World News

JTA

Marcy Oster – JTA

Juan Guaidó, recognised by 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim president, says he is working to “renew ties” with Israel.

Guaidó also told a reporter from the Israeli daily Israel Hayom that he is “confident” that Israel will help his country by sending humanitarian aid, since Venezuela has sunk into poverty under socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaidó , the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, declared himself the country’s interim president on 23 January, and called on Maduro to order new elections, saying that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was fraudulent. The country’s military remains loyal to Maduro, however.

“I am very happy to announce that the process of stabilising relations with Israel is in full swing,” Guaidó said. “It is very important for us. We will renew ties, later we will announce the appointment of an ambassador to Israel, and we really hope an ambassador from Israel will come to us.”

Guaidó said that siting the country’s embassy in Jerusalem, where it was located before it closed, “is one of the subjects we are talking about. I will declare the resumption of ties and the site of the embassy at the proper time.”

Venezuelan Jews in Israel have been active in efforts to enlist support for Guaidó, according to the report.

The late President Hugo Chavez recalled his ambassador from Tel Aviv in 2006 over the war with Lebanon. Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Israel over its 2009 military operation in Gaza.

About 6 000 Jews live in Venezuela, down from about 20 000 more than three decades ago. Most left the country for places such as the United States, Canada, and Israel after facing anti-Semitism and economic turndown under Chavez and Maduro.

Anti-Semitic acts in France rose 74% in 2018

Marcy Oster – JTA

Anti-Semitic acts in France rose 74% last year.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Monday night that the total reported acts of anti-Semitism was 541 in 2018, up from 311 in 2017, according to local reports.

The latest incident occurred on Monday, when a tree planted in the Paris suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-du-Bois in memory of Ilan Halimi was chopped down. Halimi was a young man who was kidnapped and tortured in 2006 because a gang thought that his Jewish family had a lot of money to pay ransom.

The incident followed a number of swastikas and anti-Semitic epithets being painted around the city in recent days, including on a local bagel shop.

In Sainte-Genevieve-du-Bois near the memorial to Halimi, Castaner said that “anti-Semitism is spreading like poison”, and that the government would fight it.

He called anti-Semitism “an attack against hope”.

Mississippi bans boycott of Israel

Marcy Oster – JTA

The Mississippi House of Representatives passed a bill that would prevent the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.

Following a vote of 88-10 last week in the lower house of the state legislature, the measure now moves to the senate.

It prevents the state retirement system, treasury, and any state government entity from investing in a company that boycotts Israel. The bill calls on the state to develop the list of boycotting companies.

Existing investments as of 1 July 2020 would have to be sold within 120 days after the list is published, though exceptions can be made for investments that the state determines are necessary.

At least 27 states have legislation banning boycotts of Israel, though some are facing legal challenges.

Trump calls on Ilhan Omar to resign

Ron Kampeas – JTA

President Donald Trump has called on Republican Ilhan Omar to resign from Congress for showing anti-Semitism.

“It’s terrible what she said, and I think she should either resign from Congress, or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What she said is so deep-seated in her heart, that her lame apology, and that’s what it was, it was lame and she didn’t mean a word of it, was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress.”

Omar, in her first term in Congress, said on Twitter on Sunday that the American Public Affairs Committee paid legislators to be pro-Israel. After condemnation from Republicans and Democrats, including the Democratic leadership in the United States House of Representatives, she said she “unequivocally” apologised after speaking with “Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes”.

Omar recently apologised for a 2012 tweet in which she accused Israel of “hypnotising” the world, acknowledging that she had unwittingly echoed anti-Semitic themes.

Republicans are pressuring the House Democratic leadership to remove her from the influential Foreign Affairs Committee, noting that Republicans removed Republican Steve King from committees after he questioned why it was taboo to embrace white supremacy.

King also apologised, but Trump did not call for his resignation. King was an early backer of Trump’s candidacy.

Critics of the president noted that he had not apologised for various comments they describe as bigoted. In the past, he has drawn fire for calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, for saying a judge could not be impartial because of his Hispanic ethnicity, and, as recently as Saturday, mocking Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Native American ancestry by seeming to invoke the Trail of Tears.

“Mr President, Congresswoman @IlhanMN apologized for using an anti-Semitic trope and demonstrated leadership,” Chelsea Clinton, whose mother, Hillary, lost to Trump in the 2016 election, said on Twitter. Chelsea was among the first Democrats to call on Omar to apologise.

“When have you ever apologized for your embrace of white nationalism, and your exploitation and amplification of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, racist, xenophobic, anti-LGBTQ hate?” Clinton asked Trump.