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A bill the Knesset overwhelmingly passed that retroactively authorizes settlements in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank has resulted in outrage around the world, except from Washington, D.C. (Reuters photo)
The U.S. has remained mum on the historic, yet controversial passage of an Israeli bill that retroactively legalizes settlement outposts in Judea and Samaria.
Rather than issuing a new statement, the White House immediately responded to the Regulation Law by referring to its statement from last week, which said "we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace" but that construction of new settlements "may not be helpful" in the Israel-Palestinian peace process.
Late Monday night, the Knesset passed the bill 60-52, retroactively legalizing some 4,000 homes that sit on private Palestinian land, while also providing compensation to the landowners. The State Department said that "at this point, indications are that this legislation is likely to be reviewed by the relevant Israeli courts, and the Trump administration will withhold comment on the legislation until the relevant court ruling," AFP reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump Feb. 15, where the two will likely address the issue of settlements among other topics.
Meanwhile, the international community and Arab leaders slammed the legislation on outposts, with the Palestinians calling it an attempt to "legalize theft" of Palestinian land.
"This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos. It is unacceptable. It is denounced and the international community should act immediately," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Arab League said the law "is only cover for stealing the land."
Just a day after Netanyahu met with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, British Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood said the bill "damages Israel's standing with international partners."
"It is of great concern that the bill paves the way for significant growth in settlements deep in the West Bank, threatening the viability of the two-state solution," Ellwood said.
Similarly, French Foreign Minister Jean Marc Ayrault said the law "constitutes a blow to the two-state solution."
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Sixteen Jewish community centers in the U.S. and several Jewish schools in London received bomb threats Monday, according to the JCC Association of North America and media reports.
The American JCCs receiving the threats were in California, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina and Tennessee. The community centers received phone calls from what authorities believe is the same source, with a prerecorded message warning of a bomb planted on premises. In London, Jewish schools in the Roehampton, Ilford and Brent neighborhoods were affected, The Jewish Chronicle reported. The JCCs and schools were evacuated following the threats, allowing police to search the facilities for explosives. No bombs were found.
David Posner, director of strategic performance at JCC Association of North America, said the umbrella organization "thanks federal and local law enforcement for their quick and thorough response."
"JCCs continue to work with [local and federal authorities], as they do all year long, to ensure the continued safety of JCC members and all those who participate in JCC activities, as well as the safety of JCC buildings," Posner said.
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Arabs in Israel maintain a higher quality of life than their brethren in most other places in the Middle East, yet a significant number continue to support the Palestinian-Arab struggle against the Jewish state.
One of the latest incidents occurred in the Arab city of Nazareth, where the municipality, headed by Mayor Ali Salam, held a recent event that ended up glorifying terrorist murderer Baha Alyan, who along with an accomplice murdered three Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem last year.
"Hundreds of elementary and high school students and young men and women of all ages arranged themselves in rows" holding books in their laps, a formation they called a "chain of readers," in the event organized by the Nazareth municipality and the Inma'a Association for Democracy and Capacity Building, the Jerusalem-based Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds reported last month, according to Palestinian Media Watch.
Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, told jns.org that when Nazareth officials were notified about the report, they insisted that they never knew about the event's intention to glorify terrorism.
"They said that in spite of what the press reported, the municipality only approved the readers chain" and did not have prior knowledge about the praise for Alyan, Marcus said.
Indeed, it appears likely that Mayor Salam had no prior knowledge of the plans to glorify a terrorist, since he has been waging an ongoing public battle against Arab politicians whom he accuses of radicalism.
Many Israeli Arabs strongly back the Palestinian narrative in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but decide not to act on those beliefs, perhaps because they see Israel as too strong; they continue to work and interact with Israeli Jews on a daily basis.
Yet some Arabs, like Member of Knesset (MK) Basel Ghattas (Joint Arab List), have decided to work against the state through political means and even by supporting terrorists. Ghattas is under investigation for allegedly smuggling cellphones and SIM cards to Palestinian Fatah security prisoners in Israel.
Arab Knesset members like Ghattas have been increasing their visits to Palestinian terrorist and security prisoners, a new report by Israel's Shin Bet security agency revealed last week. The report found that in 2016, Arab lawmakers submitted 13 requests to visit arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti and 14 requests to visit Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
At the same time, the Arab community is divided on the issue of relations with the state, with many Druze, Christians, Bedouin and a growing number of Muslims rejecting the violent and non-violent struggle against Israel.
