Last week, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi made headlines with her bold visit to Taiwan. Sarah Nachimson considers the island’s small Jewish community which numbers about 700 to 800 people:

After Taiwan’s first resident rabbi, Ephraim Einhorn, passed away on September 14, 2021, at one-hundred-and-three, the London-born Leon Fenster took over as lead ḥazan of the Taiwan Jewish Community, one of two centers of Taiwanese Jewish life, the other being the Chabad Taipei founded in 2011. Einhorn, who moved from Austria to the United Kingdom at fourteen years old and lost his parents to the Nazis in the Holocaust, earned his doctorate and rabbinic ordination from a now-defunct London yeshiva.

Einhorn arrived in Taipei in 1975 as a financial advisor to a Kuwaiti trade delegation, and began officiating at bar-mitzvah ceremonies and leading high-holiday services in the region. While he was the first rabbi known to live in Taiwan, the Jewish community there, according to Fenster, first began to grow in the 1950s when Jewish expats stationed at a local military base, most of them American, joined with the tiny non-military Jewish community in the city of Taipei.

Today, . . . the largest demographic in the expat community is American Jews, but some community members are also Taiwanese as well as from South America, Israel, and Europe.

Yesterday, President Biden reportedly met with his advisers to discuss how to achieve a breakthrough in hostage negotiations. Meir Ben Shabbat takes a closer look at what the terrorists themselves are saying:

Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s deputy chief in Gaza, reiterated that this issue is merely one of several demands his group has put forward as conditions for a deal. “We stress that any agreement must encompass a full cessation of hostilities, complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah crossing [which allow Hamas to smuggle weapons and supplies from Egypt], unimpeded return of displaced persons to their homes, aid and relief for Palestinians, Gaza’s reconstruction, and a prisoner exchange,” al-Hayya stated.

This stance isn’t new. What stood out in its presentation was the self-assurance displayed by the senior Hamas official, during a week when he and his associates were expected to be on edge, fearing repercussions for the killing of six hostages. However, the reaction to this in Israel and the United States prompted an opposite response from them. From their perspective, not only did they avoid consequences for the heinous act, but through it, they managed to escalate tensions and internal disagreements in Israel, while also prompting Washington to consider presenting a framework defined as a “final offer, without room for negotiation.

Hamas assumes that a final American proposal will inevitably come at Israel’s expense. The primary pressure to reach an agreement is already being applied to Israeli leadership. Hamas faces no consequences for prolonging the process, and so long as it holds hostages, it can always resume negotiations from where they left off.