The dozen or so Israelis sitting around a conference table at a Jewish community center in Tenafly, New Jersey, on a recent Wednesday night didn’t look like the leading edge of a new Israeli government-linked crowdsourced online propaganda campaign. Tapping on laptops, the group of high school students and adult mentors completed social media “missions”…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A federal appeals court has ruled that Jewish Democrats may countersue casino magnate Sheldon Adelson now that lower courts have dismissed his libel lawsuit against them. Adelson had sued the National Jewish Democratic Council in 2012 over an online petition alleging the Republican donor allowed prostitution at his casino in Macau. The…
On Monday, a columnist for Sheldon Adelson’s free daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, wrote an opinion piece comparing American Reform Jews demanding gender equality at the Western Wall to celebrating a dog’s bar mitzvah. In an article called “No Underdog,” Galit Distal Atbaryan wrote, “If I saw the Friedman family in Illinois celebrating their dog’s bar…
Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson broke publicly with Steve Bannon on Monday after missing a major gala event where Bannon was set to introduce the influential billionaire, Politico reported. The Adelsons skipped the Zionist Organization of America gala, where Bannon declared himself a “Christian Zionist” and was celebrated along with fellow former White House staffer Sebastian…
“What’s in it for you?” the 30-second video advertisement asks as the screen fills with images of everyday Americans: a farmer, factory workers, a young African-American woman. “The Republican tax cut saves middle-class families more than $1,200 a year,” the ad states, as faces continue to flash on the screen: a woman clocking in as…
Birthright Israel’s education department recently announced that all providers of its signature 10-day trip to Israel for young Jews must stop including meetings with Israeli Arabs in their programming. The move has hit a nerve. It has brought out the raw feelings surrounding the funders of the program, those who safeguard the educational content and…
On stage at the national conference of the Israeli-American Council, Israel’s hawkish deputy minister of foreign affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, seemed surprised, and then annoyed, as the crowd turned against her. Hotovely had likely expected to find a friendly audience among the Israeli-Americans. Their organization’s leading donor, Sheldon Adelson, is America’s best-known pro-Israel hawk. But within…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Not long ago Yahel Epel, a volunteer with the Israeli American Council, fulfilled her assigned mission: She assembled 200 Jews, half of them Israeli American, in a room in Denver on a Friday evening for a potluck dinner and a Shishi Yisraeli program. Shishi Yisraeli, a program launched by IAC that means…
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