Dr. Mordechai Zaken, head of minority affairs in the Israeli Public Security Ministry, told JNS.org that Israel's Arab public can be divided into various parts and should not be generalized. Arabs can be grouped according to location, religion, sect, professional affiliation and other factors, he said.
For example, in the "triangle"—a cluster of Israeli-Arab towns located near the 1967 lines, including Umm al-Fahm and Kafr Qasem—"there is a greater likelihood of [Arab] support for the Palestinian cause because many families have relatives in the West Bank," said Zaken.
On the other hand, in northern Israel's Galilee region, most local Bedouins do not have family members in the West Bank and are less focused on what is going on in the disputed territories.
Asked about Arab politicians' ability to mobilize Arab citizens against the state, Zaken replied that "they use the land issue because this has been traditionally one of the major unresolved problems of Arabs in Israel, and it has been a cause easier to unite behind. The War of Independence and later acts of land-expropriation throughout the years has roused opposition against the government."
Regarding the Bedouin living in the southern Negev, Zaken explained that they have long rebelled against whatever regime ruled their territory, going as far back as the Ottoman Empire.
"Rebellion is in their nature and the nomad culture still affects them, as they have for generations lived in constant tension with the sedentary communities," Zaken said, adding that "Arab politicians use these feelings to try to get them directed against the state, as if they are not receiving all of their rights."
Arab Christians' quality of life in Israel continues to improve, and Muslims are catching up to the traditionally high Christian levels of income, education and mobility, said the government official.
"The Christians have led in trying to integrate into Israel society, moving out of their towns and into the big cities. Now many Muslim professionals are following in their footsteps," said Zaken, who in 2013 initiated Israel's "Government-Christian Forum," which attempts to address Israeli Christians' concerns with the state.
The actions of MK Ghattas, according to Zaken, have sparked significant criticism among Israeli Arabs, with many acknowledging that the lawmaker crossed a line in his support of Palestinian prisoners. "This sentiment is present even among Arabs that support the establishment of a Palestinian state," Zaken said.
Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Greek Orthodox priest who works to increase Christians' voluntary enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces and their integration into Israeli society, told jns.org that since the so-called "Arab Spring" uprisings began in the region in late 2010, "the killing of Christians in the Middle East was a shock for the Christians in Israel."
Christians living in Arab states, he said, "were not saved from massacres and destruction, and the radicals want to force Christians to change their religion. This is what caused me to talk about the identity of the Christians in Israel."
Naddaf, whose pro-Israel views have been sharply criticized by many Muslims and Christian Arabs who identify with the Palestinian narrative, recalled that when he began speaking about Arab Christians integrating into Israeli society, his approach was not widely accepted. But with time, he has seen progress. In 2014, the first Israeli-Christian children were registered as "Aramean" instead of "Arab" on their national identification cards. Previously, all minorities in Israel were treated as one group—Arabs.
Some Arabs aggressively oppose Israeli Christians' increasing desire to identify as Aramean, seeing it as an effort to divide the Arab community.
MK Ghattas and his Christian supporters "are people (who) don't identify themselves as Christians first, but instead as Arabs first," said Naddaf, describing them as people who value ideologies such as nationalism over religion.
Naddaf said most Arab Christians oppose Ghattas and that "his way is not leading anywhere but to hate. He hurts the security of us all."
"Most of the Christians are moving in my direction" of increasing their integration into Israeli society, asserted Naddaf, adding that many politicians—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself—are showing support for his cause.
"We must help the state and overcome all of the problems," Naddaf said, "and not let its enemies and the terrorists that surround us weaken the country."
This article was originally published at jns.org. Used with permission.
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President-elect Donald Trump's advisers would like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend his inauguration Jan. 20, the New York Post reported Saturday.
According to a source close to the transition team, the advisers are also exploring the possibility of arranging "a meeting of the two leaders before then."
If Netanyahu accepts the invitation, he would become the first sitting Israeli prime minister to attend a presidential inauguration.
According to the report, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and other transition team officials "have been aggressively courting Netanyahu and want him to attend the Jan. 20 festivities."
