This week Jews throughout the world will celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, traditionally a time for giving thanks for the bounty of the harvest. Named for the sukkah, the temporary dwelling in which farmers in ancient Israel lived while harvesting their crops, Sukkot also recalls the fragile dwellings in which the Israelites lived during their…
Rosh Hashanah is an ideal time to celebrate change and renewal. Along with holiday wishes, we would like to share some wonderful news of a New Beginning for the New Year: Jewish World Watch is pleased to announce Susan Freudenheim as our new Executive Director. Susan has been Executive Editor of the Jewish Journal since 2011…
This weekend, our Director of Advocacy and Programs, Mike Brand, will be traveling to Washington, DC for the Coalition of Advocates for South Sudan’s (CASS) second annual conference that is taking place on Sunday September 25th. This year’s theme is Unity and Partnership: Supporting a Just and Sustainable Peace in South Sudan. CASS’s membership is…
This weekend we lost a giant. Elie Wiesel passed away at the age of 87. The Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner may be best known for his widely read book “Night,” the story of his time in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Wiesel was not only a Holocaust survivor, but an outspoken advocate for…
Today, 120 members of Congress called on President Obama to make Sudan a foreign policy priority, hold Sudanese leaders accountable, and protect civilians from ongoing violence. Among other recommendations, the bipartisan letter included a request to enhance the current sanctions regime to target high-level officials in Sudan, and to counter gold as a major source…
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been plagued by violence, corruption, and poor governance for decades. Since the Second Congo War in 1998, conflict in eastern DRC has claimed over 5.4 million lives, and displaced more than three million people. Various militia groups and government forces are both responsible for committing heinous crimes…
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, took control of Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Over the course of the next four years, the Khmer Rouge murdered nearly two million people while attempting to establish a strictly Communist society. The Khmer Rouge sought to transform Cambodia into…
In 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended Sudan’s decades-long civil war and provided the southerners an option to vote to secede from Sudan. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent country with the support of the United States. Two years after independence growing tensions within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)…
Sudan has undergone two civil wars spanning decades, resulting in an estimated 2 million deaths and 3.1 million displaced. In 2003, rebels from the western region of Sudan, known as Darfur, rose up against the government in Khartoum, claiming inequitable treatment of the “African” Sudanese population. The government responded by recruiting the Janjaweed, an Arab…
Today we mark the 22nd anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. April 6, 1994 began 100 days of horrific violence and slaughter that would leave nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead. Looking back at the Rwandan genocide, we are reminded of the countless warning signs that went unheeded, the propaganda that poisoned the minds…