so ago that there would be a March for Israel on Tuesday in his new hometown, he put out the word in his old hometown: Ohev Sholom would seek overnight accommodations for families coming early and would feed those coming in the morning.
That was the easy part, Wolkenfeld said. “There were a lot of enthusiastic responses” among his new congregation.
Travelers did not seem too put out by the 12-hour journey. “It was lots of fun,” said Yona Lunken as he double checked his travel bag for his prayer book, his prayer phylacteries and his prayer shawl. “Today’s a good day to pray.”
First reports estimated around 100,000 Jews at the National Mall on Tuesday who were gathered to hear from a range of speakers, including survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacres that launched the current Israel-Hamas war; students from U.S. campuses who have experienced a spike in antisemitism; and a bipartisan slate of leading politicians. It is likely the largest Jewish rally in the United States since the Second Intifada in 2002.
“There was a Palestinian march that was fairly large,” said Kenem, 58, who works in real estate, referring to a D.C. protest last month. “I hope we’re close to it or bigger. It will give people on the fence an idea of what Jews in the U.S. are doing.”
Lunken, 62, an educator, said he was not a fan of crowds, but his wife, a dentist, encouraged him to go, if only because she was unable to clear her schedule to go herself.
“We need to show there are lots of us,” he said.
Camile Altman flew in from Chicago — the thought of sitting down for 12 hours was too daunting. She wavered at first, but when she learned her mother was coming in from Memphis, that clinched it.
“I felt like I’d been doom scrolling for two hours every day, which is like being around people who want to murder me, and it would good to be with a crowd who accepted me for a few hours,” said Altman, a 33-year-old tech product manager, who attended the Ohev Sholom breakfast to meet up with fellow Chicagoans.
That Altman was coming convinced her mother-in-law, Gail Guttman to come in from Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington.
Guttmann, 69, a therapist, said she was wary of crowds, but decided to join hundreds of thousands of people on the mall not just to spend time with her daughter-in-law, but to exercise freedoms she did not have in her youth in Nashville.
“I lived with a lot of antisemitism,” she said, referring to practices that kept Jews from joining organizations or living in certain places. “I’m here because I can do something where I couldn’t do anything then.”
Ohev Sholom Congregation had a spread ready for rally-goers. (Ron Kampeas)
Bruce Gillers flew in from Boston for the protest, but arrived a few days early to hang out with grandchildren. He heard about Ohev Sholom’s breakfast and came in time for morning prayers. He had attended mass rallies in Washington for Jewish causes — for Soviet Jewry in 1987 and for Israel during the Second Intifada in 2002 — and he wanted this one to dwarf those.
“This is a challenge to the existence of Israel,” said Gillers, 75, an ophthalmologist.
Some organizers said the rally drew 200,000 people, more than the 100,000 in 2002, but short of the 250,000 in 1987.
The Chicago delegation made their way to the Metro, where they joined other people who had traveled into Washington to join the protest.
Asher Blum, Ari Barnett and Moshe Felson, all in their 20s and who know each other from yeshiva studies in Israel, flew from around the country into New York and made a road trip out of it. They stood on the Red Line train and wore capes that depicted the Israeli flag bleeding into the American one.
Barnett had heard about the rally through a group he belongs to, Young Jewish Conservatives, and he was taking his friends to a pre-rally event at the conservative Heritage Institute. Rep. Pat Fallon, a Texas Republican, would be present, Barnett told his friends. “He’s base,” he said, using a conservative term for “cool.”
“We want to show that Israel has America’s support,” said Felson.
Watching them was a couple that had driven down the night before from Long Island, Ted Sklar and Maddy Meltzer. Sklar held up a poster, “Never again! Am Yisrael Chai” inscribed over an Israeli flag.
Sklar, 67, a retired attorney, said he was attending for his father, who survived the Holocaust in France and who was still alive.
“The world’s moral compass is broken,” he said, choking back tears. “He’s alive, and he has to see this again? I have to do this for him, and for my granddaughter.”
—
The post Before they hit the National Mall, these pro-Israel rally-goers stopped for lox and prayers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
The post Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login