"There's a plan for Trump to meet with Netanyahu," the source said. "They're talking all the time. And Netanyahu is talking about possibly going to the inauguration."
Sources close to Netanyahu said Sunday that the prime minister currently has no plans to attend the inauguration.
This article was originally published at JNS.org. Used with permission.
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Jewish groups are concerned over the amount of influence Ambassador Martin Indyk has had over the Obama Administration and Secretary of State John Kerry's approach to the Palestinian issue with Israel. (Reuters photo)
Jewish Organizations Concerned Over Former Diplomat's Involvement in Current Anti-Israel Efforts
Several Jewish organizations and leaders are expressing alarm over former U.S. diplomat Martin Indyk's role in the Obama administration's recent Israel policy moves.
Indyk served as U.S. ambassador to Israel, and then assistant secretary of state, between 1995 and 2001, followed by a stint as President Barack Obama's envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013-2014.
Reliable Washington sources report that the maps and proposals Indyk and his aides formulated in recent years are still central to the Obama administration's strategy for the Palestinian issue. Indyk also is said to have remained in contact with key U.S. policymakers even though he left the Obama administration and now serves as executive vice president of the Brookings Institution.
In media interviews and on Twitter in recent days, Indyk has emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of the Obama administration's Dec. 23 vote against Israeli settlements at the United Nations. He is also one of the most vocal opponents of President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of attorney David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Indyk's credibility is now being called into question, however, as several Jewish organizations are urging him to clarify whether or not he made a series of unusually harsh remarks about Israel and Jews in a tape-recorded private conversation when he was executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent think tank.
In that conversation, in 1989, Indyk reportedly said Israelis are "paranoid," "arrogant" and think that "the rules of society do not apply [to them]" because "they are the goy's rules." Connecting Israeli attitudes to what he characterized as Jewish attitudes in general, Indyk reportedly said that "Jews would do whatever they can to avoid paying taxes," and that Jews believe it is justified to "find a way to ignore the law or get around it." He added, "In my own family, my grandfather used to stay up nights to figure out how to avoid paying taxes."
The reported remarks "echo three of the most infamous centuries-old tropes of anti-Semites," Prof. Eunice G. Pollack, a historian of anti-Semitism and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, told JNS.org.
"You have an updated version of the classic 'Jewish swindler,' combined with the 'disloyal Jew' who evades his patriotic duty to pay taxes, and the millennia-old 'arrogant Jew' who, in a more religious era, was accused of deriving his arrogance from his partner, Satan," said Pollack.
Jewish groups want answers
Indyk has not responded to multiple inquiries from JNS.org about the statements. The quotations were first raised by the organization Amcha—the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, headed by Rabbi Avi Weiss, when Indyk was nominated as ambassador to Israel in 1995. But they were not picked up by the news media at the time and were not raised by senators at his confirmation hearing.
Farley Weiss, president of the National Council of Young Israel, told JNS.org, "I hope he didn't say such things, and if he did, I hope he will disavow them. Either way, he needs to address the controversy."
Sarah Stern, president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a pro-Israel think tank in Washington, said in a statement to JNS.org that her organization is "calling on Ambassador Indyk to immediately clarify whether or not he made these horrific statements." Stern said it would be "very ironic" for Indyk to oppose the David Friedman nomination over past statements that Friedman made, "if Indyk made the repulsive remarks he is alleged to have made prior to his own nomination."
In a tweet quoted in The New York Times and elsewhere, Indyk sarcastically asserted that Friedman would be "a great ambassador for the deep settler state. But David Friedman needs to be U.S. envoy to all Israelis. Is he up for that?" In an interview with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, Indyk said Friedman's call for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to western Jerusalem is "incendiary" because it "would imply that the United States was recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, including the Arab part ... which has the third-holiest mosque in Islam."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS.org that Indyk "forgot to mention that what he calls 'the Arab part' of Jerusalem includes a large Jewish community, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives, which contains the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world. That mosque is the third-holiest site to Islam, but Har Habayit (the Temple Mount) is Judaism's holiest site." Cooper said "the current status quo, in which the U.S. does not recognize any part of Jerusalem as sovereign Israeli territory, is patently unfair."
The Wiesenthal Center, World Jewish Congress, National Council of Young Israel and other Jewish groups have endorsed the Friedman nomination. J Street, Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu oppose it.
