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July 14, 2019 at 3:05 pm
President Trump’s comments Sunday about “Progressive Democratic Congresswomen” prompted a furious response from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted at Mr. Trump, “you can’t conceive of an America that includes us.”
“Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, said. “On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either. You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”
She added, “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I r...
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July 14, 2019 at 12:31 pm
Egyptian security officials have held talks with Palestinian Authority officials and Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip in recent days in part to prevent a new flare-up of tensions between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, PA officials said Sunday.
The Egyptian delegation led by deputy intelligence chief Ayman Badie was in the Gaza Strip on Friday and Saturday and Judea and Samaria on Saturday,the officials said.
A statement on Saturday from Islamist terror group Hamas said the discussions included talks on “understandings with the enemy” — a reference to a fragile ceasefire with Israel tested in recent days.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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July 14, 2019 at 12:26 pm
A Netherlands Jewish leader was assaulted, tortured and robbed in his home by four masked men in an apparent planned operation.
Benoit Wesly, a 73-year-old businessman, woke up early Sunday morning to find the assailants around his bed. Wesly was beaten, pushed down the stairs, stabbed and kicked, according to the report. Then the men tied him to a chair, placed a piece of cloth over his mouth and nose, and poured water on the cloth — a torture technique known as waterboarding that simulates drowning — until he gave them the combination to his safe, Wesly told police.
Police are investigating the motives for the crime. Reports about the incident did not indicate whether they or Wesly have reason to believe he was targeted because of his Jewishness. Wesly is a leader of the Je...
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July 14, 2019 at 12:24 pm
On Saturday, July 20, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, beating Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion.
According to data compiled by Dr. Ofer Kenig of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), Ben Gurion served as prime minister for 4,872 days. Netanyahu will reach that number on Friday and surpass it on Saturday. Both prime ministers achieved their record through two non-consecutive periods of time, with Ben Gurion serving as prime minister from May 1948 until January 1954 and from November 1955 to June 1963.
Netanyahu was prime minister from June 1996 until July 1999 and has served as the current prime minister since March 2009. He is the only prime minister in Israel to have been elected three times in a row...
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July 14, 2019 at 12:23 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday assailed a group of Democratic congresswomen of color as foreign-born troublemakers who should go back to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignoring the fact that the women are American citizens and all but one was born in the U.S.
Trump’s tweets drew a sharp rebuke from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said the president wants to “make America white again.” Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a Trump critic who recently took steps to leave his party, called the remarks “racist and disgusting.”
Trump was almost certainly referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her allies in what’s become known as the squad. The others are Reps. Ilhan ...
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July 14, 2019 at 12:08 pm
Afula, Israel - A court on Sunday ordered a predominantly Jewish town in northern Israel to lift a ban on non-resident visitors to its parks, a prohibition that a rights group said was aimed at keeping Arabs out.
The town of Afula denied the edict was racially motivated.
In instructing the town to lift the order, Judge Danny Sarfati stopped short of accusing it of racism and cited a legal opinion by Israel’s attorney general, who said municipal parks were public property open to all.
Afula imposed the prohibition a month ago, effectively cutting off access to the 10-hectare (25-acre) park by residents of nearby Arab villages who frequented the popular site.
“This [ban] was really to exclude Palestinian citizens from entering the park,” said Fady Khoury, a lawyer with ...
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July 14, 2019 at 10:46 am
New York - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says he’s getting reports that a nationwide crackdown on immigrants facing deportation is already underway in his city.
The sweeps were expected to start Sunday, but de Blasio tweeted on Saturday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had already taken action in New York.
The mayor says ICE agents did not succeed in rounding up any residents of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood and Harlem.
Immigrants who’ve been given orders to leave the country are government targets in at least 10 cities.
Advocates are coaching them on their rights, including instructions not to respond if agents knock on the door unless shown a warrant signed by a judge.
The Democratic mayor has said his city would not cooperate with ICE...
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July 14, 2019 at 10:45 am
Former British ambassador to the U.S. Kim Darroch said in a memo that President Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal to spite former President Barack Obama in an act of “diplomatic vandalism,” The Daily Mail reported, citing leaked cables and briefing notes.
Darroch reportedly made the claim about the Iran deal in May 2018 after then-foreign minister Boris Johnson unsuccessfully visited the White House to try to persuade Trump not to abandon the deal, according to The Daily Mail.
“The Administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons – it was Obama’s deal,” Darroch wrote, according to The Daily Mail.
“Moreover, they can’t articulate any ‘day-after’ strategy; and contac...
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July 14, 2019 at 10:45 am
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed off on legislation Friday to make his state one of the few in the country to ban race-based hair discrimination.
The New York Democrat signed Assembly Bill 07797 into law, which prohibits race discrimination based on natural hair or hairstyles.
The law amended the state’s Human Rights Law and Dignity for All Students Act to make it clear that race-based discrimination also includes “traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and protective hairstyles.”
“For much of our nation’s history, people of color – particularly women – have been marginalized and discriminated against simply because of their hair style or texture,” Cuomo said in a statement.
“By sign...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:29 am
Manhattan, NY - When a massive blackout plunged much of Manhattan into darkness on Saturday evening, a choir and the casts of Broadway musicals entertained tourists with impromptu performances in the street.
The outages struck at around 7 p.m. (2300 GMT), just as many shows were starting at theaters in Midtown and at the Lincoln Center plaza on New York City’s Upper West Side.
With subway stations and traffic lights suddenly dark, thousands of people spilled outside on a hot summer’s night. Some were surprised by what they found, including writer Briallen Hopper, who had been trapped on a subway train for an hour.
