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Take advantage of the Early Bird ticket price and our discounted room block by registering now for the 2024 RJC Annual Leadership Summit, Wednesday, September 4 to Friday, September 6, 2024. Be part of the biggest and best political event of the year!

The Jerusalem Post turned to the RJC for comment on the presidential election and reported:

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, discounted polling numbers at this point of the campaign. The RJC doesn’t endorse a candidate during the primaries, and Brooks told the Post he wouldn’t say or do anything, implying that they’re going in one direction.

"We’re watching the primary," Brooks said, "and we, more importantly, are preparing ourselves with what it’s going to take and developing the plan for the general election to beat Joe Biden in 2024, whoever our nominee is."

…Brooks told the Post his focus, and everyone’s focus, should not be what’s next but what has to be done to stay focused on winning the war.

"I think any of those conversations are counterproductive and shift the focus away from where it should be, which is the war effort right now," Brooks said.

Brooks just returned from visiting Israel with former Vice President Mike Pence, where they met with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and war cabinet member Benny Gantz.

"We received and heard the same message from every single one of the government folks we met," Brooks said. "Independent of where they were on the ideological spectrum, as it relates to the US, they are very, very complimentary and appreciative of the support that the administration and the congress and everybody have given them to defeat Hamas."

The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund announced a significant independent expenditure in support of Jewish-American congressional candidate Mazi Pilip, consisting of hyper-targeted direct mail, hard-hitting digital ads, and a robust grassroots field operation to turn out Jewish voters in the special election race for New York’s 3rd district.

RJC CEO Matt Brooks said:

With less than one month left before Election Day, Mazi Pilip has all the momentum in the NY-3 special election race. Mazi Pilip is a young, dynamic, proud Jewish-American leader who will tackle the tough problems plaguing New York and our country. The failed record of New York Democrats has resulted in spiking antisemitism, rising crime, skyrocketing costs of living, and an immigration crisis that is overwhelming and crippling towns and cities. Long Island’s North Shore deserves a representative in Congress as good as its people - not a career politician like Tom Suozzi.

RJC NY has exciting news! With the NY-3 Special Election approaching on February 13, Republican Jewish Coalition members will be out in FULL FORCE in support of RJC-endorsed former IDF soldier MAZI PILIP.

Winning this battleground seat is critical to maintaining the GOP majority in the House of Representatives. As antisemitism continues to spike across the country, electing Jewish candidates like Mazi Pilip is more important than ever - AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!

RJC NY will have boots on the ground, connecting with Jewish voters throughout the district, through Election Day. We’ll also do phone banking and other remote outreach. Everyone is welcome! If you or anyone you know may be interested in joining us in our grassroots Jewish outreach efforts, please email RJC Field Representative Robert Boam at [email protected].

Former Vice President Mike Pence writes at National Review:

Throughout my public career, I have traveled to cities and towns ravaged by wars, hurricanes, and natural disasters. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw recently on the streets of communities in southern Israel still reeling after the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. I have seen tragedy up close, but I had never seen this. This was not the aftermath of war — this was the aftermath of evil. In all my travels, I have never experienced a greater combination of grief and anger than I felt that day.

… What became clear to me is that October 7 was more than just a terrorist attack — it was a terrorist invasion. Its purpose was not only to slaughter thousands of innocent Jews, but ultimately, to end the Jewish state forever.

Few people realize that on October 7, Hamas simultaneously breached Israel’s border wall at 90 different locations, with some 3,000 terrorists moving in three waves coordinated with military precision. In private briefings, leaders in Israel told me that the terrorists had sufficient weapons and supplies to march all the way to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, splitting the country in half. And they might well have succeeded, were it not for the heroic efforts of local police, IDF forces, and courageous citizens.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, no one second-guessed America’s right to respond to Japanese military aggression… The same should apply to Israel’s justified war in Gaza. I grieve the loss of innocent human life, but our ally now has no choice but to hunt down and destroy Hamas, once and for all…

There has never been a more important time for the world to know that America stands with Israel, without hesitation or apology. Instead of demanding arbitrary limitations on Israel’s military response, America should fully support Israel’s effort to eradicate Hamas in the south and secure her border against Hezbollah in the north. Most importantly, our president should make it clear that Iran will pay a steep price if it continues to attempt to escalate the violence through its proxies in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

Read the whole article here.

