The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it has settled claims with a company that employed Alan Gross, the contractor freed last week after five years in a Cuban jail as part of a major shift in U.S.-Cuba relations. USAID finalized the settlement with Development Alternatives, Inc (DAI) on Monday night for $3.2 million,…
Obama is caricatured as Che Guevara, an iconic symbol of Cuba’s revolution, on the cover of Brazilian magazine Veja / Getty Images As a life-long Democrat, I was deeply disturbed by the Obama Administration’s decision to act unilaterally on the Cuban question. The policy option may have been a valid one, but the process invoked…
(JTA) — For many Cuban Jews – the majority of whom now live in the United States – it has been a bittersweet week. Like countless Jews around the world, they cheered the release of Alan Gross, the American Jewish telecommunications contractor who had been held in a Cuban prison for the last five years. But…
On December 17, President Obama announced a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations and the release of Alan Gross, an American-Jewish contractor who had been held in a Cuban jail for five years. Here’s what a few Cuban-American Jews make of the announcement, both for themselves and for Cuban Jews in general. Rosa Perelmuter What took place…
By just before 8 o’clock last night, my feet really began to hurt. I was standing at attention, waiting for the President and his wife, wedged between four bearded Haredi men, a woman with very bare shoulders, and several people way taller than me who had their iPhone cameras at the ready and looked as…
President Barack Obama trumpeted the release of Alan Gross at the annual White House Hanukkah party. The president said Gross had his strong family and the entire Jewish community to thank for his release after five hears in captivity in Cuba. “He never gave up and we never gave up,” Obama told guests at the…
Former U.S. Secretary of State and potential presidential contender Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday she supported President Barack Obama’s move to establish diplomatic ties with Cuba after more than 50 years of hostile relations. “Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime’s grip on power,” Clinton said in a…
(JTA) — Alan Gross was imprisoned while trying to connect Cuba’s isolated Jewish community to the wider world. The deal that got him released five years later may do just that and much more. Gross’ flight home to suburban Washington on Wednesday with his wife, Judy, was part of a historic deal that overturns over five…
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