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Meet Thomas Poretsky, 10-year-old Native American-Jewish racer
ELKO NEW MARKET, Minn. (JTA via TC Jewfolk) — Thomas Poretsky is six years away from being behind the wheel of a street-legal car and is too young to drive bumper cars at the State Fair. This is ironic as he stands in the shadow of Elko Speedway in a firesuit and holds his racing helmet, waiting to take his Bandolero race car onto the track to get some practice laps in.
“I don’t like bumper cars,” he said. “I’m trying to avoid running into things.”
Poretsky, a 10-year-old Prior Lake resident, has been driving cars for nearly half of his life. His No. 8 car is emblazoned with two important pieces of family heritage: an Israeli flag denoting his father’s Jewish heritage, and a flag of the Quechan Nation, the Native American tribe of his mother’s side of the family.
“It means a lot to me,” Poretsky said during a recent practice session. “There’s not a lot of Native and Jewish mixes and it’s just … me. It shows my story.”
The Bandolero looks like a scaled-down stock car. It has a tube frame with a roll cage to protect the driver and is covered by fiberglass panels that can be removed for maintenance.
Poretsky is in his first season driving Bandoleros but has been behind the wheel of cars since he was six.
“Thomas was always quiet and shy and not sure of himself,” said Mary Poretsky, Thomas’ mother. “And one day, he said he wanted to race cars. He and I, we made this deal. He said, ‘Mom, I’ll race as long as you’re there.’ So I said ‘okay.’ And then one thing led to another and then I’m looking for a car.”
Poretsky’s car features Native American and Israeli flags. (Lonny Goldsmith/TC Jewfolk)
Poretsky started driving in what so many young drivers — including professionals — started: quarter-midget cars. But the Poretskys learned that those cars require more maintenance than the Bandoleros, so they made the move up a class.
“It’s an introductory class for kids,” said Tim Brockhouse, referring to the Bandoleros. He is the owner of the Great North Legends Bandolero parts and repair shop in Burnsville, Minnesota, and maintains Poretsky’s car. “And that’s what we try to keep it as. They actually have adults racing them down south, but at 14 we kick them out.”
Thomas drives his car around the quarter-mile inner oval at Elko Speedway at roughly 46 miles per hour. His father Solomon times his laps and said Poretsky was consistently between 18.9 and 19.1 seconds per lap.
“I’m really, really happy with his performance,” Solomon Poretsky said. “If you rip a good lap, the problem is you may not be able to repeat it. If you’re consistent, you always do the same thing.”
Consistency has been a feature of Thomas’ racing. He took part in a competitive go-kart league at Pro Kart in Burnsville last winter. Solomon Poretsky said that his son was never near the front of the pack, but consistent laps and finishes helped him finish in third place in the final standings, behind “generational racing families.”
“For a starting Bando racer to finish every race and not damage your car, that’s an accomplishment,” the elder Poretsky said. “His car control’s pretty good, especially for a beginning driver.”
Family affair
Solomon and Mary Poretsky met online in the pre-dating app era, after he answered an ad she placed on Yahoo! Personals.
“He sent me this whole dissertation,” she said.
“It was more of a thesis,” he quipped back.
That was 25 years ago, and 17 years ago when they moved to Minnesota from Sacramento, Solomon knew that they didn’t want their kids to play hockey. It was too expensive, he said, laughing. (Thomas’ car cost $7,000, and the engine — which is sealed and can only be purchased from one spot — is $2,500.)
Neither of Poretsky’s parents are mechanically inclined. Solomon has decades of experience in real estate, and Mary used to run her own small business before giving it up to focus on her son’s racing. Solomon joked that he only buys new cars to avoid dealing with repairs.
Mary said she’s getting the hang of filling Thomas’ car with gas and managing the tire pressure. But “it’s been a real learning process,” she said.
(Lonny Goldsmith/TC Jewfolk)
And the parents agreed: if Thomas is serious about pursuing racing long-term, they will support him — even if it means they need to move out of Minnesota.
Mary recalled how in an early practice session, her son’s engine blew out and he had to be pushed up the track.
“[Thomas] was in tears,” she said. “And people just came to help, and slap a new engine in. Nobody asked for anything. I was saying thank you to everybody, and everybody kept saying ‘It’s for the kids.’
“It was so beautiful,” she added. “It just looked like a testament of the goodness of humanity. They didn’t know him, they didn’t know us. We never even said hello to each other before.”
Since he has started racing at his current level, Thomas’ parents and their friends have noticed a different kid.
“He walks differently, he talks with a little bit more authority,” Mary said. “It’s like he came out of his shell. He’s making friends left and right. He has the admiration of the kids in his class. His teacher even came at the end of school to watch him.”
Said Thomas: “[My friends] didn’t believe it until I showed them a picture of the car.”
Meaning in the car design
Poretsky and his father both said a plain, white car was fine. His mother protested.
“No, it needs to be pretty,” she said.
The car number is for Thomas’ favorite NASCAR driver, Kyle Busch. The white on the bottom features tribal-inspired geometric patterns — the white and green are separated with a thin line of blue, with a diamondback snake over it. The snake is native to the southwest where Mary’s tribe originates.
The flags on either side of his name over the windows to the car was the icing on the cake.
“He’s Native American. And he’s Jewish. And we should be proud of that. And we should be proud of him,” she said.
Solomon, who described his family as “gastronomic Jews,” said being a “member of the tribe” has taken on a new meaning for Thomas. In addition to the tribal components of Native American and Jewish culture, the racing community is tight-knit, too.
“People have been so welcoming and so kind,” Solomon said. “I can’t tell you how many people have put their kids in the car, they’ve got a picture of their kids in the car smiling out the window with a Quechan and an Israeli flag. It’s been completely welcoming.”
Towards the rear of the car behind the windows on each side is a blue Thunderbird. In Native traditions, the Thunderbird is a desert bird that is the protector of the sky.
“When he flaps his wings, that’s the thunder. And he shoots lightning out of his eyes,” Mary said. “I thought that was good for Thomas to have a protector.”
Thomas said he drives for two reasons: For fun, and because he gets to inspire people.
“That’s a really big thing for me,” he said. “A lot of people wish they could do this, and it’s just cool to know that they’re feeling happy because they’re inspired to follow their dreams.”
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The post Meet Thomas Poretsky, 10-year-old Native American-Jewish racer appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The post Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback 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 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
The post Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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