The Lod District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday that it had convicted a teenage member of a Jewish terror cell responsible for targeting Palestinians and their property in the central West Bank from 2013 to 2016.

The suspect, whose identity was not released as he was a minor at the time of the attacks, operated in the group with three brothers, who were convicted in March as part of a plea agreement.

Deeming his actions to be particularly reprehensible, prosecutors tried and convicted the latest suspect separately, without offering a plea deal. The conviction was handed down last week, but was only made public by the court Tuesday.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Over his involvement in nine different attacks, the court on Thursday found the 19-year-old guilty of 25 charges, including membership in a terror organization, racially motivated aggravated assault, racially motivated property destruction, stone throwing at vehicles and arson.

This was just the second time that a Jewish suspect had ever been convicted of membership in a terror organization over the perpetration of so-called price tag attacks — assaults carried out by far-right Jewish extremists against Palestinians and their property ostensibly in retaliation for actions and policies against the settlement enterprise.

One of the three brothers, a teen, was also convicted of membership in a terror organization in March.

The three brothers, from the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Nahliel, were sentenced last year to five, four and-a-half and two and-a-half years respectively.

The teen suspect convicted last week, who hails from a different settlement in the central West Bank, is expected to receive a heftier punishment. Sentencing is not expected until June.

According to the ruling, the suspect and his co-conspirators “sought, among other things, to instill fear and panic among the Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria [West Bank], and to convey a message to the security forces and to the public in Israel regarding security issues.”

In the middle of the night in December 2015, the suspect and another descended on the village of Beitillu. There, they shattered a window of a home they knew to be occupied on the outskirts of the central West Bank village and hurled a pair of smoke grenades inside before fleeing the scene. According to the ruling, the Palestinian father heard the glass shatter, managed to wake up his wife and nine-month old baby and got them out of the home before it filled entirely with smoke. On the walls of a house nearby the attackers sprayed “Revenge, regards from the prisoners of Zion.”

In a second incident a month earlier, the two Israeli teens threw Molotov cocktails into a house in the village of Mazra’a al-Qibliya while a Palestinian family was sleeping inside. One of the firebombs bounced off the window of the home, thus a disaster was averted. On the walls of the home they sprayed “Revenge,” “Death to the Arabs,” and “Jews wake up.”

A month earlier, the suspect along with three other members of the terror cell hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles near Ramallah and torched another in Beitillu as retaliation for the murder of the Israeli couple Na’ama and Eitam Henkin.

In June 2015, the suspect along with five others brutally assaulted a Palestinian farmer on the outskirts of the village of Ras Karkar.

The Shin Bet security service arrested the terror cell in April 2016, but conditionally released the teens pending sentencing.

“The affair illustrates that the law enforcement authorities are working with full determination to eliminate acts of violence that constitute acts of terrorism on a clearly nationalistic background,” said attorneys Dan Cohen and Reut Aviri, who handled the case on behalf of the Central District Attorney’s Office.

Hay Haber from the Honenu legal aid organization representing the suspect rejected the notion that his client was a member of a terror organization. “This is a baseless accusation filled with demagoguery. To put my client in the same class as a Hamas fighter is not just erroneous at the legal level, but at the factual level as well.”

Haber said his client has expressed remorse for his actions and was being unfairly used as a “pilot case” in the court’s attempt to demonstrate that it is cracking down on cases of violence perpetrated by Jews.</s>Despite American Jews’ generally low observance of Jewish religious traditions, paucity of Jewish knowledge, and relative non-belief in God, many feel remarkably committed. That is the central paradox of contemporary American Jewish life. And Harvard Law School professor Bob Mnookin confesses he is a prime exemplar of the paradox.

Nobody could have been more surprised than I was to discover that Mnookin cared so much about the survival of the American Jewish community that he would write this book. In the nearly 60 years I have known him, he never expressed interest in anything Jewish until his “TED Talk” at our 50th Harvard Reunion five years ago—a presentation that became the basis of this remarkably bracing and thoughtful book that challenges the community to become more welcoming and embracing.

Over the course of a career devoted to conflict resolution, Mnookin has written many well-regarded books and articles on disputes arising from divorce, commercial dealings, and international clashes, including the Israeli-Arab confrontation. Yet “The Jewish American Paradox,” Mnookin confesses, was the most difficult book for him to write. It required him to master a vast literature far afield from his expertise. And it led him to address with remarkable honesty personal questions about his own identity as an American Jew. In essence, as a Jewish psychiatrist friend of his remarked over lunch, Mnookin found this so difficult because he was dealing with his own “Jewish meshugas.”

More broadly, Mnookin identifies four challenges confronting the larger American Jewish community: (1) rising intermarriage, (2) low Jewish observance, (3) reduced Jewish cohesion in confronting anti-Semitism (despite Pittsburgh), and (4) divisions among us about Israel. These trends have led observers to predict the decline of American Jewry numerically and as a force in the Jewish future. Of course, such predictions have also been commonplace for nearly 100 years.

Mnookin offers a more optimistic assessment, provided that Jewish leaders and institutions respond more creatively to the changes in 21st century Jewish America. Most controversially, he advocates a more inclusive definition of Jewish identity, which would welcome Jewish self-identification on the basis of choice, and without necessary pre-conditions of birth or formal conversion. He propounds the development of Jewish communal strategies that will welcome intermarried couples and embrace open debate about Israel and other divisive issues.

Above all, he advocates an open, more inclusive “Big Tent” approach for American Jewry which acknowledges that more traditional Jewish institutions under the Big Tent will maintain their own more restrictive rules. In practice, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have increasingly — though not fully — followed Mnookin’s proposed path.

The book’s title, addressed to Jewish Americans, rather than American Jews is significant. My own 23 year-old grandson commented on the difference. “You’re a Jew, Gramps, I’m Jewish.”

As a Reform rabbi who has spent his entire 50-year career serving the Bob Mnookins among us and never officiated at an intermarriage while on that pulpit, I now, too find myself coming around to Mnookin’s view of the most promising strategies for the Jewish future. Yes, the very thought of conceiving of Jewish identity as “optional” and/or “fluid” has long been anathema to Judaism (and, indeed, to the other Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam—unlike Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which embrace a more plastic definition of religion). Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that Judaism will need to compete for participation and commitment in an altogether new world in which identities are in fact more fluid and optional.

Robert Mnookin has composed a challenging roadmap for American Jewry. Traditionalists will dismiss it as further proof of American Jewish decline. But others will rejoice that a serious voice from the less religiously observant Jewish majority sings so clearly, directly, and potentially instructively about the American Jewish future.

Rabbi Mark Winer is a Reform rabbi and trained sociologist, with a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale. He has been conducting research into Jewish identity and writing about it for more than 50 years. He lives in Boca Raton.</s>WHY NO DEMANDS FOR CHANGE IN THE “JEWISH STATE”?

Where is the demand for a change in the “Jewish state”?

