US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman stand next to the dedication plaque at the US embassy in Jerusalem on March 21, 2019.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Biden administration’s intended reopening of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem is “illegal,” telling co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein in an upcoming episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” that President Joe Biden lacks the legal authority to reopen the consulate, which handles Palestinian affairs, given the existing embassy’s presence.“I think it’s illegal,” Pompeo said. “We don’t have consulates in the same city we have embassies anywhere in the world.”

Background: The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem was closed in 2018 following the decision by the Trump administration to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At the time, Pompeo announced that Palestinian relations would be handled by a special affairs unit within the embassy. In May, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced the State Department would reopen a Jerusalem consulate. Asked if a future Republican president would reverse such an opening, Pompeo, considered a possible 2024 presidential candidate, called the issue non-partisan. “I think every president needs to commit to it.”

Wrong signal: “It’s unnecessary and counterproductive, and I think, frankly, sends the wrong signal to the Palestinians as well,” the former secretary of state continued. “It signals to them [that it’s] back to business as usual, back to the kleptocracy, and ‘pay to slay’ and all the horrors that the Palestinian leadership and the West Bank [has] imposed on its own people as well,” he said, invoking a term used for the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of individuals who commit terror attacks against Israelis.

Read more here.

The full interview with Pompeo will be available on Tuesday.

Bonus: Pompeo will travel to Israel next week to inaugurate former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s new peace institute, The Friedman Center for Peace through Strength, and also to participate in the Jerusalem Post’s 10th annual Diplomatic Conference. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will also be at both events.

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court is once again delving into the legal complexities surrounding Nazi-looted art in a new case — its third in the past two terms — hinging on whether state or federal law should be applied, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Backstory: The Court announced last Thursday that it would take up the case of Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation. The case, which began in 2005, involves a painting by Jewish French Impressionist Camille Pissarro that was looted by the Nazis in 1939. The piece now resides in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, a state-owned museum in Madrid, Spain. Spain has refused to return the artwork to the descendants of its pre-Holocaust owner.

State or federal: Federal district and circuit courts in California have ruled in favor of the museum. The Cassirer family’s attorneys, led by legal heavyweight David Boies, argue in a brief that, under California law, the Spanish museum could never acquire legal possession of the stolen artwork. Under Spanish law, however, the museum has gained a legal right to the stolen work by holding possession of it for a sufficient length of time.

The right thing: “The painting was indisputably owned by the Cassirer family and indisputably stolen by the Nazis in 1939. And now you have a democratic ally of the United States refusing to honor its international commitments and do the obvious thing, which is to return the painting to the family,” Sam Dubbin, another lawyer representing the Cassirer family who is experienced in Holocaust restitution issues, told Jewish Insider. “We’re gratified that the Supreme Court is taking up the case.”

Flip side: In a statement, Nixon Peabody, the firm representing the art museum, argued that even if the Supreme Court decides that state law should apply, the ultimate outcome will be the same. “At the conclusion of the case, regardless of which choice-of-law test is applied, the Foundation anticipates that its ownership of the painting — already recognized by the district court and the Ninth Circuit — will be affirmed,” the statement read.

Read more here.

Zebulon Simantov reads his old tatered hebrew prayer book as he celebrates the Jewish New Year feast of Rosh Hashanah September 18, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Zebulon Simentov, until recently the last Jewish resident of Afghanistan, has been living in migratory limbo since he fled the Taliban early last month, finding refuge in an undisclosed neighboring country as he awaits instruction from his handlers. Despite some uncertainty about his future, Simentov sounded relatively sanguine in a phone conversation with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel on Friday, three weeks after vacating the ramshackle synagogue in Kabul he called home for decades. “My life is not in threat anymore,” he said in Persian through an interpreter. “I feel a little bit safer than when I was in Afghanistan.”

Big Apple or bust: Speaking from a safe house, where he is now in hiding, Simentov said his “final plan” is to settle in New York. “Everything is exciting in New York — the cars, the whiskey, the people,” he said. “Everything.” A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) confirmed to JI that his office is working on Simentov’s case. But for the moment, it seems more likely that Simentov will end up in Israel, according to Moti Kahana, the American-Israeli businessman who orchestrated the evacuation. “He would like to make it to New York tomorrow,” Kahana said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

Israel via Dubai: Kahana said he had spoken with Simentov late last week and advised him to go to Israel, where Simentov’s sister as well as his ex-wife and children live. He is currently preparing for Simentov’s departure to the Israeli embassy in Dubai, where officials are expecting him, likely within the next week or so. Kahana estimates that Simentov will be required to wait for just a few days while his papers are processed, and then make his way to Israel. There, he can apply for an Israeli passport after 90 days.

‘Real tragedy’: During his time in Kabul, many journalists paid visits to Simentov’s synagogue residence, revealing tidbits about his eccentric existence. He watched TV on Shabbat, kept a pet partridge and slaughtered chickens in accordance with Jewish dietary law. Somewhat infamously, he was once imprisoned by the Taliban for bickering excessively with another fellow Jew. Such details have imbued Simentov’s plight with a vaguely screwball quality, even if they obscure a gloomier story. “It’s kind of tragic and sad,” said Sara Koplik, the author of a book about Afghanistan’s Jewish history. “There’s real tragedy.”

One-way ticket: Simentov said he had no run-ins with the Taliban before he left Afghanistan last month, but he looked back on their previous reign with a sense of despondence. “During the Taliban it was a bitter life,” he said, particularly for women. He has no plans to return to Afghanistan, nor does he envision any Jews settling in the country again after so many years of turmoil. “Never, never,” he told JI. “I don’t think that any Jews want to go there and to live there. I don’t think so. It’s probably over.”

Read the full story here.

Bonus: Author Dara Horn, whose recent book People Love Dead Jews explores antisemitism around the world, writes in The New York Times about what happens when entire Jewish populations leave — or are forced out — of countries. “Nostalgic stories about Last Jews mask a much larger and darker reality about societies that were once ethnic and religious mosaics, but are now home to almost no one but Arab Muslims, Lithuanian Catholics or Han Chinese. It costs little to wax nostalgic about departed Jews when one lives in a place where diversity, rather than being a living human challenge, is a fairy tale from the past.”

Mark Oppenheimer

In the year after 11 Jews were gunned down during a Saturday morning Shabbat prayer service in Pittsburgh’s tight-knit Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Tablet’s Mark Oppenheimer traveled to Pittsburgh 32 times. He came armed only with pen, paper and a tape recorder. The result is his new book, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, which chronicles how individuals in Squirrel Hill reacted, adapted, mourned and carried on in that first year, culminating in a portrait of a community whose “special qualities did make it uniquely resilient in the aftermath of a mass killing,” Oppenheimer told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.

Quintessentially American: The book, in stores on Wednesday, is not meant to be a chronicle of the attack that occurred nearly three years ago. It’s a history and an ethnography of what Oppenheimer believes is a quintessentially American neighborhood. “I think that anyone who’s interested in how cities have become vital hubs for immigrants and for people who want a piece of the American dream will really appreciate what Squirrel Hill has to offer,” Oppenheimer argued.

Coming together: Pittsburgh has “a long history of being a pretty tolerant place,” said Oppenheimer. “What you saw in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting was a lot of people stepping forward as fellow citizens to reassure us that they are part of that fabric.” In the days after the attack, members of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh raised more than $70,000 for the synagogue, and local Muslims helped distribute the money for funeral expenses and medical bills.

Read the full interview here.