EMET's Stern, for her part, said that Indyk's "judgment and objectivity" were "severely undermined" two years ago, when it was revealed that he had accepted a $14.8-million contribution from the government of Qatar for the Brookings Institution. Qatar is the largest financer of the terrorist organization Hamas.
Adam Kredo, a senior foreign policy writer for the Washington Free Beacon, told JNS.org that Indyk "is known among reporters for anonymously criticizing Israel in the press, for planting stories meant to pressure the Jewish state into making concessions, [and for] leading the Obama administration's efforts over the years to discredit Israel and blame it for the failure in peace talks."
Indyk's Twitter war
Indyk took to Twitter this week to accuse Kredo of spreading "fake news" when Kredo reported that Vice President Joe Biden was involved in lobbying on behalf of the U.N. resolution against settlements. Israeli government officials subsequently publicly charged that Biden personally lobbied the government of Ukraine to back the resolution. Biden has denied the accusation.
At the same time, Indyk has been engaged in a Twitter mini-war this week with both an Israeli embassy official and a former colleague. It began with Indyk tweeting that the U.N. resolution was not an attack on Israel but was aimed only at "settlers, who undermine peace negotiations [and] are hurting Israel." Reuven Azar, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, replied, "Please don't lie to your followers. This pro-BDS resolution is unprecedented."
Indyk shot back, "Diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country. But that doesn't include accusing people of lying. Leave that to your political bosses." Azar responded, "We'll keep fighting for our country and you'll keep lecturing us," to which Indyk sarcastically replied, "Happy Hanukkah to you too."
Robert Satloff, who serves in Indyk's former post as executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, weighed in on Azar's side, tweeting, "I disagree w/my friend @martin_indyk. We've tried and failed using chainsaw on settlement issue; it needs a scalpel."
This article was originally published at JNS.org. Used with permission.
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Democratic and Republican lawmakers are vowing to challenge a limit on U.S. defense aid for Israel that President Barack Obama included in the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between the two nations.
The agreement—reached in September—guarantees Israel $38 billion in aid over 10 years, but it also states that if Congress increases the aid, Israel is obliged to return the extra funds. U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Texas), Randy Weber (R-Ariz.), and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday at Agudath Israel of America's annual legislative luncheon in New York City that the restriction is "unconstitutional" because it would interfere with the ability of Congress to fulfill its mandate as a co-equal branch of the federal government. Engel vowed to "fight every step of the way" to bring about the revocation of the aid limit.
U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), speaking at the same event, said that the aid restriction "conflicts with the Constitution in spirit if not in letter" because Congress "has a right to respond to emergency situations, and we will not give up that right." As an example, Jeffries said that if Israel is attacked, it might require extra aid to defend itself. Congress, he said, should be able to take action in such circumstances.
More Jewish Democrats oppose Ellison
Another topic addressed by several of the speakers at the luncheon was the bid by Minnesota's U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). A number of Jewish leaders have expressed concern that Ellison would turn the Democratic Party away from Israel. Speaking with jns.org at the Agudath Israel event, two more Jewish Democratic officeholders stated their opposition to Ellison's candidacy.
The Minnesota lawmaker has come under fire for his past association with Nation of Islam movement leader Louis Farrakhan, publicly claiming in 1995 that Farrakhan "is not an anti-Semite." Additionally, Ellison has urged increased U.S. pressure on Israel and has voted against funding Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.
New York's Rep. Engel, the ranking Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told jns.org that he opposes Ellison's candidacy because "we need a full-time chairman for the DNC, not a member of Congress who would only be able to devote part of his time to the job." Asked whether his opposition to Ellison is also based on Ellison's record concerning Israel, Engel replied, "My positions on Israel are well-known; my focus is on having a full-time chair for the party."
New York State Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens) said that he too opposes Ellison's bid "because of the importance of having someone who can devote himself full-time to rebuilding the Democratic Party." Weprin said he is "aware of the statements about Israel that have been attributed to Ellison, and if they are accurate, that would be a cause for concern."
Weprin added that he is "troubled by the positions that [2016 presidential candidate] Sen. Bernie Sanders took on Israel, and I know that Sanders nominated Congressman Ellison to the Democratic convention resolutions committee in order to try to get those positions in the platform."
