Briefs

BIDEN NOMINATES RAHM EMANUEL TO BE AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN

President Joe Biden has nominated Rahm Emanuel to be the next ambassador to Japan.

Emanuel, 61, who was Chicago’s mayor from 2011 to 2019, previously served as a congressman and Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff. He has attracted opposition from progressives due to how he handled the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager.

“I would proudly represent our nation with one of our most critical global allies in one of the most critical geopolitical regions,” Emanuel said in a statement, according to the Washington Post. “Our Ambassadors to Japan have a long history of distinguished public service from both parties and I am humbled to follow so many statesmen who have served in this role.”

Emanuel, whose father was Israeli, attends an Orthodox synagogue in Chicago, Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel. One of his brothers is Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood agent who inspired a character in the HBO show, Entourage, and his other brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, is a prominent bioethicist.

His appointment is subject to confirmation by the Senate. (JTA)

AMSTERDAM TO RETURN KANDINSKY PAINTING TO JEWISH FAMILY FOLLOWING PUBLIC OUTCRY

Following an international outcry, Amsterdam said its city-owned museum should return a Wassily Kandinsky painting that it had acquired from a Jewish family that was under duress during the Holocaust.

Possession of “Painting with Houses,” which is believed to be worth at least $22 million, should be transferred from the city-owned Stedelijk Museum to the family of Irma Klein, which has been fighting for about a decade in court to retrieve the painting, the municipality said in a statement last month.

The museum and city are in talks with the family about making the restitution happen in the near future, the report said.

Klein and her husband sold “Painting with Houses” in the 1940s for the modern-day equivalent of about $1,600 because they needed money to survive the Holocaust. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany considers the painting stolen. Dutch authorities recognized this but have said the “public interest” of having the painting on display at the Stedelijk outweighs that of the family trying to retrieve it.

This position, which diverges from international restitution norms, has provoked international pressure and protests, including by Dutch officials entrusted with handling restitution claims. (JTA)

POLITICO EMPLOYEES WILL NOT HAVE TO SIGN THEIR NEW PARENT COMPANY’S PRO-ISRAEL MISSION STATEMENT

Ben Smith hid a significant nugget deep within his latest New York Times story, on the billion-dollar sale of Politico: The magazine and news site’s new owners, German publishing powerhouse Axel Springer, will not require its newly acquired American employees to sign the company mission statement pledging support of Israel.

Axel Springer, named after the journalist who founded it in the 1940s, has long been a staunch supporter of Israel. On its website, the second of the company’s five core principles reads, “We support the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel.”

The company, which owns some of Europe’s most-read publications, including Die Welt and Bild, apparently requires its European employees to sign a pledge in support of “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel, among other favored values,” according to Smith’s report.

In May, during the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the company’s headquarters raised an Israeli flag as a show of support. In June, Matthias Dopfner, CEO of the German company, reportedly said that any employees disgruntled by the move should leave the company.

“I think, and I’m being very frank with you, a person who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after antisemitic demonstrations, should look for a new job,” he was quoted as saying by Israel Hayom.

Smith’s column dissects the Axel Springer purchase and its significance in the wider American media landscape. Dopfner told Smith the Politico purchase “cemented the company’s American future.” (JTA)

A TALIBAN SPOKESMAN SAT DOWN WITH ISRAELI STATE TV. HE SAYS HE DIDN’T MEAN TO.

The interview that aired last month was surprising not for what the Taliban spokesman said, but because of who was conducting it: a reporter for Israel’s state TV news channel.

Suhail Shaheen, who has been giving interviews in English from Qatar since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, said he had no idea that he was speaking to someone from an Israeli news organization. The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, has a history of supporting al-Qaeda, which routinely makes threats against Israel and uses anti-Israel rhetoric in its propaganda.

When Shaheen spoke over video with journalist Roi Kais at Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, Kais named his network, but did not tell Shaheen that he or it was Israeli.

In the interview, Shaheen said the Taliban would protect non-Muslim minorities within Afghanistan, including Zebulon Simantov, understood to be the last Jew living there, whom he said he did not know. He also said the Taliban does not have ties to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza and opposes Israel’s existence.

Kan’s interview circulated widely, eliciting surprise that Shaheen consented to speak to an Israeli. But several hours after it aired, Shaheen tweeted that he hadn’t understood who he was speaking to.

“I do many interviews with journalists every day after the falling of provincial centers of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul to the Islamic Emirate,” he wrote. “Some journalists maybe masquerading but I haven’t done interview with any one introducing himself he is from an Israeli media.” (JTA)

HURRICANE IDA DESTROYS ONE-TIME JEWISH FAMILY’S RESIDENCE THAT WAS LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S SECOND HOME

Hurricane Ida flattened the New Orleans home where a youthful Louis Armstrong spent time with a Jewish immigrant family who mentored him.

CNN reported Monday, August 30 that the Category-4 storm destroyed the brick structure on South Rampart Street where the Karnofsky family lived and ran a tailor shop at the turn of the 20th century.

Starting at about age 5, Armstrong was friends with the five Karnofsky sons and the family would have him over for meals, leading to Armstrong’s lifelong love of matzah. His first job was blowing the tin whistle on the family’s coal and junk wagon, alerting potential customers. A musicologist has said that the whistle was Armstrong’s first instrument.

The Karnofsky patriarch bought Armstrong’s first trumpet, with the repayment being Armstrong would ride on the wagon for a year and blow the whistle. The famed jazz musician was reputed to wear a Magen David and have a mezuzah on his door, said the musicologist, John Baron.

“The Karnofskys were a tremendous warm influence in his life,” Baron said in 1999.

One of the Karnofsky sons, Morris, opened the first jazz record store in New Orleans and was a lifelong friend of Armstrong, who became a seminal figure in modern American music.

The building was long shuttered, although there was talk of restoring it as an homage to Armstrong’s New Orleans roots. (JTA)