Marc Rod reports at the Jewish Insider:

The Senate soundly rejected a resolution led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have mandated the State Department investigate Israel for potential war crimes, and could have led to a cutoff of US aid to Israel.

Just 11 senators — Sanders and Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Rand Paul (R-KY), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — voted against a procedural motion to kill Sanders’ resolution. Seventy-two senators voted to table the resolution

The resolution would have invoked a provision of US foreign aid law that allows a chamber of Congress to demand the State Department provide, within 30 days, a report on a US aid recipient country’s compliance with human rights law.

Under that law, U.S. aid to Israel would have been automatically cut off if the State Department failed to deliver a report to Congress within 30 days. Once a report was provided, any senator could have forced a vote on cutting off aid to Israel. Sanders has sought in recent weeks to prevent additional US aid to Israel amid the current war.

RJC Members took action!

In response to an email that the RJC sent out on Tuesday morning, nearly 2000 RJC members sent email messages to their Senators, calling on them to vote NO on Sanders' resolution and to support Israel’s right to self-defense.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this effort!

UPDATE: Today the Senate voted on a related amendment intended to end aid to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority until they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, renounce terrorism, and release all hostages. The amendment failed on a near-party line vote, with 47 Democrats, plus the three independent senators, voting against it. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) joining all the Republicans present and voting.

This week the Biden administration announced plans to designate the Houthi militia group as a “specially designated global terrorist” (SDGT) group. The Houthis, an Iranian proxy in Yemen, has disrupted international shipping by attacking ships in the Red Sea. Zach Kessel reports at National Review Online:

The Houthis had previously been recognized as both a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and an SDGT group; former president Donald Trump’s administration designated them as such in January 2021, but soon after that year’s inauguration, the Biden administration removed the label…

Gabriel Noronha, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, posted on X after the initial round of reporting that the designation means three things: 1) "Houthis can still get US visas," 2) "Not a criminal penalty to support them," and 3) "US banks don’t have to seize their funds."

He elaborated on those three aspects of the decision, telling National Review that there are significant differences between the two types of designations.

"If you are sanctioned on the FTO list, none of the members of the organization can receive a visa to come into the United States, even if you’re a cook or a conscript or a low-level guy," Noronha said, adding that, if an organization is on the FTO list, its "assets can be seized and forfeited to the victims of Houthi terrorists. . . . If you are just an SDGT, your assets in the US are frozen, but they can’t really be turned over to the victims."

Another distinction Noronha emphasized has to do with criminal prosecution. While offering an SDGT financial support carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence; the penalties for assisting an FTO are much harsher.

Cliff May: The blood libel at The Hague

Genocide: The "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel where they murdered as many men, women, and children as they could. In response, the South African government filed a lawsuit under the Genocide Convention to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. You know the punch line: It is not Hamas but Israel that South Africa is accusing of genocide… So, to accuse the Israelis of genocide is a lie and a blood libel. By contrast, Hamas is proudly genocidal. The Hamas Charter declares that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

WSJ Editorial: Palestinian ‘Pay for Slay’ keeps growing

Recently we told you that Palestinian Authority law requires the Oct. 7 terrorists to be compensated financially for a massacre well done. Now the PA has taken steps toward making that a reality. It acted just in time for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Ramallah. Last Wednesday’s Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the PA’s newspaper and mouthpiece, announced 23,210 additional “martyrs,” using the Hamas-supplied Gaza casualty figure that includes every dead Hamas terrorist. The PA pays a one-time lump sum plus a monthly stipend for life to the families of any "martyr" killed attacking Israel or in a confrontation with Israel.

Ira Stoll: The war against the Jews is a war against capitalism

Connecting the military and propaganda war against Israel to a wider campaign against "capitalist forces" might initially seem like something so theoretical or extreme that only Ivy League graduate students would be naïve enough to believe it. The more one investigates, though, the more it becomes clear that the denunciation of capitalism is more significant than an immature rhetorical flourish. It is a core part of the anti-Israel ideology — and not just on campuses and among American intellectuals, but also among members of Congress, and in key documents of the terrorist group Hamas and its Iranian sponsor.

See also - Violent Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Are Not a Bug: They’re a feature of a dangerous new politics by Eitan Fischberger.

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