The statements by Engel and Weprin against Ellison's possible party chairmanship echo the sentiments of New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), who toldjns.org earlier this month that "if Israel has to depend on support from the Ellisons of the world, it would be in serious trouble."
FBI Official: Palestinian Terror Tactics Adopted in U.S. Attacks
William Sweeney Jr., assistant director of the FBI's New York Division, said at the luncheon that the Palestinian terrorist tactic of "grabbing whatever you can to carry out an attack, whether a bulldozer or a kitchen knife" is being adopted by terrorists within the U.S.
Citing the attack at the Ohio State University campus this week by a Somali Muslim, Sweeney said that attacks by "homegrown violent extremists" are "simpler, aimed at more diverse targets, and carried out by younger attackers."
Sweeney said that the threat of terrorism on American soil "has become more serious in the past year, with some of the attacks being carried out by teenagers, who often are not in contact with terrorists overseas, unlike during previous periods."
This article was originally published at jns.org. Used with permission.
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You couldn't trust the pundits and spinmeisters before the election, and you still can't trust them after the votes came in.
The chattering class, especially the segment focused on the Jewish audience, predicted a resounding rejection of Donald Trump by American voters. They were wrong. Now that the votes have been counted, many of the same prognosticators are claiming Clinton trumped the Donald when it came to Jewish voters. Wrong again.
How can that be? Hillary Clinton received approximately 70 percent of the Jewish vote, but that is among the lowest percentages of the Jewish vote that a Democrat has received in decades. The only other time in recent history that a Democratic presidential nominee received fewer Jewish votes was in 2012, following Barack Obama's first term.
Many pro-Israel American Jews were dismayed by Obama's conscious distancing of Washington from Jerusalem, as well as the public disrespect directed toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Obama's first term. That disappointment translated into a deep dip in the Jewish vote for Obama's second run, as his 78 percent share of Jewish votes in 2008 plunged to 69 percent in 2012. In addition, Romney's warm personal relationship with Netanyahu guaranteed the former Massachusetts governor's pro-Israel credentials. Those two factors translated into a relatively strong 30-percent turnout of Jewish votes for the Republican nominee that year.
Given the wild card of Obama's tumultuous relationship with Israel, a more accurate understanding of the Jewish vote in 2016 is yielded by discounting the 2012 election. The new calculus reveals a potentially strong Jewish vote for Trump—and Florida, a hotly contested state that Clinton was favored to win but ultimately lost, supports this analysis.
Experienced political strategist Dan Rodriguez, founder and CEO of the MGR Group, spent the run-up to Election Day and the big day itself in Florida. In the aftermath of the election, he has been traveling to boards of elections in heavily Jewish voting districts. He explained that from raw data, Jewish votes are difficult to distinguish because they get lumped in with white votes. Yet Clinton "received only 32 percent of the white votes (into which Jewish votes are lumped) in Miami-Dade [County], whereas Obama took 37 percent," Rodriguez told me. In addition, he said, "voters 45 or older, a significant portion of whom are Jewish, went strongly for Trump, 56 percent to Clinton's 42 percent."
Marilyn Parmet, a Jewish Republican in her late 50s who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, knew something the pollsters and pundits didn't know. She was out on the streets in her community waving a "Jews Choose Trump" sign at rallies and next to busy intersections.
"At one mid-October rally at The Fairground in West Palm Beach, at least a hundred people came up to me and asked to take pictures with the sign. I knew then that there were so many Jews who weren't saying it out loud, but who were going to vote for Trump," she said.
Parmet's comments hint at the possibility that the perceived national trend of a "hidden" vote for Trump, a trend that stumped many pollsters, may extend to Jewish voters in Florida. She believes that when the final votes are tallied, they will reveal that more than 30 percent of Florida Jews cast their ballots for Trump.
J Street's Spin
Despite Trump's win, the leftist Jewish lobby group J Street claimed victory for its causes and candidates, claiming that the 2016 election cycle "demonstrates the political space that exists for a Middle East policy that puts diplomacy first." But the numbers belie J Street's claims.
What is significant about J Street's analysis is not its conclusion—which was that 70 percent of American Jews voted for Clinton—but its failure to put the results in context.
J Street's poll—conducted by GBA Strategies' Jim Gerstein, a former J Street board member—also heralded that Jewish voters' ranking of 13 priorities revealed that Iran was considered the least important priority on the list. In the J Street poll, Israel came in 9th on that list of priorities.