It is interesting to see how German politicians feel called upon to demand sanctions against the legitimately elected Venezuelan President Maduro.The leading candidate of the European People’s Party for the European elections, Manfred Weber, announces in the Bild Zeitung: “The world community must not watch as the situation in Venezuela escalates more and more” and calls for a unified EU line, “which does not shy away from sanctions, as a signal the unity of the Europeans “. Similarly, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, David Mc Allister, in the “central organ of democracy”, the “cancerous ulcer” of the German media landscape to speak with the statement: “The humanitarian situation in Venezuela is catastrophic and continues to worsen daily”.

On the side of the coup

The FDP foreign policy expert Count Lambsdorff wants to continue to watch as “Maduro starves his people”. Of course, the CDU General Secretary Paul-Zimiak does not want to stand aside and condemns that “Maduro shoot at people”. Of course, there could also be missing the green-outdoor expert Cem Özdemir, who also called for the EU pressure to move Maduro to give in; He urged the Left Party and its European allies to opt for the people and the dictatorship of ideology.

This shows us once again how implausible these politicians are, for these cowardly hypocrites are more than eloquent when it comes to the illegal occupation of Palestine and the daily Israeli human rights violations; All of them are loyal to the “Jewish Occupying State”, which unites all parties, from left to right-wing extremists.

It is frightening how quickly German policy has sided with the coup leader Guaidó, a US puppet that does not shrink from incitement to civil war and US intervention. But this does not trump Trump poodle-pack: the Germans are again squeezed on the side of injustice, despite the opinion of the Scientific Service of the Bundestag, which leaves little doubt that “the recognition of Juan Guaidó by the federal government in violation of international law.” , (1)

In sharp contrast to this fatal tendency to disregard international law, Merkel again and again emphasizes that she does not want to interfere in the “internal” affairs of the Zionist regime when it comes to the decades of violations of international and human rights by the Jewish state. But she is in a hurry when it comes to interference in Venezuela or Syria.

From the painful experience with US interventions in Latin America, it is also the right of the Venezuelans to refuse aid supplies, especially from the US, which link them with their sinister political goals. Hardly any of our so-called quality media reports on relief supplies, including from Cuba, China, Russia, India, Turkey.

Was not Ukraine also the victim of US intervention policy, which will continue to burden us for decades? And who does not remember Nuland’s “Fuck the EU”? Oh, and how willingly he gave himself to that … (2)

The US blackmail of the sanctions policy against Russia and Iran is fatal and we should defend against it, because our natural neighbor is and remains Russia. The surveys also show a blatant disproportion of the folly of the rulers to the reigned voting cattle, which is mostly against it, but ignored!

Now, Merkel is at the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, calling for more tolerance and change among the participating Arab states, not shying away from communing with dictators such as the host al-Sisi and the Saudi king; one is stunned by such shameless mendacity. It was an embarrassing performance by an EU that sees itself as a “community of values” but has been fooled by dubious rulers in order to achieve cooperation promises.Human rights, democratic governance or the involvement of civil society are no longer on the agenda.

In reality, all we have to do is keep the refugees off our backs and stop the mass exodus from the Arab and African areas. However, whoever is responsible for this situation, as we see it in Syria, Libya, Iraq or Yemen, namely interference and interventions contrary to international law, is silent about this summit. It can not be overstated by sad cynicism if AA Maas “substantially” (100 million euros?) Appeals to the upcoming Yemen donors conference without commenting on who the perpetrators and profiteers of this genocide are! All we can see is that US welfare and democracy bring the desperate people in refugee boats across the ocean.And NATO can not keep its throat full: more weapons, more war, more destruction,

If Merkel thinks that she can ignore everything, just to mention human rights, but not too much, so as not to upset, that is the “Christian Zionist value policy”, which is forever in Merkel’s reign bad memory will remain.She has managed to stage herself again and again as a “compensatory politician,” but in reality pursues an ice-cold industrial policy. Whether it is the softening of the determination of armaments deliveries or the increase of the defense budget. Let’s ask ourselves, what happens to all the arms exports, and how are they used? More and more new wars and armed conflicts with millions of refugees are the result.

Indeed, if al-Sisi at the summit actually calls on the EU to intensify the fight against terror, which spreads like a harmful plague, then one must be surprised at its own terror against critics. In fact, when al-Sisi was asked if he was aware that the EU was in disagreement with the human rights situation in his country, it was still a scandal. As Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Abu Ghait asserted, “Not one of those present expressed” dissatisfaction “with the human rights situation, EU Commission President Juncker fought to clarify that human rights were well spoken. Well roared, lion, and so what, with what consequences? Further deepening cooperation in the fight against “terror and terrorists”? What a shameful performance by an EU Commission President.

I ask myself, if it had been a conference in the “Jewish State”, if there would have been the word “human rights”? Would not the Netanyahu regime have canceled the conference immediately? One is stunned by such shameless sanctimonious mendacity.

Have all these politicians ever called for a change in the “Jewish occupation state”? Not at all, because the Zionist regime is free to pursue an ethnic cleansing policy that is unparalleled. We see that right-wing regimes and structures are courted and allegedly leftist are vilified. We have a situation that should make us more than worried. If such tendencies dominate the entire EU and the European Parliament, then good night Europe! If “democratic socialism”, which finally brought South and Central American states to freedom, becomes an enemy because of the US coup and regime change policy and supports Europe and Germany in particular, this inhumane policy, then we should finally respond. We have to prevent

Is not all about it in reality: namely, the Western, especially US economic interests in Venezuela and its oil and the demonization of the left?

It seems as if the US-led coup attempt in Venezuela this time fails, the miserable end to a US-led “coup revolution” on schedule. But will the Trump Pompeo government give up? Did not the self-proclaimed interim president maneuver into complete US offside by holding all “options open” to his coup attempt to succeed yet. Further proof that the US and its helpers are all about oil wealth. The people are little interested in them.

Mantle of Silence on the Crimes of the “Jewish State”

There was a wave of solidarity for Venezuela, around the world, which I would like to see Palestine as well. One wonders why it was only Roger Waters again, who made a name for himself as a famous artist and Palestinian and BDS supporter, why he stands alone. Where are the intellectuals and artists, especially in Germany, who work for human rights also for Palestinians and against the occupation of their homeland? Since the infamous hate against the last upright German voice Günter Grass silence in the woods is announced! For this we experience a more than embarrassing performance of female singers singing their trivial ditty songs for Israel. This republic has become as full and hollow as their talk shows and “sieved” news. Only shallow news broadcasts, who prefer to talk about football rather than about weekly murders and child murders of the “most moral” of all Jewish “defensive armies” on the border with illegally occupied Gaza. While the Israeli newspaper Haaretz publishes more than critical articles on a daily basis and is not afraid to publish the naked truth, and clearly calls the crimes of the state by its name, in this country they graciously spread the mantle of silence over the crimes in the Jewish Country”.

