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TEL AVIV — Like many Israeli politicians, Ron Dermer is an unapologetic defender of Israel’s actions, even if it might mean being undiplomatic.
But like a seasoned diplomat, Dermer — senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — knows his way through Washington’s backchannels and has cultivated relationships with senior US policymakers.
Most important, say those who know him, he has Netanyahu’s ear.
“Netanyahu likes him, respects him and listens to him,” said Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s national security adviser until 2011.
“I often asked for his advice. In many ways he was a guy to listen to. When it came to knowledge and being cultured and erudite and intellectually inclined, that’s him.”
The Moroccan government announced plans to preserve and renovate buildings that once served as Jewish schools.
The Muslim nation’s education minister, Mohamed El Ouafa, presented the plan on Dec. 18 at a meeting in Rabat with Marc Eisenberg, president of the Alliance Jewish education network.
The first phase of the plan is to place plaques in front of each of the buildings, according to the French-language Moroccan newspaper Le Matin.
The minister said the plan would “allow present and fu...
WASHINGTON — President Obama has appointed Todd Fisher, Robert A. Sherman, Andrea Lavin Solow and Michael Ashley Stein to the US Holocaust Memorial Council and named Steven Schwager to the president’s Global Development Council.
Schwager recently retired from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where he served as CEO.
Richard C. Blum, chairman of the Blum Capital Partners equity investment management firm and husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), also was appointed to ...
LONDON — Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has big shoes to fill.
Appointed last week as the 11th British chief rabbi, he will succeed Jonathan Sacks, an internationally renowned author and public intellectual who speaks frequently on moral, philosophical and theological affairs.
The widespread assumption among British Jews has long been that a Mirvis chief rabbinate would be quite different, that he would focus on internal Jewish community issues rather than trying to emulate Sacks. But Mirvis has diffe...
WASHINGTON — Will we fall of the fiscal cliff? Plunge into war with Iran? Dive into contentious confirmation battles? One thing’s for certain: There will be plenty of action in Washington that the Jewish community will be watching closely over 2013.
Here are some likely focal points:
Fiscal Cliff
Unless President Obama and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives work out their differences by year’s end, the US government will head off the fiscal cliff.
That means that much o...