US President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned against the rise of religious intolerance in veiled criticism of Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump during an event to honor men and women who helped save Jews from peril in the Holocaust.
Obama made the remarks at the Israeli embassy, where he attended a ceremony to posthumously honor two Americans and two Poles who protected Jews from the Nazis during World War II. The event came on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
His remarks, the first of a sitting US president at Israel’s embassy, were also a sign of lowering tensions between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration. The event was hosted by Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate Netanyahu’s speech last year to the US Congress about the then-pending Iran nuclear deal.
Photo: EPA
The speech irked the White House.
Dermer, at the ceremony on Wednesday, thanked Obama for the message of friendship he conveyed by attending.
The president is also clearly irked by Trump’s rhetoric. The billionaire businessman, the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election, has called for the US to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country as a national security measure.
“An attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths,” Obama said. “For Americans, in particular, we should understand that it’s an attack on our diversity, on the very idea that people of different backgrounds can live together and thrive together.”
“Here, tonight, we must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it,” he added.
“Too often, especially in times of change, especially in times of anxiety and uncertainty, we are too willing to give in to a base desire to find someone else — someone different — to blame for our struggles,” he said.
Before Obama spoke, “Righteous Among the Nations” awards were presented to the families of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, teacher Lois Gunden, and a Polish couple, Walery and Maryla Zbijewski, for risking their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.
The awards were given by Yad Vashem, an organization to commemorate the Holocaust, on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS