Foreign Minister Avigdor and Prime Minister Lieberman

Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief David Horovitz and I interviewed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday. Since then I've been asked quite frequently about my impressions of the man.

Everybody wants to know about Lieberman. What's he like, this "Russian King" as a friend called him [actually he's Moldovan]. When I posted photos of our interview on Facebook, I got comments and questions ranging from disgust [try get the stain off your hands Lady Macbeth!; ewwwww!; when is he going to be indicted?; shame you didn't barf on him; did you ask him if he really believes the bullshit coming out of his mouth or does he just like the perks? why doesn't the jpost punch people in the stomach anymore?]. "How bad is he?" another concerned friend asked.

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Letter from Germany

Benjamin Weinthal is the Jerusalem Post correspondent in Germany. In addition to covering Germany, Benjamin reports on Austria and Switzerland. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University where he received a BA in Philosophy.  He earned a Master of Philosophy in European Culture and Literature from the University of Cambridge in England.

BERLIN - The topsy-turvy events of 2008, including an unprecedented German-Israeli diplomatic crisis provoked by Chancellor Angela Merkel administration's decision to approve a more than 100 million euro trade deal to build three gas plants in Iran, consumed my reporting at the time; this deal reflected the common phenomenon in Germany, where I live and work, of playing down anti-Semitism worldwide, including Iran's genocidal threat to Israel and dictatorial Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's persecution of his country's small Jewish community.

A deeply moving, but highly disturbing, Jerusalem Post column by this paper's editor-in-chief David Horovitz in late February 2008 (When Jewish communities lose their voices), which dealt with rising anti-Semitism in Venezuela, stoked by Hugo Chavez, reminded me of my attempt to draw attention to the precarious situation of Venezuela's Jews and Chavez's state-sponsored anti-Semitic campaign. A little over a year before David published his column, I found myself in the position of the messenger who is attacked for blowing the whistle on a reporter's anti-Semitic article. I had uncovered a journalist writing freelance articles for the main German Jewish paper while simultaneously filing an anti-Jewish article for a hardcore anti-Israeli leftist German daily.

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Blogging from Germany

The Jerusalem Post's News Editor, Amir Mizroch, is currently in Germany for the German-Israeli Young Leaders Exchange 2008 with 10 other people from Israel to explore German-Israeli relations.

Read their group blog to get a glimpse of their experiences around Germany,  the program and each other.

Amir Mizroch writes his own blog at Forecast Highs where he's also written about the program.

Skydiving for Israel, Pt. 2

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles.

Last week I wrote about some of the gimmicks Hillel leaders were using to attract Jewish students on US campuses to Judaism and Israel. I focused on skydiving with an Israeli flag, something I found to be rather wasteful, considering the level of political activism displayed by anti-Israeli groups on some campuses.

Stars talk investment, not charity, at GA

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles

It was perhaps the strangest of panels at the UJC General Assembly in LA this year, but also one of the most important, and definitely one of the most interesting.

While most other panels and sessions at this year's Israel-focused GA dealt with American Jewish aid and donations to Israel, President and CEO of the Leumi Group Galia Maor moderated a star-studded panel on "Investing in Israel", aimed at promoting US Jewish investment in the Jewish state. Maor made a point of frequently asking her panelists if what motivated them to invest in Israel was Zionism, purely economic reasons, or a mixture of both.

Good for the non-Jews too

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles

This is a story that broke during the war, and it came up again today at the GA. It's about the UJC's Israel Emergency Campaign [IEC], which raised about $334 million from American Jewish Federations for emergency aid and reconstruction to Israel over this past summer. At some stage during the planning of the allocation of the funds that the UJC was going to distribute to Israel, UJC leadership made a decision that non-Jewish Israelis living in the north would also be included in the aid package.

Bielski's OK

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles

It's been a long two days for me at the GA. On Sunday, the Jewish Agency was upset with me for my Skydiving for Israel blog entry in which I questioned the usefulness of skydiving with an Israeli flag as a means of attracting US Jewish students to Hillel on campuses. I got quite a bit of flak from the JA for that, and quite a lot of support and agreement from just about everybody else here.

Do Jews have a future in America?

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles.

"One day, the penny will drop for American Jews and they will realize they have no future as Jews in the US due to assimilation and intermarriage. Assimilation is unstoppable and inevitable in a country of this size and with such a mobile population. We have to get them to move to Israel, and then Ariel Sharon's vision of 1 million olim from America will come true," Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski told me at a meeting in New York on Friday.

"So are American Jews fighting a losing battle to stay Jewish?" I ask Bielski.

The Jews of DC

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles.

I just spent two interesting days in Washington meeting representatives of the UJC and other prominent Jews in the DC area. First, a few observations about DC Jews: [Numbers given to me by the Washington Jewish Federation]

My first face-to-face with organized American Jewry

The Jerusalem Post news editor is on a trip to the United States to cover the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles

Most American Jews are not Orthodox, in the Israeli Jewish sense of the word. Many of them are Reform Jews. United Jewish Communities officials say they find it hard to raise funds from the Reform communities because official Israeli policy negates their existence as Jews.