Peres calls Trump’s foreign policy proposals ‘a very great mistake’

(JTA) — Israel’s former president Shimon Peres said carrying out Donald Trump’s isolationist foreign policy vision would be “a very great mistake.”

In an interview with Bloomberg.com published Monday, Peres — who has served in numerous roles in Israel’s government since its founding in 1948 — did not refer to the Republican presidential nominee by name. But asked about Trump’s statements on foreign policy, the Nobel Peace Prize winner said, “To suggest that America will disconnect her relations with NATO, that America will leave the whole field open to other countries — in my judgment it’s a mistake. A very great mistake.”

Last month Trump suggested in an interview with The New York Times that U.S. military support for NATO member states might be conditional on whether those  members’ fulfill their obligations to the bloc. During the interview, Peres, who turned 93 this week, also addressed other topics, such as a project he’s working on that seeks to bring together Israeli and Arab tech entrepreneurs.

“We want to make not just a Startup Nation, but a Startup Region,” Peres said of his project, the Israeli Innovation Center.  “Science doesn’t have flags. Science doesn’t have borders.”

Asked about the Palestinian Authority’s threats to sue Great Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Peres compared the move to refighting the Crusades, the medieval battles for control of the Holy Land.

“The past is dead,” he said. “The future is the agenda.”

Trump trashes Bloomberg on Twitter, calls him ‘little’

(JTA) — Donald Trump lashed out against former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Twitter, calling him “little” and terming his mayoral stint a “disaster.” The Republican presidential nominee took aim at Bloomberg, who is 5-foot-8, last Friday morning, two days after Bloomberg said at the Democratic National Convention that Trump is “a risky, reckless and radical choice” that the United States cannot afford to make.

“’Little’ Michael Bloomberg, who never had the guts to run for president, knows nothing about me. His last term as mayor was a disaster,” Trump said on Twitter about Bloomberg, a billionaire who was mayor from 2002 to 2013.

In 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter: “Mike Bloomberg is doing a great job as mayor of New York City. Ray Kelly is a great police commissioner.”

But last Friday, Trump wrote: “If Michael Bloomberg ran again for Mayor of New York, he wouldn’t get 10% of the vote – they would run him out of town!” He ended his tweet with the hashtag “#NeverHillary” in reference to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

At a rally in Davenport, Iowa, on July 28, Trump said he wanted to “hit” several unnamed speakers at the Democratic National Convention “so hard” they would “never recover.”

“I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard,” he told the crowd. “I was going to hit one guy in particular, a very little guy,” he said as his audience applauded and cheered. “I was going to hit this guy so hard his head would spin, he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

Several news organizations, including The New York Times, speculated that the person Trump was referring to was Bloomberg. Bloomberg, who is Jewish, in 2014 won the Genesis Prize, an annual prize dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.”

Republican Jewish Coalition ad brands Democrats ‘anti-Israel’

(JTA) — An ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) accuses the Democratic Party of being “stridently anti-Israel,” featuring a string of attendees at last week’s Democratic convention criticizing Israel.

Released last Friday, the ad claims that “anti-Israel Democrats are on full display at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.” The video then goes on to quote Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson comparing the Israeli West Bank settlement movement to termites during an event held at the convention. The ad shows a clip of protesters burning an Israeli flag outside the convention. It then shows video of two attendees criticizing Israel: One calls Israel an “apartheid state,” and the other says “America is acting as a terrorist” and is “giving way too much money to Israel.”

At the Democratic National Convention, debate over Israel was present but peripheral. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton pledged to safeguard Israel’s security in her acceptance speech, and her campaign condemned the Israeli flag-burning.

The ad is part of an RJC campaign begun in June that highlights prominent Democrats’ perceived anti-Israel statements. The ads all end with the tagline, “Sadly, this isn’t the old Democratic Party. It’s today’s Democratic Party.”

In a statement responding to the ad, the National Jewish Democratic Council accused the RJC of trying to divert attention from their party’s candidate, Donald Trump.

“We understand why they don’t want to be defending their racist, sexist and bigoted candidate who peddles in anti-Semitic tropes, but notice how they don’t even mention Hillary Clinton’s actual record,” the NJDC said in a statement.

“As they oppose the only consistently pro-Israel nominee in this race, this is going to be a tough year for RJC – all while more and more of their people stand with Israel and strengthening the US-Israel relationship by abandoning Trump.”

Why Bill Clinton’s Hebrew Hillary button resonated

By Ron Kampeas

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — There was a thrill ride on Jewish Democratic social media Wednesday night, July 27, when Bill Clinton was spotted at the Democratic National Convention sporting a button backing his wife – in Hebrew.

Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman, indulged in a little partisan kvelling when he appeared Thursday with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer on a panel. “What a remarkable statement for America that a former president of the United States could wear that,” said Wexler, who now directs the Center for Middle East Peace.

Democrats will vigorously defend Obama’s record on Israel. Yet, there is the “kishkes” thing, which drives Obama and his partisans nuts. The subtle – maybe not so subtle – messaging from the organizational Jewish side: Bill Clinton got Israel! Hillary Clinton gets Israel! What’s with Obama? The frustrated reply: Of course he gets Israel, he’s been to Sderot, and made the threat its residents face from the Gaza Strip personal when he said he could imagine his daughters facing it. He visited the grave of Zionist founder Theodor Herzl. He gets it!

And yet. Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to mention Israel on the main stage on Tuesday night, July 26, and it came up not in the emphatic “best U.S. ally” way it did repeatedly at the Republican convention in Cleveland last week, but utterly organically, recounting Hillary Clinton’s role as Arkansas’ First Lady.

“Hillary told me about a preschool program developed in Israel called HIPPY, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters,” recalled the former president. “The idea was to teach low-income parents, even those that couldn’t read, to be their children’s first teachers. She said she thought it would work in Arkansas. I said that’s great, what are we going to do about it? She said, oh, I already did it. I called the woman who started the program in Israel, she’ll be here in about 10 days and help us get started. Next thing you know I’m being dragged around to all these little preschool graduations.”

Clinton’s reference to the Israeli program was so casual that might as well have been referring to a preschool program founded in Illinois. It’s the unforced familiarity that melts pro-Israel activists, and there it was on display Wednesday evening in the pin he wore.

(The button was also a nice contrast to an event from the day before, when activists outside the arena burned an Israeli flag. Some pro-Israel activists spent Wednesday demanding that the DNC send out an official condemnation of the burning, although Hillary Clinton had already denounced the act, through a spokesperson.)

Obama also had a Jewish moment in his speech Wednesday night, but it was telling in that its reference was purely American. It came toward the end, when he spoke of his Kansan grandparents and how they welcomed the stranger:

“They knew these values were exactly what drew immigrants here, and they believed that the children of those immigrants were just as American as their own, whether they wore a cowboy hat or a yarmulke; a baseball cap or a hijab,” he said.

The reference no doubt resonated with many Jews. But the relief and joy triggered by the button on Bill Clinton’s chest suggests many are still looking for something more.