But J Street's Iran finding, which dovetails nicely with the group's strong lobbying for the Iran nuclear deal, is inconsistent with much of what others involved in Jewish-focused campaigning describe.
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), said it "defies logic" to claim that American Jewish voters did not oppose the Iran deal when so many campaigns this election season, especially ones geared towards Jewish voters, emphasized the dangers of the Iran deal. Brooks pointed to campaigns with which the RJC was involved, noting the anti-Iran deal ads that ran for Republicans including Pennsylvania's Sen. Pat Toomey, Arizona's Sen. John McCain, and Florida's senator, Marco Rubio—all three of whom were re-elected.
Opposition to the Iran deal within the organized Jewish community achieved a level of unity unseen since the days of the movement to free Soviet Jewry. Nearly every major Jewish organization from far-right to center-left opposed the Iran deal, as did every major Israeli political party. Just about the only poll which concluded that a majority of American Jews supported the Iran deal was commissioned by J Street.
Pew's View From the Pews
The Pew Research Center's preliminary analysis of the 2016 vote by religious affiliation shows 24 percent of American Jews voting for Trump and 71 percent for Clinton. The numbers show Trump's 24 percent Jewish support falling in between Romney's 30 percent in 2012 and McCain's 21 percent in 2008.
The Pew analysis also offers a longitudinal view of the evangelical Christian vote. The largest religious cohort voting for Trump was white, born-again/evangelical Christians, at an all-time-high of 81 percent. Pew began collecting information on that specific demographic in 2004, when the cohort produced 78-percent support for President George W. Bush, followed by 74 percent for McCain in 2008 and 78 percent for Romney in 2012.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore—founder and president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a pro-Israel evangelical organization—said that during this election cycle, evangelical churches undertook a major push to encourage their members both to vote in general and to vote specifically for Trump. Cardoza-Moore would know, as she is also the representative to the United Nations for the World Council of Independent Christian Churches, which represents 44 million congregants.
"We were appalled that the numbers did not turn out for Mitt Romney four years ago," Cardoza-Moore said. "This time we saw that religious freedom was hanging in the balance."
Cardoza-Moore explained that the U.S.-Israel relationship "is front and center for our members," citing the biblical verse Genesis 12:3, which states, "I (God) will bless those who bless you (Israel), and whoever curses you I will curse."
"Well, we've been cursed these past eight years [under President Obama]," she laughed, "so please, God, give us our blessings now."
Lori Lowenthal Marcus is a journalist and lawyer who writes about the Jewish state and Jewish communities worldwide.
Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of King David's footprints in a mysterious two-gated city from 3,000 years ago, mentioned in the Bible's story of David and Goliath.
The site is known by its modern name, Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel's Elah Valley.
After nearly seven years of excavations, the public can now explore the archaeological findings of Qeiyafa through "In the Valley of David and Goliath," a new Bible Lands Museum exhibition that opened earlier this week in Jerusalem. The Qeiyafa findings have sparked debate and intrigued historians and archaeologists since they were first revealed.
The city was discovered between Sokho and Azekah, on the border between the Philistines and the Judeans, in the place where David and Goliath battled. It's mentioned in the Torah in 1 Samuel 17:1-2.
Carbon-14 dating of some 28 charred olive pits found during excavations date the city as existing around the end of the 11th century BCE, until the early 10th century, in the days of Saul and David.
"No one can argue with this data," said Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, Yigal Yadin Chair of Archeology at the Institute of Archeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He, along with Sa'ar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Michal Hazel of Southern Adventist University of Tennessee, led the excavations.
Among the site's highlights are its two gates: the western gate, which faced Philistia, and the southern gate, which faced Judah. Having two gates for a relatively small city of 5.7 acres is unusual, according to Bible Lands curator Yehuda Kaplan. Gates are the weakest part of any city. The two gates are what led excavators to identify the site with Sha'arayim (Hebrew for "two gates"), a city mentioned in the David and Goliath story in the Book of Samuel, which reads, "...And the slain Philistines lay along the way of Sha'arayim, as far as Gath and Ekron" (1 Sam. 17:52). It's also in Judges 16:5 and in Jeremiah 17:19-20.
The gates were corroborated by additional evidence of Jewish activity at Qeiyafa, including thousands of sheep, goat, cow and fish bones, and the absence of non-kosher pig bones, Kaplan said.