However, it becomes criminal when everything that concerns criticism of the “Jewish state” turns into anti-Semitism and is not stopped even by Jewish critics – as is currently the case with the “Jewish voice for just peace in the Middle East” – who have the decency, to work for the freedom of Palestine and the occupation. To work for international law and for peace in this country means that one has to reckon with massive reprisals. This is incompatible with the Basic Law and the right to freedom of expression, but recalls the times when Jews were once excluded and defamed in Germany. In this form of new hatred of the Jews, Jewish officials and politicians nowadays are in the same boat.

The leading candidate of the conservative EPP, Manfred Weber, does not demand an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine, but rather cheap as the voice of his Mr. Schuster a Europe pact against hatred of the Jews.Should he be elected President of the European Council, we must be very concerned about this, as this would be another step towards the end of freedom of expression and eternal silence on Zionist terror in illegally-occupied Palestine.

The FDP chairman Lindner still sets one on it and how the shoemaker orders the anti-Semitism that “comes under the guise of criticizing Israel” and demands the cessation of the financing of NGOs that support BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions). Hard to imagine that Lindner and the FDP come with such “un-liberal” demands in the “double-digitity”, because such theses certainly attract no liberal voters, and certainly none that give something to international law.

The opinion of the curious “Liberal” Lindner is completely irrelevant to us, as Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the EU, affirms the right to BDS: “The EU protects the freedom of expression and assembly in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, applicable in the territory of all EU Member States, also with regard to the BDS measures implemented in that area. “(3) (3a)

Miserable this FDP, which, at the pressure of lobbyists, gives up its liberality and intellectual freedom at the Central Council wardrobe.

Again and again one tries to pull the so successful nonviolent boycott movement with lies in the dirt. It’s not about “Do not buy with the Jew,” but “Palestinian civil society calls for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and the universal principles of human rights.” No central council yet bans this important document read and freely form your own (!) Opinion. (4)

Meanwhile, even the powerful Israeli-loyal US organizations, the pro-Israeli AIPAC and AJC, are getting cold feet because they suspect what the policies of the right-wing Netanyahu regime are doing. More striking than the “world” can not be expressed: “They made the state of Israel thanks to their influence in the US Congress again and again significant strategic support.” In fact, Israel is a racist apartheid state, which must be protected from itself. (5)

Unfortunately, this has not yet penetrated to the German governor of the “Jewish State”, Josef Schuster. He has the chutzpah to criticize President Steinmeier for having congratulated Iranian President Rohani on the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution – “also in the name of his compatriots”. In fact, Steinmeier, as Federal President, has practiced diplomatic practices that are expected of a Federal President. What Schuster did this time surpasses everything in his infatuation. He misses “clear” words of criticism and actually means to speak on behalf of the Germans. No, he speaks in the name of the “Jewish State” and that is unbearable and proves the dependence of the Central Council of Jews on the “Jewish State”. Conversely, let us imagine that Steinmeier, in a congratulation to the 70th anniversary of the “Jewish state”, criticized the violation of human rights and international law and called for an end to the illegal occupation? What would have been an outcry from Schuster, probably the German President would have mutated to “supreme” anti-Semites. Addressed to Steinmeier’s address, it has not paid off for him to speak to the “Jewish State” about the mouth, maybe this central behavior finally promotes a “rethinking” in the Bellevue! (6) probably the German Federal President would have mutated into the “top” anti-Semite.Addressed to Steinmeier’s address, it has not paid off for him to speak to the “Jewish State” about the mouth, maybe this central behavior finally promotes a “rethinking” in the Bellevue! (6) probably the German Federal President would have mutated into the “top” anti-Semite. Addressed to Steinmeier’s address, it has not paid off for him to speak to the “Jewish State” about the mouth, maybe this central behavior finally promotes a “rethinking” in the Bellevue! (6)

In these times of anti-Islam and hatred of Muslims, refugees and migrants, we should fight together against any kind of defamation. When is finally called for a change in the “Jewish state”?</s>Tell your friends to sign up for the Daily Kickoff here or for early 7AM access via Debut Inbox

KUSHNER MIDEAST TOUR — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to meet Jared Kushner in Ankara on Wednesday. Erdogan told NTV television on Tuesday that he and Kushner would discuss conflicts in the Middle East as well as economic relations.

It’s worth noting that Kushner is not visiting Egypt or Jordan on this trip, two countries likely critical to any peace plan rollout, as the primary goal of his current Middle East tour is raising funds for a large financial investment with the Palestinians and Israel’s other neighbors. According to former U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk, the number Kushner has in mind is $65 billion, a rather ambitious fundraising goal.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

“Kushner is trying to raise $65 billion in funds to support not just the Palestinians but also Egypt and Jordan. So there’s no reason to go there on this trip. They’re supposed to be beneficiaries, not donors,” Indyk explained to Jewish Insider.

Asked how much of the $65 billion he thinks the Trump administration will be willing to put up, Indyk replied: “Somewhere between ‘effes and shum davar‘ (zero and nil). Actually, I have no idea but it’s probably the second question the potential donors will ask. The first question will be: ‘What’s in the plan?’ And since it could cause an upheaval in Israel if any part of the plan leaks, he [Kushner] probably can’t answer that.”

New government documents reveal Jared Kushner’s Secret Service codename as ‘Mechanic’ — by Justin Rohrlich: “Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s Secret Service codename is “Mechanic,” a new government filing reveals.” [Quartz]

Top Israeli minister to Trump: Reveal plan before the election: “Israeli cabinet minister Naftali Bennett is calling on President Donald Trump to reveal his much-anticipated ‘Deal of the Century’ for Middle East peace before the upcoming Israeli election. Bennett… says Tuesday that Trump is leaving Israelis in the dark before a crucial election and ‘friends do not keep secrets’ from each other.” [AP]

SCENE LAST NIGHT — by JI’s Laura Kelly: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told a group of Jewish Democrats that Israel as a bipartisan issue is being put at risk by people who would like to separate the Jewish community and the Democratic Party. [Pic]

At a reception hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), the majority leader said Democratic members were united in criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for touting an anti-Semitic trope on Twitter. “Well we made some criticism when one of them said something we thought was not appropriate and gave the wrong message of anti-Semitism, but she apologized… I said, ‘We’re prepared to criticize our own,’” Hoyer said.

Over a dozen members of Congress came out to the event, held at the Liaison Hotel in Washington, DC. “We are a wonderful noble country and in the last few years, there have been real attempts to derail that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said at the opening of the event, before heading to a fundraiser across the hall.

Also speaking at the event were freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who voiced greater action in confronting anti-Semitism, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who promoted Jewish values as central to democratic values, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that strong support of Israel is essential for America’s national security. “I know that the Israelis are key to our national security as well, in terms of their partnership, in terms of their sharing information with us — we’ve got to end this notion that somehow one party or the other is promoting stronger ties with Israel. We should all be promoting stronger ties.”

