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Jewish Groups Pull Support From Oregon Food Bank for Blasting ‘Israel’s Violence’ in Gaza
Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in this handout picture released on March 5, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
A total of 12 Jewish organizations based in Oregon, including nonprofits and five synagogues, announced in a joint statement that they will not support the Oregon Food Bank until it retracts its condemnation of Israel’s military actions during the ongoing Israeli campaign targeting Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The local Jewish groups, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, also called on the Oregon Food Bank to issue a new statement “indicating that it will maintain its focus on hunger and its root causes here in Oregon.”
They added, “Until such time we will support other local organizations who are upholding this important mission.”
On April 30, the Oregon Food Bank released a statement that called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end “Israel’s violence against Palestinians.” The organization — which collects and distributes food across five main locations in Oregon and southwest Washington — claimed that Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip puts Palestinians in the region “at risk of genocide.” The food bank condemned what it described as “indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli army on Palestinians, including the bombardment of neighborhoods, healthcare facilities, humanitarian aid efforts, and refugee camps.”
“The intentional obstruction of humanitarian relief efforts as well as the deliberate destruction of Palestinian food and lifeways, such as the intentional targeting of bakeries, hospitals, and housing units, exacerbates the suffering and vulnerability of Palestinians,” the food bank added. “These attacks illustrate how blocking food distribution and the weaponization of starvation is a violent tactic of war … Oregon Food Bank’s mission is to end hunger and its root causes. We know that colonial ideologies are root causes of hunger, including the legacy of World War II’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hatred, which fuel the current outbreak of violence in Israel and Palestine.”
The statement on April 30 was the first time that the Oregon Food Bank has commented or released a political statement on an international conflict. The food bank also denounced the deadly Oct. 7 attacks committed by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel and called for the release of all hostages abducted that day by the terrorist organization. The group additionally condemned the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Oregon and southwest Washington.
In response, Jewish organizations — including Portland Jewish Academy, Oregon NCSY, and the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation — released a joint statement that accused the food bank of exhibiting a “bias” in its approach to a “complicated international situation.” They said the Oregon Food Bank is wrong for solely blaming the Jewish state for the Israel-Hamas war and “accusing Israel of waging war on a civilian population rather than battling a terrorist organization which brutally murdered, raped, and kidnapped more than a thousand of its citizens.”
The Oregon Food Bank’s statement “also includes false charges of colonialism and genocide which the Oregon Food Bank is not in a position to substantiate,” the Jewish groups said. “Antisemitism is on the rise in our nation and our community. In our view, the false accusations here serve to further fan the flames of Jewish hatred.”
Many of the Jewish groups have been longtime supporters of the Oregon Food Bank as donors and volunteers, some even since the food bank was founded in 1982. “We maintain a commitment to the mission of eliminating hunger in Oregon, and its root causes,” they explained. “But we cannot see how calling on one party of a conflict thousands of miles away to commit to a ceasefire, while allowing the terror organization that broke the ceasefire to continue to flourish on its borders, helps eliminate hunger in Oregon.”
On May 16, the Oregon Food Bank released a statement in recognition of Jewish-American Heritage Month, honoring “the resilience and contributions of Jewish peoples” and recognizing “the deep roots and present actions of antisemitism” across the US. The Jewish organizations said that while they appreciate the food bank’s remarks celebrating Jewish-American Heritage Month, “it does nothing to negate the harm already done.”
The post Jewish Groups Pull Support From Oregon Food Bank for Blasting ‘Israel’s Violence’ in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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