Evidence of cultic activity throughout the city was also unearthed, as well as two inscriptions written in the Canaanite script. One was incised on a jar and contains the Hebrew name Eshbaal, son of Beda. The second was inscribed on a pottery shard with only a few identifiable words, including "king" and "judge." Many of the letters seem to reflect Hebraic writing. Garfinkel suggests this is the earliest writing documentation of the Hebrew language discovered to date.
Among the pottery on the site, less than 2 percent was typical Philistine pottery. Kaplan said if the community had been Philistine, a minimum of 20 percent of Philistine design should have been found. Of the 24 weapons and tools discovered, 67 percent were made from iron and 33 percent from bronze. Use of iron during this period by other sites in Judah, such as Arad and Beersheva, helped archeologists identify Qeiyafa as a Judean site.
Finally, casemate walls—two thinner, parallel walls with empty space in between and a belt of houses abutting the casemates, incorporating them as part of the construction—are reminiscent of the type of urban planning found only in Judah and Transjordan.
Garfinkel explained that before the period of King David, people lived in small farming communities. Around 11th BCE, these agrarian communities became urban societies.
"In this, the biblical tradition has historic memory," Garfinkel said. "If we ask, 'Where is archaeology starting to support biblical tradition, Khirbet Qeiyafa is the beginning."
There's only one other archaeological reference to King David found in Israel, the Aramaic inscription from the mid-9th century BCE found at Tel Dan. This inscription, on display as part of the new exhibit, is attributed to Hazel, king of Damascus, who boasts about killing a king of Israel and a king of Judah, the latter of which is referred to in the inscription as "King of the House of David."
While the site stirs the biblical imagination, it also serves a political role.
Biblical Minimalists, a band of biblical scholars and archaeologists trying to eradicate the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel by claiming there's not reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel, can be negated by some of Qeiyafa's findings. Within 10 days of his publishing the first paper on Qeiyafa, another article claimed the site as Palestinian, Garfinkel said.
"This happens a lot," said Jacob L. Wright, associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University in Atlanta. "In no other area of the world do you have such a connection to biblical imagination."
Wright said there's likely a middle ground. While he believes Garfinkel has placed Qeiyafa in the right time period and that it's likely a Judean community, experts aren't certain that King David had anything to do directly with the site.
"One has to separate the bible and archaeology," Wright said. "The minimalists want to deny the state of Judah and Israel; they are politically driven and have a loose agenda. ... But it does not help when the maximalists try to connect everything they find on the ground with Jesus or King David."
Bible Lands' Kaplan is confident in the exhibit and the story it's telling of Qeiyafa.
"Everything you touch at Khirbet Qeiyafa brings you to this biblical period," he said.
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Amid the intrigue and speculation over the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland, one item that the party has settled is its firm support for Israel and opposition to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Tuesday, the Republican Platform Committee unanimously approved a number of significant changes to its platform in an attempt to further set the party's pro-Israel credentials apart from the Democrats, who are facing concerns over their party's future support for the Jewish state. The GOP's platform changes included removing language encouraging a two-state solution as well as reinstating a reference to an "undivided" Israel that was previously included in the party's 2008 platform, but was removed in 2012.
"The U.S. seeks to assist in the establishment of comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, to be negotiated among those living in the region," the approved amendment said. "We oppose any measures intended to impose an agreement or to dictate borders or other terms, and call for the immediate termination of all U.S. funding of any entity that attempts to do so."
Alan Clemmons, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a Republican convention delegate, conveyed his disappointment over the 2012 GOP convention, when the platform committee chose not to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.
"I was a delegate at the last RNC, but was not on the platform committee. I observed the platform committee process and proposed language similar to the language that was passed today (July 12). Unfortunately, that language gained no traction and it went nowhere on the platform, and as a matter of fact the platform regressed in terms of support for Israel," Clemmons told JNS.org.
The push to bolster the Republican Party's language on Israel follows a four-year effort by Clemmons and Joseph Sabag, the former executive director of the Israel Allies Foundation. Both leaders sought to reach out to the party's base—evangelical Christians—as well as to Jewish and other ethnic groups to reach a consensus on the GOP's pro-Israel stance.
