BRIEFS COVID RELIEF PACKAGE INCLUDES $2.75B FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS. ORTHODOX JEWISH GROUPS THANK CHUCK SCHUMER. After successful lobbying by Orthodox Jewish groups and others, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tucked $2.75 billion in aid for private schools into the $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue package. The move came over the objections of some Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and public school advocates who have fought efforts to funnel federal money to private schools. The National Education Association expressed “strong disappointment” at what it called a “Betsy DeVos-era” policy, referring to former President Donald Trump’s education secretary. The funding did pick up a surprise endorsement from Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers and a frequent critic of government aid for sectarian schooling. She told The New York Times “it would be a ‘shonda’ if we didn’t actually provide the emotional support and nonreligious supports that all of our children need right now,” using the Yiddish word for “scandal.” Nathan Diament, public policy director at the Orthodox Union, thanked Schumer, a New York Democrat. “It’s still the case that 10 percent of America’s students are in nonpublic schools, and they are just as impacted by the crisis as the other 90 percent,” Diament told The Times. A previous coronavirus stimulus signed by Trump in December included $2.75 billion for private schools hit hard by the pandemic, a move backed by Orthodox and Roman Catholic groups. The current package directs governors to prioritize the private school funding for schools serving disadvantaged students and private schools “most impacted” by the virus, according to Education Week. (JTA) ISRAEL’S MILITARY SAYS IT HAS REACHED COVID HERD IMMUNITY The Israeli military declared that it has reached herd immunity to COVID-19 after 80% of its personnel had either been vaccinated, had the disease, or both. The announcement makes the Israel
Defense Forces perhaps the first military in the world to achieve immunity to the disease. “Things look a lot more like they did a year ago,” Brig. Gen. Dr. Alon Glasberg, the IDF’s chief medical officer, told reporters, according to The Times of Israel. “It seemed impossible, but now it’s here.” While herd immunity will allow the military to resume normal operations, soldiers will still have to wear masks and socially distance for now. The military’s vaccination campaign comes amid Israel’s record-setting drive to immunize its population. As of earlier this month, more than 4 million Israelis, nearly half the country and the majority of its adults, have been fully vaccinated. (JTA)
CAPITOL RIOTER WITH ‘HITLER MUSTACHE’ WHO TALKED ABOUT EATING JEWS IS A NAVY CONTRACTOR AND ARMY RESERVIST A Navy contractor who was arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol sports a “Hitler mustache” and allegedly talked about eating Jews. Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, according to The Washington Post, was known by his friends and co-workers as a white supremacist, Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier. He was also a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. One Navy officer told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that HaleCusanelli said “Hitler should have finished the job.” Another seaman said Hale-Cusanelli said if he were a Nazi, “he would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.” Hale-Cusanelli allegedly also made comments deriding Black people and babies with disabilities. Photos that federal agents found on his phone show him with a mustache and haircut similar to Hitler’s. The Post reported that Sgt. John Getz, one of Hale-Cusanelli’s supervisors, told agents that Hale-Cusanelli would walk up to people and say “You’re not Jewish, are you?” Hale-Cusanelli’s lawyer wrote in a
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court filing that his client is not a member of any white supremacist organizations and that he denied being a Nazi in an interview with the FBI. According to the Post, he is one of a growing number of Capitol rioters with ties to the military or law enforcement. (JTA)
American Rescue Plan is now here to offer direct and immediate relief.” Among the rescue package’s benefits, Emhoff and Harris on their Western tour are touting the grants and loans for small businesses, especially for restaurants. (JTA)
EMHOFF WANTED TO TOUT THE BENEFITS OF THE STIMULUS PACKAGE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. HE CHOSE A JEWISH BAGEL JOINT. Doug Emhoff, the Jewish husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, is on a swing through Western states with his wife to promote the benefits of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that the Biden administration just squeezed through Congress. There was a stop at a food bank in Las Vegas and at businesses in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But when he hit Denver, Emhoff headed for a Jewish deli that featured large in a Rosh Hashanah message he delivered before November’s election. Emhoff stopped by Rosenberg’s Bagels in the Colorado city’s Five Points neighborhood. “We were honored to have the Second Gentleman stop by our Five Points location today to talk small business relief (and of course, bagels & lox)”, the bagelry said on its Facebook page, which featured photos of Emhoff meeting with the store’s owner, Joshua Pollack. Pollack launched his eatery in part after moving to Denver because he missed the Jewish food available in his native Bergen County, New Jersey. He has a specially made machine that converts water to New York mineral levels to replicate the gluten levels in New York-area bagels, and he offers Jewish holiday-specific foods: challahs on Shabbat, crown challahs on Rosh Hashanah and latkes on Hanukkah, among others. Pollack, who campaigned in Denver for the election of President Joe Biden and Harris, was the star of an Emhoff Rosh Hashanah video in which he described his economic struggles during the pandemic. “Couldn’t stop by Denver without visiting,” Emhoff said on Twitter. “Josh and I met virtually last year and have kept in touch ever since. This pandemic has greatly impacted small businesses. The
AMSTERDAM MAYOR ACCUSES NETANYAHU OF HURTING FIGHT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM At a conference on fighting anti-Semitism by 32 mayors from around the world, the one from Amsterdam took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly cheapening the struggle for electoral gain. Femke Halsema, a former leader of the Green Left party, criticized Netanyahu’s recent statement that the Netherlandsbased International Criminal Court has made “anti-Semitic edicts” when the court decided last year that it had jurisdiction to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes in Gaza in 2014. “If someone says for political gain that a legal investigation by the International Criminal Court of a state actor in Gaza is anti-Semitism, then you deeply undervalue the meaning [of] anti-Semitism and the dark outcomes of anti-Semitism nowadays and in history,” Halsema said during her video address in the Mayors Summit Against Anti-Semitism, a virtual conference hosted by the German city of Frankfurt with the U.S.-based Combat Anti-Semitism Movement. Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Naor Gilon, pushed back on Twitter. At a conference on anti-Semitism, “one should speak about threats to the Jewish state rather than using this as another opportunity to criticize it” and wonder why Israel is criticized disproportionately, Gilon wrote. The summit was the brainchild of Frankfurt Mayor Uwe Becker, who told JTA that he initiated the event so his counterparts “can learn from each other and feel that they are not alone.” Anti-Semitism in Germany is “as diverse as our society,” Becker said. The coronavirus pandemic “worked like an incubator, speeding up the spread of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.” (JTA)