William Daroff of the Jewish Federations of North America said, “I think it’s important in the current environment to ensure that there is a pro-Israel majority on both sides of the aisle and there are certainly forces on the right and the left to wedge support between the U.S. and Israel and we need to vigilantly, we need to be vigilant across the board and across the spectrum.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar deletes the controversial tweets that drew charges of anti-Semitism — by William Cummings: “Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) seems to have deleted the tweets that drew accusations of anti-Semitism from both Republican and Democratic colleagues two weeks ago.”[USAToday]

ARGUMENT — No More Mr. Nice Jew: How to deal with those who hate us? — by Edward Luttwak: “Those who favor ‘dialogue’ with the likes of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar appear to be driven by the delusion that our enemies would not be so if only they knew us better, or stood in solidarity with them on issues of mutual concern… The good news is that we live in a democracy, and there is another election coming up soon enough. Let their opponents receive all proper encouragement and support, both local and national… When it comes to those who proclaim anti-Jewish hate, the American Jewish community needs to follow the examples set by British and French Jews when confronted with even greater threats: Stop dialoguing and start winning.” [Tablet]

JI INTERVIEW — Dov Zakheim, former Undersecretary of Defense in President George W. Bush’s administration, harshly criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu for causing long-term damage to the U.S.-Israel relationship in a phone interview with Jewish Insider‘s Jacob Kornbluh. “Perhaps the longest-term damage that Netanyahu has done — and it’s true damage — is losing Israel’s status as a bipartisan issue in the U.S., Zakheim charged, joiningprominent critics of Netanyahu’s latest political moves.

“The next Israeli prime minister will have to begin repairing that, partly by reaching out to the Democrats and partly by at least working with the Palestinians, whereas now I think it’s impossible with Netanyahu,” Zakheim continued. “And not only is it impossible with Netanyahu, I think he’s jeopardizing the entire relationship that the U.S. has worked on with the Gulf and other Muslim countries. It’s going to be very, very difficult to convince the Gulf leaderships that they can work with a guy who’s willing to have on his team people who are ready to throw the Arabs into the desert. The Jews always say the Arabs want to throw them into the sea. Well, you now have people who want to throw the Arabs into the desert. It’s fraught with difficulties.”

“I think the impression that people have already developed for some time and this move reinforces is that Bibi is not about Israel. Bibi is about Bibi. And given all the other issues that have already been there: the friction over the Palestinians, the friction over religious issues, this is just on top of them all. And I think, when it comes to AIPAC or the AJC or the other organizations that have spoken out, I think this simply was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Deborah Lipstadt resigns from synagogue over defense of Israeli extreme right: “Deborah Lipstadt, the prominent Holocaust historian, is resigning her membership in her local synagogue because it belongs to a movement that defended an Israeli political deal with the extremist right wing. Lipstadt belonged to Young Israel of Toco Hills in Atlanta, an Orthodox congregation. The rabbi of Lipstadt’s synagogue, Adam Starr, himself condemned the statement in a Facebook post, writing, “Not in my name and not in my shul’s name!” But Lipstadt still felt that she could not continue to be associated with Young Israel, despite having fond words for her synagogue and rabbi.” [ToI]

— American Friends of Likud said in a statement on Tuesday that it was ‘disappointed by the overt interference into the elections in Israel by certain leaders of American Jewish organizations,’ and calling the criticism by organizations like AJC and AIPAC ‘insulting and obtrusive.’ The criticism sends an ‘unmistakable message to the Israeli public,’ it charged, ‘that these American Jewish leaders are casting their uninvited votes in the election against the Likud, the Prime Minister’s party, and that Israeli voters should vote the same way.’ [ToI]

ON THE HILL — Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer and attorney, will testify publicly before the House Oversight and Reform Committee at 10 AM EST, one day after a closed-door hearing with the Senate Intelligence committee. On Thursday, he’ll testify in another private session with the House Intelligence Committee. [CSPAN]
• Read Cohen’s opening statement here [NYT]

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) appeared to — as per former ethics czar Walter Shaub — warn or tamper with Cohen around the time of his hearing. Gaetz apologized and deleted his tweet about six hours later.

At around the same time, former secretary of state Madeline Albright is scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, giving an assessment of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy.

ON THE GOLAN — Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AK) introduced a resolution recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights on Tuesday. An identical proposal was filed in the House by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI).

The bill changes long-standing U.S. policy that any decision on control over the Golan Heights would occur in a peace deal between Israel and Syria. The Republican Senators, instead, say that Israeli control of the area is in the national security interest of the U.S. and is a punishment to Syrian President Bashar al Assad for war crimes in that country. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) signed on as co-sponsors. The House version has at least 13 Republican co-sponsors.[JewishInsider]

— At the moment, this bill is only being co-sponsored by Republican members although Democratic members have previously told Jewish Insider that they support recognition.

HAPPENING TONIGHT — Former UN Ambassador to the U.S. Nikki Haley will be the guest of honor at a dinner with about 20 of Manhattan’s top GOP donors. The dinner will be the first of a series being organized by Paul Singer to spotlight key surrogates for the congressional races of 2020.” [Axios]

AT THE UN — Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon welcomed the nomination of Kelly Craft to replace Nikki Haley at the United Nations on Tuesday. “With her previous experience as part of the US delegation to the 61st General Assembly, Craft is no stranger to the United Nations,” Danon told Jewish Insider. “I have no doubt she will continue the strong positions Ambassador Nikki Haley took and look forward to working with her to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he added. [JewishInsider]

KAFE KNESSET — Bibi Cuts Moscow Trip Short; Dershowitz Enters the Fray — by Neri Zilber: Netanyahu will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later today for the first official summit between the two since last September’s downing (by Syrian air defenses) of a Russian military jet — an act the Kremlin blamed on Israel. On the agenda: Iran’s entrenchment in Syria. Yet Bibi cut his Moscow trip short — he’ll be flying back this evening, instead of tomorrow — amid growing speculation that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will issue his decision on the PM’s three corruption cases imminently, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. For his legal and public defense, Netanyahu conscripted Prof. Alan Dershowitz, who issued an open letter to Mandelblit arguing that charging the PM for crimes related to his dealings with the media could “endanger democracy and freedom of the press.” Netanyahu released a video last night quoting extensively from Dershowitz’s letter and called for the AG to “seriously reconsider” pursuing charges. Read today’s entire Kafe Knesset newsletter by subscribing here [KafeKnesset]

2020 WATCH — Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday at the University of Delaware that after several meetings with his family, “there’s a consensus” that they want him to run for president… Bernie Sanders’ media strategists split from his 2020 presidential campaign… Hillary Clinton is not a candidate. She looms over 2020 anyway.

