Czech Republic’s Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, speaks during the United Nations climate change conference COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer

The Czech Republic will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem “at the right moment,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Thursday, cooling the likelihood of a near–term move that the government had signaled after the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

The Czech Republic has been a strong ally of Israel on the international scene, at times breaking ranks with EU allies in United Nations votes on Middle East affairs.

After the October 2023 attack, Fiala said the embassy move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv could come in a matter of months, but on Thursday he indicated the move was some way off.

“Let’s make it clear: The Czech Republic will move the embassy, because it is right, the question is not if but when,” Fiala told a hearing in the upper house of the Czech parliament.

He said the move should come at a time when Israel is not in a state of war with Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, and ideally when the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab nations, are widened to include more partners.

“Let’s be a little patient, but at the same time ready to make this step as soon as the right moment arrives.”

The Czech Republic opened a diplomatic office in Jerusalem in 2021, a step that drew protests from the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.

It would be the second NATO country to move its embassy to Jerusalem after the United States, which did so in 2018 under the first Trump administration. It would be the first European Union state to move its embassy.

Israel‘s government regards Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the country, the world’s lone Jewish state. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, the location of the holiest sites in Judaism, as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

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People stand outside of the La Scala opera house on the day of the season opening of La Scala theater in Milan, Italy, Dec. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

Milan’s famed La Scala opera house has fired one of its ushers after she shouted an anti-Israel slogan at a gala event attended by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni earlier this month, two trade unions said on Thursday.

The woman shouted “Free Palestine” as Meloni was taking her seat in the Royal Box at a May 4 concert in honor of the Asian Development Bank meeting in Milan, the theater’s trade unions said. Contacted by Reuters, La Scala had no immediate comment.

“In the dismissal order, signed by superintendent Fortunato Ortombina, it is emphasized that she betrayed trust by disobeying service orders, but we believe that she listened to her conscience,” the CUB union said in a statement.

“We will deploy all trade union actions to defend this brave girl who has our utmost solidarity,” CUB added.

Italy’s government has been a vocal supporter of Israel, but its foreign minister said on Wednesday Israel’s continued military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip had become unacceptable and had to stop immediately.

Israel launched its campaign on the Palestinian enclave in response to the devastating Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage into Gaza.

In Italy, opposition parties are planning a rally on June 7 calling for an end to the war in Gaza, while unions at La Scala have asked for a banner to be put up before performances on June 6 and 11 saying “Ceasefire, stop the massacres.”

The post Milan’s La Scala Theater Fires Usher Who Shouted ‘Free Palestine’ at Gala Event first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Secretary of State John Kerry with President Barack Obama. Photo: White House.

More than a week has passed since Israeli embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were murdered in an antisemitic terror attack in America’s capital, Washington, D.C.

In the immediate aftermath of the heinous killing, which occurred at a May 21 event hosted by The American Jewish Committee (AJC), leaders from around the world and across the ideological spectrum offered words of support to the Jewish community, and expressed outrage at the brutal slaying.

Notably, one high-profile couple who preferred to stay quiet following last week’s murders is former US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, who co-hosts the IMO Podcast with her brother Craig Robinson.

Nearly 10 years after leaving the White House, the Obamas remain pivotal and revered figures within the Democratic Party establishment. With almost 130 million followers, Barack Obama retains the second-largest following on the social media platform X.

Over the last decade, he has leveraged his influence to weigh in on a host of issues while campaigning alongside celebrities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

The choice of Obama to deliver the keynote address on the second night of last summer’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) illustrates how the former president is still setting the ideological tone of the Democratic Party and is considered the leader best suited to straddle the interests of progressives and centrists, as Democrats grapple with the direction of their coalition.

It is precisely this phenomenon that renders the Obamas’ actions since the October 7 massacre in Israel so troubling. Whether it’s feckless statements or marked silence, there is perhaps no couple that bears more responsibility for indulging the Democratic Party’s tolerance of the antisemitic and anti-Israel movement than the former first couple.

Pro-Israel Americans might very well conclude that their refusal to publicly condemn Lischinsky and Milgrim’s Jew-hating murderer is tied to a warped belief that placing sole blame on the gunman is to discount the geopolitical reasons behind his wicked rage. (Though it’s recently come out that besides hating Jews, he was also hoping for a genocide of white people).

The Obamas’ perverse silence and inversion of reality can be seen to convey that because they supported and worked on behalf of Israel, the murdered couple bear some culpability for their demise.

It was within this contextual framework that Obama implored Israel, in an October 23, 2023, column that was published in Medium, to exercise restraint in its war against Hamas.

That piece was followed by a November 2023 interview he gave on the Pod Save America podcast, an outlet whose hosts are, incidentally, both Obama administration alums and who, during a recent episode, shamelessly accused Israel of genocide.

During the 2023 discussion, as Israelis were still in the throes of memorials and fighting against Iranian proxy attacks, it was former President Obama who advanced a narrative popularized in progressive political orbits by claiming that “nobody’s hands are clean” — seemingly attempting to draw a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

For her part, former first lady Michelle Obama, who has consistently tried to position herself as a paragon of feminist virtue, has yet to say a word about the October 7 brutal rape, torture, and mutilation of Israeli women at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

Horrifying accounts by female captives of the sexual violence they were subjected to daily have failed to move the former first lady, who seems to devote most minutes of her new podcast to talking about herself and dispensing with any divorce rumors surrounding her marriage to “Barack.”

Michelle Obama’s stony silence in the face of Hamas’ assault against Israel stands in stark contrast to her expressed outrage back in 2014 over the ISIS-aligned foreign terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapping hundreds of Nigerian school girls. At the time, the former first lady appropriately and publicly joined the global “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.

The Obamas’ refusal to acknowledge the murder of Sarah Milgrim, who was the same age as the former first couple’s eldest daughter at the time of her killing, and Yaron Lischinsky join their pattern of behaving with indifference and outright malice when it comes to confronting antisemitic violence.

The operational freedom that the “Free Palestine” movement enjoys across US cities and campuses, coupled with recent polling showing nearly half of younger Americans back Hamas over Israel, are crucial data points confirming that the grievance-driven playbook seemingly backed by the Obamas has inculcated a generation of Americans that is openly hostile to Israel and, by extension, Jews.

According to the Obamas’ intersectional worldview, Jewish victims are complicit in fomenting the antisemitic terror that now haunts them. Years after leaving the White House, they continue to permit this distorted thinking to enter the political consciousness of millions of Americans, and at least for the foreseeable future, the former president will be primarily tasked with shaping the Democrats’ discourse that, with rare exception, is turning against Israel. That is a very troubling sign for the future — both for Jews and all Americans.

Irit Tratt is an American and pro-Israel advocate residing in New York. Follow her on X @Irit_Tratt.

The post Jewish Blood Is Spilled, and the Obamas Stay Silent first appeared on Algemeiner.com.