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US House Speaker Confirms Netanyahu to Address Congress Soon

US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stands in the House of Representatives ahead of US President Joe Biden’s third State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 7, 2024. Photo: Shawn Thew/Pool via REUTERS

US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver a speech to a joint session of the US Congress in the coming days.

Johnson gave a keynote address at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC on Thursday evening as part of a yearly Israeli Independence Day event. The Republican leader told the crowd that he is “happy to announce” that Congress will “soon be hosting Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

The crowd cheered Johnson’s announcement that a visit by the Israeli premier is in the works. 

He added that hearing an address by Netanyahu would be “a strong show of support for the Israeli government in their time of greatest need.”

Johnson bemoaned that support for Israel seems to be fading among some progressive politicians and suggested that Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that launched the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, has even “recruited apologists” among certain members of Congress.

The House speaker also took shots at US President Joe Biden, claiming that he has withheld “vital weapons” from the Jewish state. 

“Some leaders who have been previously proud to stand with Israel, and even some who have made statements of solidarity following Oct. 7, have suddenly begun to backpedal on that support,” Johnson said. 

Biden publicly announced earlier this month that his administration would no longer deliver shipments of offensive arms to Israel if the country were to embark on a major military operation in the city of Rafah, a step that many experts consider necessary to dismantle Hamas. Several of Israel’s allies condemned Biden’s decision to condition arms shipments to the Jewish state and argued that the president abandoned a close ally of the United States. 

Johnson also rebuked the decision of the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office to seek an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, claiming that the organization “likened Israel’s just war to the barbarism of Oct. 7th.” He promised that the United States would not “acknowledge or abide by” the court’s mandates. 

US Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) delivered his own keynote address at the Israeli embassy on Thursday night, reaffirming America’s “commitment to Israel’s sovereignty.”

Johnson’s invitation to Netanyahu comes amid increasing tensions between liberal members of Congress and the Biden administration over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Some Democrats have suggested that Israel is committing “genocide” and demanded that Israel agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, signalling a growing rift between more progressive politicians in the Democratic Party and one of America’s closest allies.

Moreover, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has faced significant pressure by members of his own party not to join Johnson’s invitation for Netanyahu to address Congress. Progressive Democrats such as Maxwell Frost (D-FL), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) have all vowed not to attend a congressional address by Netanyahu.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Wednesday dismissed the notion of a growing rift between Democrats over Israel as “nothing but puppies and rainbows.”

“The Republicans have repeatedly tried to make Israel a partisan political issue and divide Democrats, and they have failed,” Jeffries said.

The post US House Speaker Confirms Netanyahu to Address Congress Soon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election

US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS

Both Democratic and Republican parties are scrambling to galvanize Jewish support on the eve of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.

In what is projected to potentially be the closest presidential election in over 20 years, both parties believe that Jewish voters could play a major role in determining the election’s outcome. As the race for the White House enters the final hours, Democrats and Republicans have deployed some of their most vocal pro-Israel allies in a last-minute pitch to the Jewish community.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to court Jewish voters who feel alienated by Rep. Summer Lee’s (D-PA) unrelenting anti-Israel rhetoric. Torres sought to assuage fears that Vice President Kamala Harris harbors similar views on Israel as Lee.

In addition, Torres defended the Biden administration’s record on Israel, arguing that a potential Harris administration would continue to strengthen ties with the Jewish state and mitigate any threats from Iran.

“I joined the Harris campaign in showing solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community, which has been profoundly shaken by both the Tree of Life mass shooting and the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism,” Torres told Jewish Insider.

“I did my best to reassure the Jewish community that the Democratic Party — despite the background noise on Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok — has been and will remain fundamentally pro-Israel and that the Vice President herself falls squarely within the pro-Israel consensus that has historically governed American politics, rejecting both the [a]nti-Zionism of the far left and the America-[F]irst isolationism of the far right,” Torres continued.

On the conservative side of the aisle, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filmed a video with the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in support of former President Donald Trump.

“This is the most important election cycle in our lifetime, and as we have seen on college campuses, the rot of antisemitism is real in the Democratic Party.

She accused the Biden White House of betraying Israel and the Jewish people. She lambasted the Biden administration for their failure “to combat antisemitism”

“It is Republicans who have always – and will always – stand strongly with Israel, and stand up and clearly condemn antisemitism,” Stefanik said.

While serving on the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has lambasted administrators of elite universities for their mealy-mouthed condemnations of antisemitism and tolerance of anti-Jewish violence on campus. Last December, Stefanik engaged in a fiery back-and-forth with the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a purported antisemitic campus atmospheres.

Early indicators suggest that Harris is expected to win a smaller share of the Jewish vote than previous Democratic candidates. Jewish voters, highly-concentrated in important areas such as the suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia, could prove critical in Harris’s bid to win the White House.

Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones cautioned Monday that Harris has suffered an erosion of Jewish support in the Philadelphia metro.

Jones said that he’s “worried” that the “Jewish vote in the suburban areas” of Philadelphia have dramatically soured on Harris.

“Biden won the Jewish vote [in suburban Philadephia] by 70%” Jones said, referencing the 2020 election.

“Some polls show Kamala at 50-50” among Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Jones lamented.

The post Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’

In a gentrifying West Toronto neighbourhood full of signs advocating for Black lives, transgender youth and the unhoused, the clerk’s refusal to hang up a sign of my own design […]

The post Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large

Illustrative: An ambulance used by Hatzalah in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Orthodox Jews in New York City are again frustrated with a lack of law and order in the Five Boroughs following another attack against a member of their community, this time a child.

According to multiple accounts, an African American male on Monday morning smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The incident was the second known assault on an Orthodox Jew in the area in less than a week.

“He was riding his bike between Winthrop and Clarkson, near the hospital, when a man slapped him. He arrived at school shaken, and the school contacted his parents and Crown Heights Shomrim [a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group],” Yaacov Behrman, a local Jewish leader, posted on X/Twitter.

Behrman — a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — added that the boy was filing a police report.

A teacher of the young man, Yisrael Eliashiv, added that the assailant, who remains at large, “smacked [the boy] across the face for no reason other than hate. Thankfully, he got away before anything else happened.” The teacher then noted that his student did not initially think to notify the police because he doubted the attacker would receive any punishment.

“I’m fuming to the point I’ve got a migraine … You have kids who are 13 or 14 and have grown up with the attitude of ‘if you get assaulted in the street, just take it because nothing is gonna be done.’ Those are the symptoms not of a sick but of a dead and decaying society,” Eliashiv wrote.

Crown Heights, home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, has seen numerous antisemitic hate crimes in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face.

Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.

Monday’s assault came just days after an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn last week.

These latest attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community continue a trend.

According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.

Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.

Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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