** Good Wednesday Morning! Enjoying the Daily Kickoff? Please share us with your friends & tell them to sign up at [JI]. Have a tip, scoop, or op-ed? We’d love to hear from you. Anything from hard news and punditry to the lighter stuff, including event coverage, job transitions, or even special birthdays, is much appreciated. Email Editor@JewishInsider.com **

BUSINESS BRIEFS: Insight Venture Partners Acquires Israeli Fund’s Portfolio [WSJ]
• Equity investing will have harder time than debt investing, says hedge fund manager Marc Lasry [CNBC]
• YieldStreet Raises $62M To Bring Alternative Investing To The Masses [Fobes]
• Wynn Resorts to Pay $20 Million Fine Related to Sexual Misconduct Investigation [WSJ]
• Boeing nominates former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to its board of directors [CNBC]
• Israeli Accelerator theDock Partners with U.S. Tank Barge Operator Kirby Corp [Calcalist]

STARTUP NATION — Israeli Startups Shine In The $92 Billion Cybersecurity Market — by Gil Press: “In 2018, Israeli startups received $1.19 billion or almost 20% of global VC investments in cybersecurity, up 47% from the previous year, according to a new report from Start-Up Nation Central. Another report, published by Strategic Cyber Ventures, shows that Israel has surpassed China last year as the hottest spot for VC investments in cybersecurity companies outside of the U.S.” [Forbes]

TALK OF OUR NATION — Becoming a dad after death: Is preserving a Jewish bloodline worth creating a child who will never know her father? — by Shira Rubin: “Over the past two decades, posthumous reproduction has occurred throughout the world in modest but growing numbers… In Israel, IVF is one of the rare issues supported by nearly all sectors, regardless of religion or sexuality, in an infamously divided society. ‘There’s a very strong urge to have children here,’ said Julia Pozniansky… ‘There’s tradition, family, 2,000 years of persecution in which we’ve needed to rise from the ashes to create life.’ Like many Jewish Israelis, Pozniansky sees reproduction as a way to replenish the numbers of the Jewish people, in the wake of the Holocaust and millennia of Jewish suffering.” [Undark]

SPOTLIGHT — Daniel Barenboim Seemed Untouchable. Now He’s Accused of Bullying — by Christian Marquardt: “Mr. Barenboim, 76, has long been considered untouchable in Berlin, where he is music director of the Staatsoper — the city’s premier opera house — and principal conductor for life of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle… But cracks have begun to emerge in the conductor’s image as Mr. Barenboim has been accused of bullying and humiliating members of the Staatskapelle… Mr. Barenboim dismissed the accusations. ‘I was born in Argentina, so there’s a bit of Latin blood in my body, and I get upset now and then,’ he told RBB, a German broadcaster.”[NYTimes]

ACROSS THE SEA — Drones launched to help preserve Europe’s Jewish cemeteries: “A private organization is expanding its work preserving old Jewish cemeteries in Europe by employing aerial drones to map burial sites in countries where the Holocaust decimated local Jewish populations. The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative said Tuesday that teams plan to survey 1,500 Jewish cemeteries in Slovakia, Greece, Moldova, Lithuania and Ukraine this year.” [AP]

DEEP DIVE — The real story of the Green Book, the guide that changed how black people traveled in America — by P.R. Lockhart: “Filmmaker Yoruba Richen, whose new documentary The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, premiered on the Smithsonian Channel on February 25, talks about the history of the Green Book, how the book was used to build community among African Americans during a time of formal and informal segregation… ‘The Green Book was first published in 1936 by Victor Green. He was a postal worker, and he had a Jewish friend who had a book that listed places in the Catskills where Jewish people could go to. And Green says, “This would be great for black people — we need a book like this.'” [Vox]

TALK OF THE TOWN — How Fairfax Became the Mecca of Streetwear: An Oral History — by Karizza Sanchez: “This is the story of how a subculture transformed an unassuming Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles into the epicenter of streetwear, and then how that mecca became mainstream. This is also the story of the people who built Fairfax into a streetwear destination and the obstacles they faced, the chaotic lineups, the unforgettable celebrity sightings, and the lasting legacy of the block.”[Complex]

SCENE LAST NIGHT IN NYC — The Met Council honored Jeffrey Feil, a New York-based real estate developer, at its inaugural real estate cocktail reception held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan. [Pic]

BIRTHDAYS: Performance artist and film-maker, Eleanor Antin turns 84… Writer and illustrator of children’s books, Uri Shulevitz turns 84… William Drykos turns 80… Investor and philanthropist, Chair of Julliard, Vice Chair of Lincoln Center and on the Board of the Metropolitan Opera, Bruce Kovnerturns 74… Judith Meyer turns 74… Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Alan Harvey Guth turns 72… Grand “Pa” of Dov, Joe and Rael et al., Michael Gervis turns 72… Senior Rabbi of the West London Synagogue, a member of the British House of Lords, Baroness Julia Neuberger turns 69… Film and television actor, he starred as FBI Agent Stan Beeman on the FX series “The Americans” (2013-2018), Noah Emmerich turns 54… Jewish leader involved with the UJA of New York, Suzy Appelbaum turns 57… VP of regional operations and advancement at the Anti-Defamation League, David S. Waren turns 56… Founder of Spanx, she is also a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks, Sara Blakelyturns 48… Senior Washington editor for NBC News, Rebecca Sinderbrandturns 42… Singer-songwriter, composer and prayer leader, creative director at Romemu and director of engagement at Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal,Sam Benjamin “Shir Yaakov” Feinstein-Feit turns 41… Member of the Knesset since 2015 for the Jewish Home party, Bezalel Smotrich turns 39… SVP of baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, Chaim David Bloomturns 36… Massachusetts State Senator since 2015 and former Obama White House aide where he was one of the originators of the White House Seder, Eric P. Lesser turns 34… Alana Berkowitz… Lenore Wax…</s>JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's alliance with an ultranationalist political party has raised significant concerns among U.S. Jews, a top leader in the Jewish American community said Sunday.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the alliance is "very disturbing" to many American Jews. He said there are also concerns that it will provide new ammunition for Israel's critics.

Netanyahu last week welcomed a merger that folded the "Jewish Power" party into the larger "Jewish Home" for April elections. As part of their deal, Netanyahu gave the merged party a seat on his Likud Party's list of candidates and guaranteed them two Cabinet positions if he wins.

"Jewish Power" members see themselves as the ideological heirs of the banned Kach movement, which was outlawed by Israel and the U.S. because of its racist views.

The deal has been widely criticized in Israel, and even strong supporters of Israel in the U.S. have spoken out against it. The American Jewish Committee, a major pro-Israel advocacy group, and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC both called Jewish Power "reprehensible."

"For those who follow this, there's a lot of concern," Hoenlein said in an interview.

"What we have to deal with is how it is perceived and understood in the United States," Hoenlein said. "And we have to be very careful because it feeds certain tendencies that are very concerning to us."

Hoenlein, who is visiting Israel, said he has not discussed the matter with Netanyahu and did not want to judge him. "He obviously has some political calculation that drove him to it, but politics can't dictate everything. You have to take into consideration all of the ramifications and all of the concerns," Hoenlein said.

Hoenlein said, however, that the "ultimate decision" will be made by the Israeli public, which he said rejects extremism.

Netanyahu on Saturday lashed out at his domestic critics on Saturday, claiming they have sought alliances with extremist Arab parties and accusing them of hypocrisy.</s>WASHINGTON (JTA) — The umbrella body for Jewish public policy groups has directly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to denounce a far-right political party that he invited into a marriage of convenience ahead of April elections.

