Ron Kampeas

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Dec 28, 2024, 9:38 AM

The blessing and burden of bearing first witness to Jewish history

A portrait of Ron Kampeas by sketch artist Emily Goff. (©Emily N Goff, 2023, all rights reserved.)

A longtime JTA journalist who showed up to report on some of our darkest moments ponders the impulse to turn away from Jewish tragedy

Jul 8, 2022, 6:41 PM

Yehuda Meshi Zahav: A life lived in Jerusalem’s bright light ended in darkness

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, the chairman of Israel's Zaka rescue unit poses outside his mother shiva, in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, Jan. 19, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

In an obituary, you want an arc, a life well-lived. You want anger to melt into kindness, but some furies are resistant to kindness; they will not dissolve

May 15, 2020, 3:05 AM

The Trump scandals, season finale

Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump. (Aaron P. Bernstein; Brendan Smialowski / AFP both via Getty Images)

With the exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, we'll be seeing a rehash of the Jewish and Middle East related subplots from 2017

Sep 15, 2018, 10:19 PM

How an encounter between Jews and Palestinians underlines the promise and failures of Oslo

Illustrative. The Palestinian side of the separation wall in Bethlehem has graffiti in Arabic and English, June 25, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)

Both sides suffer from physical and intellectual claustrophobia. Just saying hello is fraught with meaning.

May 11, 2017, 11:22 PM

The day the newscast died

Channel 1 simply was Israel: austere, serious, faithful, and with the camaraderie and purpose that meant ‘home’

Mar 13, 2017, 9:29 AM

Lies I told about my dog

The author’s dog, Zevy, who died of cancer. (Ron Kampeas)

Grieving for his beloved Israeli mutt, starting with the very first lie: 'We're not getting a dog'

Oct 19, 2016, 2:47 PM

A Bob Dylan cover offers solace in distressing times

Taking refuge from toxic politics in a version of 'Wagon Wheel' created by an ethnic mashup of American talent [VIDEO]

Aug 3, 2016, 3:36 PM

Republican Jewish Coalition’s needless hyperbole

The RJC flag burning ad should've targeted Democratic Israel ambivalence, instead of the rogue element

Jun 23, 2016, 11:54 AM

Abbas’s ‘humongous fail’? Not really

Wait a minute -- you want the PA leader to acknowledge Zionism, and then he does, and then you mock him?

Jun 18, 2016, 4:31 PM

How Israel stays a ‘well-regulated militia’ with so many guns around

Soldiers attending the funeral of Alon Albert Govberg, who was killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem, Oct. 14, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

The secret of how the Jewish state stays a ‘well-regulated militia’ while having so many guns around

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About Me

Ron Kampeas is Washington bureau chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.