Britannia Radio

Daily Briefing

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

FEATURED STORY Amid unrest, rethinking the $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Egypt The question Israel and its allies in Washington will be considering as Egyptians shape a new government is whether maintaining $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Egypt sustains the Israel-Egypt peace treaty or bolsters its detractors. Read more » EDITORS' PICKS Big givers, by the numbers Jews took five of the top six spots in the annual survey of top givers by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, but America's most generous citizens gave less in 2010 than they have over the past decade, JTA's Jacob Berkman reports. America's old-new Mideast friend Daniel Gordis writes in The New York Times that the threat of chaos, and even Islamist rule, in Egypt makes it all the more obvious that there is only one country in the region that has the same values as America: Israel. No room for Muslim Brotherhood The Muslim Brotherhood, whose ideology seeks the submission of all people to Islamic law, is the very antithesis of democratic pluralism and a free civil society, Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe. Escape from Egypt Two Arizonans return safely from the unrest in Egypt and tell the Arizona Jewish Post their stories. BREAKING NEWS A Tel Aviv court has upheld the right of women denied a religious divorce by their husbands to sue for damages. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in Washington meeting top administration officials and Congress members. Storahtelling has tapped former Birthright NEXT executive Isaac Shalev to become its next executive director. A Holocaust survivors' organization praised the Catholic Church for changing a new English translation of the Bible to eliminate the word "holocaust." The partner of an Israeli man killed in an attack on a gay community center in Tel Aviv has been ordered deported. Israeli airstrikes hit three terror sites in Gaza in response to shelling on southern Israel, the Israeli military said. Maria Altmann, whose seven-year battle to recover her family's Nazi-looted paintings riveted the art and legal worlds, has died. Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis said in a television interview that he is an "anti-Semite and anti-Zionist." The U.S. Jewish policy umbrella welcomed the emergence of a new state in southern Sudan, but said the international community must be vigilant in bringing about a broader peace. Israel should be invited to join NATO, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder wrote in a German newspaper. Israel's Knesset held its first Jewish Identity Day to provide lawmakers with a Jewish outlook and context in the lawmaking process. President Obama named a top American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee lay leader as chairman of his faith-based council, as well as a top Conservative rabbi to the council. Actress Claire Danes has landed in Israel to film scenes for a new television series based on an Israeli show.