A letter sent Tuesday by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs is unusual in that it directly addresses Netanyahu on the topic of the Otzma Yehudit party which has roots in the racist anti-Arab views of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. The letter, however, carefully avoids chiding him for courting the party.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has obtained a copy of the private letter.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

“We are unwavering in our support for the nation-state of the Jewish people and the country’s quest for peace and security,” the letter says. “We are dismayed, however, by reports that a racist party was brought into the election process.”

The passive voice is notable: It is Netanyahu who brought Jewish Power into the process. Earlier this month he arranged for a party to the right of his own Likud to jointly run with Otzma Yehudit in the elections and thereby strengthen their chances of success.

“We urge you to speak out against Otzma Yehudit’s racism in no uncertain terms,” the JCPA letter concludes.

Directly addressing Netanyahu is nonetheless significant for a centrist Jewish group that operates through a consensus-building system soliciting Jewish voices from right to left.

Several mainstream centrist US Jewish groups have denounced Otzma Yehudit in recent days, but without mentioning Netanyahu.

Among those groups condemning Otzma Yehudit are the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is rare for AIPAC to weigh in on Israeli politics. Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington and address the lobby at its annual conference next month.

Netanyahu has defended working with Otzma Yehudit by accusing critics of hypocrisy for not criticizing the Labor Party for using non-Zionist parties to maintain power in the mid-1990s.</s>Generations of family pictures inspired scholar Pamela Nadell to take up the monumental challenge of writing a history of American Jewish women.

Nadell, a professor of gender and American Jewish history at American University, in Washington, DC, saw how necklines lowered, sleeves shortened and then disappeared; Edwardian skirts receded into the short athletic shorts of modern girlhood. The pictures, she says, “pulled me back” to think about the ways in which the women of her family shaped and were shaped by their own historical surroundings.

The product of this introspection is “America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today,” coming out March 5. It is a book that is both personal and sweeping, intimate and general as it attempts to show the history of Jewish women in the United States in a concise and accessible volume.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Nadell eschews a historical narrative that would privilege events over experiences, focusing as often on domestic and community spaces as on landmark events. Prominent figures, male and female alike, sometimes did not make the cut in an effort to offer a women-centered and concise text.

In an era in which academic and so-called “crossover” literature tends to the monumental, Nadell’s drive to write a book that is accessible not just in its style but its length posed a unique challenge. Some of the usual cast of characters — the Rebecca Gratzes, Bella Abzugs, Emma Lazaruses and Gloria Steinems — walk across Nadell’s stage. But so too do women whose lives were largely lived out of the historical gaze.

“I was aspiring to try to describe the lives of women — I don’t like to use the word ‘ordinary’ — there were American Jewish women who lived lives on smaller canvasses and their stories were known in their families, their communities and their neighborhood,” Nadell explains.

“I wanted this story to balance in telling about both, [and] that really guided whom I decided to highlight. This was one of the things that was a critical decision in deciding how do you take a very big subject,” she says.

Applying the tools of women’s history to four centuries of American Judaism, this approach leads “America’s Jewish Women” to offer granular, occasionally intimate, views of lives easily imagined within its readers’ families.

The book introduces readers to Pearl Nadel, a cheerleader who met saxophone player Jules Sachs, becoming engaged in the run-up to Pearl Harbor. When war was declared, Sachs enlisted in the Army Air Corps (the book calls it the Air Force) and he and Nadel quickly got married.

The details are brief but thorough: how the bride’s family got into the car and hurriedly arranged a wedding, dress and all. In two brief paragraphs, Nadell — Pearl’s niece — goes through years of Pearl’s life on base until the morning in 1944 when the war bride became one of over 100,000 American war widows in World War II.

“I had heard that story about her becoming a war widow my entire life,” says Nadell. “Not long before my father died, I sat down with him over breakfast and he told me the story with all those details. I thought it was a powerful story and it’s really close to my heart.”

The candid and intimate moments are intentional. “On a personal level, people are going to see something that’s going to resonate. I’m hoping that people will find a deep personal connection,” she explains.

At the same time, she hopes readers see a larger picture.

“On the other hand, as a historian, I want people to love history and I think that if we don’t understand our past we won’t understand our present,” she says.

Nadell conceived of the project as filling a gap in that understanding. When she was thinking about a topic for a new book, a friend sent Nadell to local bookstores, telling her to “go through Judaica, history and women’s studies sections and see what is on the shelves.”

“When I went through the sections, what jumped out is that history is almost all politics, great men and war. In Judaica, it was about understanding Judaism and a lot on kabbala, and in women’s studies there was almost no women’s histories — more sociology and psychology.”

Nadell’s years of experience in academia come together in this project.

“I’m sitting on more than a quarter century of work in women’s history and American Jewish history. I had this huge corpus sitting under me. Joining these streams of scholarship is what makes this book unique,” she says.

Writing the history of Jewish women in America may seem like a daunting task. Defining the parameters of America, beginning with a colonial migration from Recife to New Amsterdam, and extending into the global age is a challenge within itself, but the challenge is compounded by the diverse identities and stories of Nadell’s dozens of subjects.

In her research, Nadell demonstrates striking consistencies and familiar experiences across the centuries.

In the closing years of the 18th century, Rebecca Samuel settled in Petersburg, Virginia, knowing that the Jewish population of the town outside of Richmond is tiny. After a while, she and her husband decide that the lack of Jewish life was unsustainable and they move elsewhere in search of better kosher food options and a more observant community.

Early American Jewish women complained in different language of an 18th century “shidduch crisis” in which the tiny populations of unmarried Jews spread up and down the Eastern Seaboard meant that there were few non-relatives, if any, who would make suitable partners.

A 19th century Jewish matron, left out of church-based ladies’ society decided that her family can attend church but pray to the Jewish God — only to convert on her deathbed to Christianity; turn-of-the-century sixth-grader Kate Simon struggled to get the math grades to enter an accelerated junior high school that would lead her to college; an on-air interviewer asked two-time Hadassah president Rose Halperin in 1957, who coordinated a massive organization, logistical and fundraising network, “How much time do you spend taking care of your husband?”

“On the one hand there are tremendous continuities — women are wives, grandmothers, daughters and widows. In those different roles, they’re embedded in communities, and work and Jewishness affects most of their lives, but the meaning of that has changed over time,” Nadell explains. “What it meant to be a wife and a mother in colonial America is very different from what it means today.”

Discussing her decision to write a book that appeals to a wider audience than the tight circle of academics frequently exposed to gender histories, Nadell says, “People are telling me that as they read it they start to think about their own families.”

“America’s Jewish Women” may drop academic crumbs — here a reference to gender history in use of terms like “separate spheres,” there a groundbreaking application of the concept of republican motherhood to Jewish women in the Federal Period — but Nadell envisioned her challenge as writing a broad and sweeping history in a way that was academically rigorous but appealed to a broader audience.

Earlier versions, she says, were much longer and contained many more footnotes.

“The decision was if I was going to write a book for academics and a small audience or was I going to write for a broader audience,” Nadell acknowledges. “I always wanted to write a big book. There’s something very exciting about using scholarship and bringing it to a larger audience.”

Nadell’s book comes out weeks after prominent US analyst Max Boot decried the absence of historians from the public debate, but Nadell’s examination of Jewish women’s history is part of an attempt to engage with an audience outside of college seminars.

“Historians used to write for much wider audiences, but [over time] much of their work got embedded deeply in the academy,” she says.

Nadell hopes that her book will help readers think about the history of American Jewish women in new depth. As Nadell says in the book, the longue durée history “tells us a great deal about how the American Jewish community has changed – most of these women were married but today, a large chunk of American Jewish women have chosen not to marry and have made different choices in their lives.

“Another aspect is the complexity – I have tried to show the diversity of American Jewish women in the past as well as today. There are many who center their lives around Judaism. There are Jewish women for whom Jewishness has inflected their lives; it wasn’t an all-encompassing identity but it influenced their lives. But there are also some for whom being Jewish wasn’t consequential or at least they didn’t see it as consequential,” she writes.

Nadell is also interested in the contemporary context of struggles with anti-Semitism, a topic to which she begins to ascribe prominence in the mid-19th century.

“It seems to me that this is a moment in which we need to be talking not just about what’s happening now but how this moment is grounded in the past,” she asserts.

“America’s Jewish Women,” carefully footnoted and indexed, is designed to do just that. Rather than explaining American Jewish history and showing how women intersected it, it shows how American Jewish women worked both within and against the parameters set by their respective societies and circles of community to find a place for themselves amid constantly changing conditions.</s>Members of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party, which is poised to enter the next Knesset, have allegedly received funding through a shadowy network of American organizations, including a Jewish body that the United States has blacklisted as a terror group, a report said Monday.

The investigation by Yedioth Ahronoth alleged that leaders of the party — Michael Ben Ari, Bentzi Gopstein, Itamar Ben Gvir and others — maintain a series of organizations presenting themselves as charities with the goal of funding their activities.

One of them is “Yeshivat HaRaayon HaYehudi” (the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea), founded in Israel by far-right extremist Meir Kahane in 1987 to disseminate his views. The yeshiva is viewed by the US State Department as part of Kahane’s outlawed Kach movement and thus designated a terror organization.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Otzma Yehudit is the spiritual successor to Kach, which was barred from the Knesset under a Basic Law outlawing incitement to violence and later banned entirely in Israel.

Ben Ari, who is ranked number 5 on the merged Knesset slate with Jewish Home, is among the yeshiva’s founders and served on its audit committee as of June 2018, the report said, citing protocols and legal documents.

Between 2002 and 2005, the institution reported granting scholarships totaling NIS 74,000 ($20,500) to Gopstein, head of the extremist anti-assimilation group Lehava.

The report said Yeshivat HaRaayon HaYehudi is funded by US donors through various entities, including “Charity of Light” and “Chemla” — US branches of Israeli organizations once led by prominent Kahanist Levy Hazan, who was convicted and jailed for his part in a 1984 shooting attack on a Palestinian bus near Ramallah in which six people were injured.

Chemla’s stated intent is to assist teens from troubled homes, but also focuses on female teens who are “in danger of assimilation.” It has received hundreds of thousands of shekels in support from the Welfare Ministry. It has also employed Gopstein.

“Charity of Light” — a loose translation of “Hasdei Meir,” an Israeli NGO named after Meir Kahane — was listed as a charity in New Jersey in 2001. One of Hasdei Meir’s stated intents is to support the “hilltop residents” — code for a band of far-right activist West Bank settlers, mostly young. It has previously been linked in reports to so-called “price tag” attacks against Arab property in retaliation for moves by the government perceived as hostile to the settler movement, such as the demolition of illegally built West Bank settlement homes.

Ben Ari called the report a “collection of fabrications that were published and refuted years ago. But when the goal is to topple the right-wing leadership, journalistic ethics get trampled.”

Gopstein said the allegations were “lies with the goal of toppling the right-wing government and preventing Otzma Yehudit from entering the next Knesset… It won’t help. I will continue my legal fight against assimilation in the Holy Land.”

The story was published exactly 25 years after American-born doctor and Kach member Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron on February 25, 1994, which prompted Israeli and US authorities to blacklist Kahane’s Kach party as a terror group.

The national religious Jewish Home party voted overwhelmingly last week to approve a merger with Otzma Yehudit. The merger deal was facilitated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to strengthen a future Likud-led coalition following the April 9 election and has since been widely condemned, including by Israeli right-wing politicians, as well as mainstream US Jewish organizations.

Related op-ed by ToI editor David Horovitz: Netanyahu’s despicable push to bring racists into Israel’s political mainstream

American-born Kahane founded the militant Jewish Defense League in the US, and espoused the immediate annexation of disputed territories and the expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank until his assassination in 1990.

Ben Ari has called Kahane his rabbi and teacher. Other Otzma Yehudit leaders include former Kahane aide Baruch Marzel, a resident of Hebron who holds a party every year at the grave of Goldstein; Gopstein, a rabbi who runs Lehava, a racist group that protests marriages between Jews and non-Jews; and Ben Gvir, an attorney who defends right-wing activists accused of Jewish terrorism.

Established in 2012 as Otzma Leyisrael by Ben Ari and Aryeh Eldad, many of the views espoused by Otzma Yehudit are akin to those backed by some of the Knesset’s most hardline MKs, including annexation of the entire West Bank, unrestricted settlement construction, opposition to a Palestinian state, punitive military operations in response to terror attacks and further emphasis on Israel’s Jewish character in the education, social, and judicial systems.

However, the ultra-nationalist party adds to those positions a host of more overtly racist ones.

It supports encouraging emigration of non-Jews from Israel and expelling Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who refuse to declare loyalty to Israel and accept diminished status in an expanded Jewish state whose sovereignty extends throughout the West Bank.

The party also calls for a termination of the fragile status quo on the Temple Mount, which Israel has maintained since capturing and annexing the site in 1967, under which Muslims can pray at the disputed holy site and Jews cannot.</s>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The Latest on the dispute between Poland and Israel (all times local):

The American Jewish Committee says it hopes years of reconciliation work between Poland and Israel will not be undone by a new dispute over the Holocaust.

American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris said Monday that “competing historical narratives” had strained the two countries’ relations before.

Harris says such disputes usually result from “varying assessments of the magnitude of anti-Semitism in Poland, especially before and during World War II.”

But he said it was important for public officials in Israel and Poland to choose their words carefully and not to let disagreements “escalate out of control.”

Noting that Poland was a center of Jewish life for centuries, Harris said: “1,000 years of Jewish presence on Polish soil cannot be reduced to a single headline or sound bite.”

