On the day the Russian army invaded Ukraine last month, Anna Niedźwiedź, a citizen of neighboring Poland, noticed a post on Facebook requesting shelter for a family from Kyiv that was fleeing the violence. She responded immediately. 

“I sent a message saying that I have space in my house, and they are very welcome,” the Krakow resident told Jewish Insider in a phone interview. “I then called my husband to tell him.”

With an eye to Riyadh, Israeli entrepreneur and investor Erel Margalit spent four days in Bahrain last week exploring the Gulf state’s advances and aspirations in the world of financial technology, or fintech, as well as assessing the possibility of opening one of his innovation centers in the country. He believes that such developments could form a tech bridge to Bahrain’s neighbor, Saudi Arabia, which Israel has long been hoping will be the next country to join the Abraham Accords normalization agreements. 

“I was surprised by the level of entrepreneurship in Bahrain; those regulating the country are using ideas and concepts like a startup,” Margalit, founder and executive chairman of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) – one of Israel’s oldest and most established venture capital companies – told Jewish Insider in an exclusive interview on Saturday.

Days after the director of Amnesty International’s USA branch was met with criticism by lawmakers and Jewish groups for his comments about American Jewish attitudes toward Israel, Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke with the organization’s top official, as well as the leader of Human Rights Watch, both of which have levelled accusations of “apartheid” at Israel.

Blinken’s conversation with Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard and HRW executive director Ken Roth occurred after State Department officials rejected an Amnesty report last month that labeled Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid, saying the report applied a “double standard” to the “world’s only Jewish state.” 

Manuel Casanova, one of two Democratic primary candidates challenging Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in New York’s redrawn 16th Congressional District, told Jewish Insider that he is backing out of the race and endorsing Westchester County legislator Vedat Gashi.

“I am going to step down and I am going to be supporting Vedat,” Casanova, a former political strategist and businessman in New Rochelle, said of Gashi. “I think he is going to be able to put together the coalition that needs to be there to win this primary.”

In a lengthy letter sent to its membership on Friday morning, AIPAC defended its first round of more than 100 congressional endorsements issued by its new PAC, in particular three dozen Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election.

“This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends,” the letter, authored by AIPAC President Betsy Berns Korn and CEO Howard Kohr and obtained by Jewish Insider, reads. “The one thing that guarantees Israel’s ability to defend itself is the enduring support of the United States. When we launched our political action committee last year, we decided that we would base decisions about political contributions on only one thing: whether a political candidate supports the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

With the application period for the 2022 Nonprofit Security Grant Program expected to begin in the coming weeks, Department of Homeland Security officials told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Wednesday that they’re working to conduct greater outreach to “underserved and marginalized communities” that may lack awareness about the program.

“We know that there are parts of the country, there are particular communities that have not accessed this program, our analysis has shown that is not simply a matter of them being non-competitive, it’s that they’re not competing at all,” Christopher Logan, deputy assistant administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Grant Programs Directorate, said. “And we need to solve that problem.”

Thirteen Senate Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday seeking to block the Biden administration from withdrawing sanctions that prohibit nuclear cooperation with Iran.

According to a statement from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the administration notified Congress last month that it would provide a waiver for international cooperation, including between Iran and Russia on seven non-military nuclear activities, and said these projects would be valued at $10 billion.

Knesset Member Nir Barkat, who has aspirations of succeeding former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the leader of Israel’s Likud party, said on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. that he believes Israel should be taking a more defined stance in support of Ukraine and decried the current coalition government’s efforts to act as a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.

“I said from day one we should have taken sides with the United States and the Western world and be very, very clear which side we’re on,” Barkat told Jewish Insider earlier this week, during his fourth visit to Washington in eight months. “We belong to the Western world and if it was up to me, I would not play that mid[dle]-role, but take a side.”