“I guess this is what they call a New York moment,” she wrote on Twitter with a video of a choir singing at sunset. “I emerged to see dark restau...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:26 am
Jerusalem - Israel’s prime minister says it will deliver a “crushing” strike against Hezbollah if the Lebanese militant group attempts to attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reacting to comments made by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In an interview Friday, Nasrallah boasted that his group is much stronger than during the 2006 war and is capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Pointing to a map, Nasrallah identified a list of targets he said his group could strike, saying “in all fields, the resistance has developed in quantity and quality.”
Speaking to his Cabinet Sunday, Netanyahu criticized what he called Nasrallah’s “arrogant” words.
He says “if Hezbollah dares to do something stupid and attack Israel, we ...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:25 am
Former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, said on Friday that, if elected, he would undo U.S. President Donald Trump’s relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—the first candidate running next year for the highest office to explicitly say so.
“We have to have a two-state solution, and I believe the administration made a mistake to move the embassy to Jerusalem,” the former two-term Pennsylvania congressman told JNS. “That will be a major impediment, if not a permanent impediment, to try to get a two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said.
“We need to move the embassy back out of Jerusalem, but with the understanding that, ultimately, I believe we need to hav...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:25 am
The US House of Representatives approved a $733-billion defense policy bill on Friday, defying President Donald Trump’s veto threat by including provisions like a clampdown on funding for his planned wall on the border with Mexico.
The House passed its version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, by a 220 to 197 vote, without a single Republican voting in favor of the bill and after some of the most liberal Democrats opposed it as they pushed for a reduction in defense spending.
Republican opposition to the bill sets the stage for a stiff fight over its provisions later this year that could threaten Congress’ record of passing the NDAA annually for nearly six decades.
The version of the bill passed by the Democratic-controlled House has several provisions...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:23 am
The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Friday to block U.S. President Donald Trump from militarily striking Iran.
The measure was added by a vote of 251-170 to a $733 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prohibit the Trump administration from utilizing any taxpayer funds for military action “in or against” the regime unless the president gets explicit authorization from Congress, although it would not prevent Trump from retaliating if Iran were to strike on the United States.
The Senate rejected such a provision last month.
The NDAA passed 220-197.
Additionally, the House NDAA “would, for example, reverse Trump’s ban on transgender personnel serving in the military and enact a one-year ban on the sale of air-to-ground m...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:21 am
White House hopeful Julián Castro called for the end of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Saturday ahead of a suspected operation to deport thousands of migrant families.
“I’ve said that instead of breaking up families, we should break up ICE,” the former Housing and Urban Development secretary said at the Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia.
The comments come a day before the reported start of an ICE operation in several major cities across the country that would deport thousands of families living in the U.S. without documentation.
Read more at The Hill.
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July 14, 2019 at 9:20 am
Former U.S. Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Thursday that if elected, the United States would re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when the regime “returns to compliance.”
“If Tehran returns to compliance with the deal, I’d rejoin the agreement,” he said in a foreign-policy address in New York. “The historic Iran nuclear deal we negotiated blocked Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, with inspectors on the ground—international inspectors confirming that the agreement was being kept. Yet Trump cast it aside prompting Iran to restart its nuclear program, become more provocative, and raising the risk of another disastrous war in the region.”
He said that he would use “hard-nosed diplomacy” a...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:18 am
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt sat down with i24NEWS’ senior Washington correspondent Dan Raviv to discuss his proposed future Mideast peace plan following an economic summit held in Bahrain earlier this month.
When asked at what point the long-awaited political component of the plan will be revealed, Greenblatt told Raviv it is “unclear”.
“President Trump has to make a decision,” said Greenblatt. “It’s either going to be a pre-election post-election, pre-government post-government, we haven’t made a decision yet.”
“We understand completely that there is no such thing as an economic peace, but there is no such thing as a political agreement without a very strong economic plan,” said Greenblatt. ...
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July 14, 2019 at 9:16 am
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) condemned the House Foreign Affairs Committee for considering a resolution condemning the anti-Israel BDS movement.
The resolution seeks “to silence opposition of Israel’s blatantly racist policies that demonize both Palestinians & Ethiopians. Our 1st Amd. right to free speech allows boycott of inhumane policies. This bill is unconstitutional,” tweeted the freshman congresswoman.
The resolution currently has 336 co-sponsors. It was introduced by Reps. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Ann Wagner (R-Mo.).
Tlaib is not on the Foreign Affairs Committee, unlike fellow freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota. They both support BDS, which “is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, ju...
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July 14, 2019 at 4:52 am
Local authorities have advised motorists to take Route 1 via the Arazim Tunnel or Route 443.
Planning on driving to Jerusalem over the next three years or so? Better leave a little extra time.Beginning 10 a.m. on Sunday until sometime in 2022, Shazar Boulevard, a major artery at the entrance to Jerusalem from Route 1, will be blocked to all private vehicles, as part of the second stage of the Jerusalem Gateway Project, a plan to turn area into one of the country’s leading business hubs.
Some 40 traffic officers will be on hand Sunday to direct motorists to alternative routes, including Herzl Avenue, Yirmiyahu Street and Yitzhak Rabin Boulevard, which has been widened ahead of the closure. Public transportation will continue along Shazar as usual, unaffected by the constructi...
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July 14, 2019 at 4:49 am
One consequence of New York City's Saturday night blackout: It shined a bright spotlight on the tensions between two prominent Democrats, the city's mayor and the state's governor.
As more than 70,000 customers -- plus countless tourists and other visitors -- dealt with the loss of electricity attributed to a transformer fire, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomoblasted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in Iowa campaigning for president when the massive blackout hit Manhattan.
“I can count the number of times I leave the state basically on my fingers,” Cuomo told CNN, responding to a question about the importance of the mayor being in New York during an emergency.
"Mayors are important. And situations like this come up, you know. ...
