57
76
Facebook
the year in
review
Vicky Escobar
and Romi Charur
were married at
a synagogue in
Argentina.
continued from page 103
support of David Duke after earlier
claiming he knew nothing about the
former Ku Klux Klan leader’s views. In
response, the Anti-Defamation League
announces it will be providing all
presidential candidates with informa-
tion about hate groups so they can bet-
ter determine which endorsements to
accept and reject.
MARCH 2016
Jewish comedian Garry Shandling dies
in Los Angeles at 66. Shandling wrote
for several sitcoms before starring in
his own shows, including The Larry
Sanders Show, which aired on HBO
in the 1990s and earned Shandling 18
Emmy Award nominations.
Venice launches a yearlong com-
memoration of the 500th anniver-
sary of the world’s first official Jewish
ghetto. Among the many events sched-
uled for the anniversary is an appear-
ance by Jewish U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who pre-
sides over a mock trial of Shylock, the
Jewish moneylender character from
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Microsoft pulls its artificial intel-
ligence tweeting robot after it posts
several anti-Semitic comments. The
software company had launched the
so-called chatbot as an experiment but
quickly paused the endeavor after the
controversial tweets, several of which
expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
A Pew study of Israelis finds that
48 percent of the country’s Jews agree
that Arabs should be “expelled or
transferred” out of the country. The
finding, the most shocking in a wide-
ranging study of Israeli attitudes,
is based on interviews with 5,600
Israelis conducted between October
2014 and May 2015.
Israeli leaders condemn the actions
of a solider caught on video fatally
shooting an injured Palestinian terrorist
who was lying on the ground. “What
happened today in Hebron does not
represent the values of the IDF,” Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says fol-
lowing the release of the video, shot by
the human rights group B’Tselem. The
soldier is charged with manslaughter in
May and later goes on trial.
Thousands of delegates attend
the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee’s annual policy conference
in Washington, featuring appearances
by most contenders for the presidency
— most controversially Donald Trump,
who sparks much talk of protests and
walkouts in the days leading up to
the conclave. Speaking the morning
after Trump’s address to the gathering,
AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus issues
a rare apology for Trump’s attacks on
President Barack Obama, saying the
group is “deeply disappointed that so
many people applauded a sentiment
that we neither agree with or con-
done.” Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and
John Kasich also address the confer-
ence, while Bernie Sanders issues a
written statement to the group from
the campaign trail.
Merrick Garland, the chief of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia, is nominated to replace
Antonin Scalia, who died in February,
on the Supreme Court. In his accep-
tance speech, Garland emotionally
recalls his grandparents who had fled
anti-Semitism for better lives in the
United States. Republicans vow not
to consider his nomination during
President Obama’s last year in office.
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder
and CEO of Facebook, is the world’s
richest Jew, according to Forbes. The
magazine’s annual list of the world’s
billionaires shows Zuckerberg surpass-
ing Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to claim
the top spot among Jews.
2
APRIL 2016
Days ahead of the New York primary,
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton
engage in a heated exchange over
Israel at a debate in Brooklyn, with
4
the Vermont senator accusing the
former secretary of state of neglecting
the Palestinians and reiterating his
charge that Israel used disproportion-
ate force in Gaza in 2014. Clinton says
she worked hard to bring peace to the
region as secretary of state. Clinton
won the primary in New York, home to
the country’s largest Jewish population,
58-42 percent.
A majority of professors at Oberlin
College sign a letter condemning the
“anti-Semitic Facebook posts” by a fel-
low faculty member. The letter, signed
by 174 professors, does not name Joy
Karega, the rhetoric and composition
5
professor whose posts, including one
accusing Israel and “Rothschild-led
bankers” of responsibility for downing
an airliner over Ukraine in 2014, drew
widespread attention.
Bernie Sanders suspends his
Jewish outreach director after revela-
tions of social media posts that used
profanity to describe Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Simone
Zimmerman, a former activist with
6
J Street, reportedly called Netanyahu
a “manipulative asshole,” though she
later changed the expletive to “politi-
cian.”
The first same-sex Jewish wedding
ceremony in Latin America is held at
a synagogue in Argentina. Some 300
guests attend the wedding of Victoria
Escobar and Romina Charur at the
NCI Emanu El Temple in Buenos
Aires.
continued on page 106
104 September 29 • 2016
1
3
1: The main square of the Venetian Ghetto.
2: Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in 2016.
3: Merrick Garland is nominated to the U.S. Supreme
Court in March. Republicans refuse to give him a
hearing. 4: Microsoft pulls its artificial intelligence
tweeting robot after it posts several anti-Semitic
comments. 5: Israeli soldiers remove the body of a
Palestinian man who stabbed a soldier in the West
Bank city of Hebron, March 24, 2016. 6: Bernie
Sanders and Hillary Clinton engage in a heated
exchange over Israel at a debate in Brooklyn.