New York/Prague, Aug 17 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman will receive an award from the U.S. Gershon Jacobson Jewish Continuity Foundation (GJCF) at a gala evening to be held by The Algemeiner paper in New York on September 18, CTK has learnt from the organisation’s website.
Zeman will go to New York to attend a session of the U.N. General Assembly starting a day later, on September 19. U.S. presidents usually give a speech at the beginning of the session.
The foundation, called after Gershon Jacobson, founder of The Algemeiner, orginally a Yiddish-language paper, bestows its awards on personalities defending the interests of Jews.
In 2015, the daily praised Zeman’s long-term support for Israel and listed him among 100 influential personalities in this respect.
In the same year, American Jews appreciated Zeman for his statement “I am a Jew” at a conference of another Jewish organisation, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), paraphrasing the famous sentence in German “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berlin inhabitant), uttered by U.S. president John Kennedy at the newly built Berlin Wall in 1963.
Zeman’s statement is a central motive of the promotional spot in which the organisers invite people to the gala evening.
Along with Zeman, artist Yaacov Agam and a couple of businesspeople a philanthropists, David and Mona Sterling, will be awarded.
The Jewish paper will present its annual awards for the fourth time this year. Two years ago, the award went to real estate magnate and current U.S. President Donald Trump.
Zeman was striving for a meeting with Trump after his election head of state last year. He wanted to connect it with the award-giving ceremony in the spring.
However, the visit, announced by the Presidential Office, did not take place and the award-giving was postponed until September.