"Between Joseph and myself, we talked to pastors that represent literally millions of evangelical Americans," said Clemmons.
Although evangelical support was a significant factor in crafting the 2016 RNC platform, Clemmons said the party "didn't leave the Jewish population out of that mix."
"We met with many of prominent movers and shakers in the Jewish community throughout the United States, and Israel as well," he said.
According to Clemmons, two more recent alliances that made a significant impact on drafting and approving the platform's Israel language were with David Friedman and Jason Dov Greenblatt, senior Israel advisers for presumptive nominee Donald Trump's campaign.
"Those gentleman appreciated what we were doing. They appreciated the language that was being offered and presented it to Mr. Trump, who likewise was very interested in being of assistance in this process," Clemmons said.
Clemmons, in his platform committee speech prior to this week's vote, said that along with Trump's advisers and leading policy experts, he "was able to present platform language that captures the true sentiment of pro-Israel supporters everywhere."
The Trump campaign's Friedman told JNS.org that getting the pro-Israel language on Jerusalem reinstated "was a collaborative effort with a lot of people whose hearts were in the right place with respect to Israel. I think the outcome speaks for itself."
"It's the most pro-Israel platform that either party has ever issued, so we're obviously very proud of the accomplishment," he said.
The Trump campaign's involvement in reinstating the platform language may also signal a move by the candidate to bolster his pro-Israel credentials, amid questions over his past statements on remaining "neutral" about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and accusations of anti-Semitism stemming from his recent Twitter post featuring what critics called a Jewish Star of David.
Friedman said that Trump has been working very hard to "lay that issue to rest over the last couple of months."
"Mr. Trump himself has said, over and over again, that he is a highly pro-Israel candidate—not just in comparison to Hillary Clinton, where the differences are stark—but even in absolute terms, he's a very pro-Israel candidate," he said.
The GOP platform "should lay that issue to rest," said Friedman, who argued that the Trump campaign's work on the Israel language highlight the candidate's ability to work with leaders across different faiths and ethnicities to achieve a common goal.
"When people criticize [Trump] for being polarizing, I think just the opposite is true. This was an effort which unified people of different faiths, all united behind a desire to support Israel," Friedman said.
One of the groups that the Trump campaign worked with closely on the platform was the Hispanic Israel Leadership Coalition (HILC), a group that seeks to engage Latino Christians in support of Israel. HILC is a subsidiary of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC).
Pastor Mario Bramnick, president of HILC, told JNS.org that Trump and his advisers "were very strong on the importance of this language [on Israel]. And through discussions, the language was finalized ... [and] ultimately approved by a unanimous vote."
"We are very encouraged by the resolve and support of Mr. Trump and his advisers on the issue," said Bramnick, who is also a regional vice president for the NHCLC. "We had worked with the platform committee leadership regard the reinserting of the language as a united Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the nation of Israel, and the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem should the Republican candidate win the presidency."
Clemmons, the South Carolina state lawmaker, affirmed the roles of Bramnick and HILC, calling them a "very big part" of the process to reinstate the platform language.
"[Bramnick] certainly has a large congregation and a prominent following, and a good feel for the respect that evangelical Christians have for Israel. He was certainly a partner in all of this. That's not unlike the other pastors around the country who were a part of it as well," Clemmons said.
The push for the revised platform language was also backed by Pastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI) non-profit through its separate 501(c)(4) lobbying affiliate, the CUFI Action Fund.
In a letter (first reported by JNS.org) that was sent to Republican convention delegates on July 6, former Ronald Reagan administration official Gary Bauer, director of the CUFI Action Fund, called for the Republican platform to "strengthen its language in support for Israel with Jerusalem as Israel's 'undivided, eternal' capital."
Bramnick praised CUFI's role in the process, saying the group "worked very hard behind the scenes to make sure that a very strong supportive platform language came forth from the Republican Party, especially as it pertains to a united Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel."
For evangelical Christians, support for Israel is not only a political stance, but a theological one. As such, working to strengthen the Republican Party's ties with the Jewish state is a highly prioritized process for that faith community moving forward.
"There was a Pew [Research Center] report back in 2013 that said that 82 percent of the evangelical community believes that God has given the land of Israel to the Jewish people, and we read that literally," Bramnick said. "We believe that is a biblical covenant and mandate that really no person has the right to revoke. ... For the evangelical community, this is very important."
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