Clinton urges Jews to aim for their ‘best selves’ in get out the vote call

(JTA) – Hillary Clinton spoke with Jewish supporters in a Rosh Hashanah-themed get out the vote call, urging them to help her build “a country consistent with our best selves.”

“The High Holy Days are a time to reflect on the last year take a hard look at personal and collective priorities and ask ourselves how we can do better in the year ahead,” the Democratic nominee said on a call that her campaign reached 1,000 supporters. “To build a country that is consistent with our best selves, a country that is big enough for everyone.”

Clinton did not mention her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Clinton also spoke of her meeting earlier last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying she told him that she would always “stand up for Israel’s security and continue to work for peace.” Netanyahu also met with Trump.

Clinton expressed her sadness in the ten-minute call at the death this week of Shimon Peres, and noted her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would join the delegation to the funeral for the former Israeli prime minister and president, led by President Barack Obama. She closed her remarks with “Shana Tova”.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld opened the call casting the responsibility to vote as a religious one.

“The choices we each make in these coming weeks will not only determine how we personally are inscribed in the book of life this year but will affect people around the world for many years to come,” Schonfeld said. “We are with you Secretary Clinton, because the Jewish community knows that we are always stronger together.”

“I’m with her” and “Stronger Together” are Clinton campaign slogans. Schonfeld, who is the executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, spoke in a personal capacity.

What does a Libertarian like Gary Johnson’s running mate see in Shimon Peres?

Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday, Sept. 28, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson dealt another blow to his long-shot campaign when he couldn’t come up with the name of a single foreign leader he liked.

Lost in the post-mortem, however, was the bizarre response of his running mate, Bill Weld, who said his favorite leader was Shimon Peres. Statesmen of all political stripes have been praising Peres since his death. But it’s odd that Weld, a libertarian, is one of them. Over the course of a 70-year career, Shimon Peres was many things: He was a hawk and he was a dove. He was a cowhand, shepherd, prime minister and president. He was a minister of defense, finance and foreign affairs.

But he was never a libertarian. How non-libertarian was Peres? Let us count the ways:

Libertarians want minimalist government. Johnson promises on his website that “no line in the budget will be immune from scrutiny and reduction.” He says, “Government does too many things that could be done better and more efficiently by the private sector.”

Peres was a socialist. He started his adult life working on a kibbutz, a socialist commune, and spent almost his entire career in the socialist Labor Party and its predecessors. He even served a term as vice president of the Socialist International.

Midway through his career, as prime minister in 1985, he did take a turn toward small government, combating rampant inflation through cutting government expenditure. But even after those reforms, Israel’s government hardly shed what one critic called its “socialist and statist heritage that bred an inefficient economic system.”

Libertarians oppose foreign entanglements. Johnson’s campaign page calls for cutting military spending, bashes the “imperialistic foreign policy” of the United States and says “we have enough problems to solve right here at home.”

Peres was all about military spending and foreign entanglements. As director-general of the Defense Ministry in the 1950s, he built up Israel’s military capacity and solidified its alliance with France. In 1956, he helped manage the Sinai Campaign, which saw Israel attack Egypt in concert with France and Britain. Later, he was the architect of Israel’s nuclear program.

Finally, whatever you think of Peres’ foreign policy, he almost definitely knew where Aleppo was.

Jared Kushner lauds wife Ivanka Trump’s record on women’s issues

(JTA) – Jared Kushner praised his wife Ivanka Trump for raising issues pertaining to women and families at the Republican National Convention in July.

“It took real courage for Ivanka to stand before 35 million Americans, including many who had not previously focused on these issues before, to help advance substantive policies that will dramatically improve U.S. law in favor of all women, parents and children,” Kushner wrote in Variety on Tuesday, Sept. 27. Kushner’s 328-word post appeared as part of Variety’s New Power of New York list, which included Ivanka Trump.

Kushner painted his wife, Donald Trump’s daughter, as an ambitious mom who also finds time to work on her own lifestyle company and website.

“A few years ago, at a large family function, Ivanka was carrying a plate of snacks in one hand and our daughter, Arabella, with the other, when she was approached by a guest holding a Sharpie. The woman took off her heels, handed Ivanka the marker and asked her to sign them – they were Ivanka Trump shoes. The timing was less than ideal, but Ivanka knows that the women who buy her clothes are often like her, busy moms trying to (sometimes literally) balance their work and family lives,” he wrote.

Ivanka Trump won praise for using her speaking slot at the convention to argue that issues like equal pay and affordable child-care will be important priorities for her father. However, some have argued that the candidate’s documented plans do not match the ideas his daughter has proposed.

Kushner and Trump, who underwent an Orthodox conversion to Judaism before marriage, are raising their children in an observant home.

Netanyahu tells Cabinet it doesn’t matter who is elected president

(JTA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet following the first U.S. presidential debate that as far as Israel is concerned, it does not matter who is elected.

“They both spoke of their support for Israel and the importance of bilateral relations between our two countries,” he said Tuesday, Sept. 27 at the start of a Cabinet meeting, hours after the debate Monday night in New York between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Netanyahu had met separately on Sunday with both candidates.

“It doesn’t matter which of them is elected – American support for Israel will remain strong. This alliance will stay strong and will even strengthen in the coming years,” he said.

Trump cited his meeting with Netanyahu during the debate when criticizing the Iran nuclear deal, which exchanged sanctions relief for limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities. Netanyahu was vehemently opposed to the deal, saying it harms Israel’s security.

“I met with Bibi Netanyahu the other day, believe me, he is not a happy camper,” Trump said.

The debate was aired live in Israel on one of the country’s major television channels with simultaneous Hebrew translation.

Clinton, Trump release statements praising Shimon Peres

(JTA) – Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both released statements lauding Israeli statesman Shimon Peres following his death early Wednesday morning, Sept. 28.

Clinton, the Democratic nominee, released a joint statement with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who presided over the Oslo peace accords that led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Peres, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

“He was a genius with a big heart who used his gifts to imagine a future of reconciliation, not conflict, economic and social empowerment, not anger and frustration, and a nation, a region, and a world enhanced by caring and sharing, not torn asunder by the illusions of permanent dominance and perfect truth,” the Clintons’ statement said. “His critics called him a dreamer. That he was – a lucid, eloquent dreamer until the very end. Thank goodness. Let those of us who loved him and love his nation keep his dream alive.”

Trump, the Republican nominee, also praised Peres’ leadership in a statement extending condolences from himself and his wife, Melania.

“On the world stage, Shimon Peres was a visible and highly effective patriarch to another, much larger family – the people of Israel, whom he led as prime minister and president,” the statement read.“With his hand outstretched in peace and friendship, Shimon Peres personified dignity and grace in a region of the world where both run far too short.”