Poland pulled out of a meeting in Israel on Monday after the acting Israeli foreign minister said “Poles collaborated with the Nazis” and quoted a former Israeli prime minister who commented 30 years ago that Poles “sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

Jewish leaders in Poland say they are offended Israel’s acting foreign minister said Poles “sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

The leaders issued a statement Monday saying that accusing all Poles of anti-Semitism slighted thousands of Poles honored by Israel’s Holocaust memorial center, Yad Vashem, for helping Jews during the Holocaust.

The comment on Sunday by the Israeli minister, Israel Katz, led to the scuttling of a meeting of central European leaders in Israel this week.

Katz quoted a former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, in making his remark alleging all Poles are prone to anti-Semitism.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, and Union of Jewish Religious Communities head Monika Krawczyk said Shamir’s words “were unjust already when they were first said, in 1989.”

The two continued that the words Katz repeated “are even more unjust today, 30 years later, when so much has been done on both sides for a mutual understanding of our very difficult, but shared history.”

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis says a planned summit meeting in Israel with his counterparts from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia has been canceled over a bitter new Holocaust spat between Poland and Israel.

Babis, who is leaving for Israel later Monday, told reporters: “No V4 meeting in Israel is going to happen.”

The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia form an informal group known as the Visegrad group, or V4. The prime ministers regularly invite counterparts from other countries for those summits.

Babis says only bilateral meetings are planned in Israel. The prime ministers of Slovakia and Hungary are already in Israel.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon confirmed the cancellation of the summit.

“There will be no full V4 meeting (it requires the presence of all four). Three PMs are arriving and will hold meetings with PM,” he said in a statement.

Babis says a V4 summit might take place in the second half of the year when the Czech Republic holds the V4 presidency.

Poland’s prime minister says his country is not sending a delegation to a meeting in Jerusalem after the acting Israeli foreign minister said that Poles “collaborated with the Nazis” and “sucked anti-Semitism from their mothers’ milk.”

The developments mark a new low in a bitter conflict over how to remember and characterize Polish actions toward Jews during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the remarks by acting foreign minister Israel Katz “unacceptable” and “racist.”

Morawiecki had already announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the meeting in Israel on Monday and Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leaders of four central European nations. That had followed a comment by Netanyahu last week about Polish cooperation with the Nazis.

A government official says Poland is considering pulling out altogether from a visit to Israel over a comment made by the acting Israeli foreign minister, the latest in a bitter new Holocaust spat between the two nations.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki already pulled out of the meeting Monday and Tuesday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by leaders from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz was tapped to go in his place.

On Monday, Michal Dworczyk, the head Morawiecki’s office, said Czaputowicz’s attendance is now in doubt over comments made by Israel Katz, the acting foreign minister.

Katz said Sunday that Poles “sucked anti-Semitism from their mothers’ milk,” citing something once said by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, whose father was murdered by Poles.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.</s>Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to enter an electoral pact with a party of ultranationalist extremists has drawn rare criticism from an influential pro-Israel group in the US.

In a rare criticism, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which has generally given unflinching support to the Israeli leader during his 13 years in power, called the Jewish Power party “racist and reprehensible”.

Aipac, which receives Netanyahu as a celebrity, with adoring crowds at conferences, joined a chorus of condemnation worldwide from Jewish and Zionist groups shocked by the agreement with the far-right party.

Netanyahu helped orchestrate the merger last week of Jewish Power with another ultranationalist ally, Jewish Home, that would give him a better chance of forming a majority government in an election on 9 April.

Aipac retweeted a statement by the American Jewish Committee, another major pro-Israel advocacy group. Although not mentioning Netanyahu by name, it warned that Jewish Power might conceivably enter government under the new deal.

“The views of Otzma Yehudit are reprehensible,” it said, using the group’s Hebrew name. “They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel.” It added that it would be up to Israel’s elections commission to decide if the party could run.

A former long-time Aipac official, David Kreizelman, said the group “very rarely” comments on domestic Israeli politics. “It’s pretty major. It’s a very strong statement,” he said.

Jewish Power’s leaders are ideological successors to Meir Kahane, a US-born rabbi who served one term in parliament 1984. His Kach movement was later banned by Israel and the US under anti-terrorism laws.

He advocated for a Jewish theocracy, the expulsion of millions of Palestinians and a ban on sex and marriage between Jews and Arabs.

After moving to the US and setting up the militant Jewish Defense League, he was imprisoned for bombmaking and later assassinated in 1990 by an Egyptian-born American gunman. The FBI deems the Jewish Defense League a “rightwing terrorist group” after two members attempted to bomb a California mosque.

Key Israeli figures in Jewish Power include Baruch Marzel, who has said homosexuality is “a disease of choice”, and Benzi Gopstein, the leader of a pro-segregation group that fights against Jews marrying non-Jews.

Another, Itamar Ben Gvir, an attorney who defends Israeli settlers implicated in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, was convicted in 2007 for inciting racism after holding signs at a protest reading: “Expel the Arab enemy.”

In a recent interview, he said Arabs who are “loyal to the state” are welcome. “But those who are not must be expelled.”

A recent poll suggested the new alliance might receive as many as five seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu has defended his merger as a way to form a rightwing coalition in April and accused his critics of “hypocrisy and double standards”.

As well as more progressive Zionist groups, who frequently attack Netanyahu, the deal received criticism from more conservative pro-Israel organisations.

The Zionist Federation of Australia said it did not typically comment on the internal political machinations of Israel but added: “Electoral gains should never justify sacrificing the very values underpinning the Jewish atate that we, as Diaspora Jewry, are proud to support.”

Under Israel’s political system, which strongly favours multi-party coalition governments, the merger will guarantee Netanyahu allies in exchange for two cabinet positions if he wins.

Running for a fifth term, the 69-year-old leader has seen a growing threat from former army chief, Benny Gantz, whose chances of defeating Israel’s second-longest serving premier have risen after he allied with centrist parties.

Gantz said the prime minister was damaging “our important relationship with US Jews”.

“The rare reaction by Aipac, an organisation that does not usually touch on internal Israeli politics, proves that Benjamin Netanyahu has once again crossed ethical red lines just to keep his seat while causing serious harm to Israel’s image,” he tweeted.

An analysis in the right-leaning Jerusalem Post newspaper, however, said the crisis between Israel and Aipac was being overplayed. “The next time [Aipac] goes to meet a senator or congressman to lobby for additional funding for Israeli missile-defense projects, it might be asked about Otzma. It needed to take a moral stand now,” it read.

It noted that despite the criticism, Aipac announced two days later that it was honoured Netanyahu would address its annual meeting in Washington next month.

The piece went on to say: “More concerning was that Netanyahu showed the world that almost nothing is off-limits in achieving the goal of remaining in power.”
A Jewish Israeli teen is convicted of membership of a terror organisation, arson, and racially aggravated assault. He is the second Jewish person convicted of terror group membership ever in Israel in connection to crimes against Palestinians. His conviction was announced today, but occurred last week in secrecy.