RSS
Jewish groups back gun restrictions for domestic abusers in high-profile Supreme Court case
(JTA) – Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement that it would consider a major case on Second Amendment rights, Jewish groups are joining an effort led by a Jewish organization for survivors of domestic abuse to back gun-rights restrictions for people convicted of domestic violence.
Jewish Women International is leading an amicus brief that also includes the organizations representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, along with several interfaith organizations, in the case United States v. Rahimi.
The case, which the court announced in late June that it would consider in the coming year, concerns whether a law prohibiting people under domestic-violence restraining orders from owning firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment, which says the right to gun ownership “shall not be infringed.” Gun-control advocates worry that the court’s rightward tilt, combined with its willingness to hear the case at all, could point to a ruling that overturns the law.
The faith groups argue that preventing convicted domestic abusers from accessing firearms is not only consistent with the Second Amendment, but also a matter of religious urgency. The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, for example, cites the Book of Leviticus in arguing that clergy should not “stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”
“Rabbinical Assembly recognizes that acts of gun violence, whether perpetrated against the Jewish community or not, are shattering the peace and sanctity of our lives at an alarming rate,” the brief adds.
One story related in the brief, from Rabbi Bruce Kahn of Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland, relates how Kahn had counseled a non-Jewish woman who had fled her abusive former partner and is currently helping her and her children flee the area where her partner lives.
In its brief, Jewish Women International notes that one of its members was shot and killed by an estranged husband in 1988, permanently shifting the focus of the group’s mission “to break the silence about domestic abuse in the Jewish community.” It joins the brief’s other Jewish groups: the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis; the Rabbinical Council of America, which is Orthodox; the Jewish Gun Violence Prevention Roundtable; the National Collaborative of Jewish Domestic Violence Programs; and the Women’s Rabbinic Network, also from the Reform movement.
Also represented are more than a half-dozen Jewish members of an interfaith coalition against domestic and sexual violence: the Clergy Task Force to End Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community, Hadassah, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, National Council of Jewish Women, Network of Jewish Human Services Agencies, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
Jewish groups and activists have long argued for stringent rules to keep guns out of the hands of people who might use them for dangerous purposes. Multiple Jewish groups, including Hadassah and the Orthodox Union, teamed up to press for federal gun-control legislation in 1968. The 2000 “Million Mom March” for gun control was launched by a woman who was distraught about the 1999 shooting by a white supremacist at a Los Angeles-area Jewish community center in which multiple children were wounded; some of the children’s parents became organizers. And Jewish students and parents from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were killed in 2018 have emerged as leading gun-control activists in the years since.
—
The post Jewish groups back gun restrictions for domestic abusers in high-profile Supreme Court case appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says
An Israeli flag flies in Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as seen from Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israel said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon, adding it would release five Lebanese detainees held by the Israeli military in what it called a “gesture to the Lebanese president.”
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had agreed with Lebanon, the US, and France to establish working groups to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area with airstrikes in southern Lebanon citing what it described as Hezbollah activity.
The ceasefire deal ended more than a year of conflict between Israel‘s military and the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that was playing out in parallel with the Gaza war.
The fighting peaked in a major Israeli air and ground campaign in southern Lebanon that left Hezbollah badly weakened, with most of its military command killed in Israeli strikes.
The post Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday over Iran’s expansion of its stock of uranium close to weapons grade, diplomats said on Monday.
The meeting was requested by six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain, and the US.
They also want the council to discuss Iran’s obligation to provide the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – with “the information necessary to clarify outstanding issues related to undeclared nuclear material detected at multiple locations in Iran,” diplomats said.
Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned meeting.
Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Western states say there is no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under any civilian program and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran reached a deal in 2015 with Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, and China – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Washington quit the agreement in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments.
Britain, France, and Germany have told the UN Security Council that they are ready – if needed – to trigger a so-called snap back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 this year when the 2015 UN resolution on the deal expires. US President Donald Trump has directed his UN envoy to work with allies to snap back international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.
The post UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says
A man inspects a damaged car in Latakia, after hundreds were reportedly killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers, Syria, March 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Haidar Mustafa
Entire families including women and children were killed in Syria’s coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population were members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families – including women, children, and individuals hors de combat – were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said, using a French term for those incapable of fighting.
So far, the UN human rights office has documented the killing of 111 civilians and expects the real toll to be significantly higher, Al-Kheetan told a Geneva press briefing. Of those, 90 were men; 18 were women; and three were children, he added.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis,” Al-Kheetan told reporters. In some cases, men were shot dead in front of their families, he said, citing testimonies from survivors.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk welcomed an announcement by Syria’s Islamist-led government to create an accountability committee and called for those investigations to be prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial, the spokesperson added.
The post Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.