Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 326 - 350 of 477
TEL AVIV (JTA)-On one hand, most Israelis say their financial situation is good and getting better. On the other hand, they're worried they won't be able to provide for their children. On one hand, they want significantly more government spending in a wide range of public services. On the other hand, they say they pay too many taxes. These are among the confused results of a wide-ranging economic survey obtained by JTA ahead of its publication Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute think... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-For a leader often accused of not wanting to talk peace with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sure does a lot of talking about wanting to talk to the Palestinians. In a series of three statements this month, Netanyahu repeatedly stressed the need for peace with the Palestinians. He called the peace process one of his highest priorities and hinted that a renewal of talks might be underway. Responding to a question about the peace process on Twitter on... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-On an army base in northern Israel, a scrawny nerd with glasses shakily patrols in the dead of night. Suddenly he's ambushed by a group of militants in kaffiyehs, and he's forced to fight for his life, using everything from a gun to a knife to a desk lamp, until he's left with blood dripping down his face. This isn't the most recent flare-up in the Israeli terror wave. It's a scene from the recent horror film "Freak Out," starring Itay Zvolon-who is famous in Israel for a... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The Israeli Supreme Court decision on Jewish conversion changes almost nothing. But down the line, it could change a lot. Under the March 31 ruling, the state of Israel must recognize Jewish conversions performed in private Orthodox conversion courts not run by its Chief Rabbinate. A network of such courts, called Giyur Kahalacha, or "conversion by Jewish law," began operating last year. The ruling concerned whether three people who had converted in non-Rabbinate courts could... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-At least 21 people were injured in a bus bombing in Jerusalem, police said, in the first such attack in Israel in years. A city bus exploded and went up in flames Monday evening, April 18, on a major thoroughfare in the southern end of the capital. The blast set a second bus and a car nearby on fire. Two people were seriously injured in the attack, with seven moderately injured and 12 lightly injured. An explosive device was planted in the rear half of the bus, which was stopped... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-During the five-plus years of Syria's civil war, Israel has striven to stay neutral-supporting neither the government of President Bashar Assad nor the rebels, and certainly not the Islamic State. But on one issue, senior Israeli politicians have gladly taken sides: Israel keeping the Golan Heights. Facing reports of an international call for Israel to leave the territory as part of a settlement of the Syrian crisis, the Israeli Cabinet met Sunday on the Golan. The unprecedented... Full story
KFAR SABA, Israel (JTA)-One family lost their son in late July 2014. The other lost theirs on the first of August in the same year. One family has lobbied the United Nations and crossed an ocean in hopes of bringing their son's remains back. The other mostly stays home. One family is sure their son is dead. The other is plagued by uncertainty. But one thing unites the Goldin and Shaul families: Of the 67 sets of Israeli parents who lost sons in the Gaza War two years ago, only theirs have not... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It began as an all-too-common story: A Palestinian assailant in the contested West Bank city of Hebron stabs and wounds an Israeli soldier. Israeli forces shoot him dead. But hours after the incident Thursday, a political and moral firestorm engulfed Israel. A video showed a soldier executing the already incapacitated attacker. One day later, after condemnation from the highest reaches of Israel's government, a second video appeared to show that the attacker might have still... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country. That's one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center. Coming just three years after Pew's much-discussed study of Jewish-Americans, the Israel study depicts a country divided by religion and ethnicity, where Jews of opposing religious outlooks rarely associate and marriages that cross the Jewish-Arab divide... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, one statistic stood out: nearly half of Israel's Jews support expelling the country's Arabs. The Pew Research Center's study of Israelis' attitudes, which had its findings released Tuesday, had asked respondents whether they agreed that "Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel." Forty-eight percent of Israeli Jews agreed, while 46 percent did not. Among self-described right-wing Jews, 72 percent... Full story
PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA)-Only after Yonatan Azriaev grabbed the terrorist's arms and threw him against a wall of soft drinks did he think he was about to die. Azriaev, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect, had been handing out religious pamphlets in the open-air market here when he stepped inside a shop at around 4 p.m. Tuesday hoping to give one to the cashier. Then he felt sharp blows to his back and shoulders. Feeling like he was punched, Azriaev said he figured he was being attacked by... Full story
HULA VALLEY, Israel (JTA)-Thousands of cranes sit in pairs in a field here, their outlines approaching the horizon. Then, all at once, they take flight, a cloud of black-and-white feathers filling the sky. Shai Agmon isn't interested in most of these. All he cares about is one pair near the front, slightly shorter than the rest. Most of the birds are common cranes, but these two are demoiselle cranes-a rare find in these parts. "They can't sleep in the desert and can't stop in southern Israel,"... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-After years of false starts, Israeli negotiators went to Geneva last week for talks aimed at ending a long-running conflict with a regional adversary. It's not the Palestinians. It's Turkey. Once a key partner of Israel, Turkey in recent years has been a thorn in its side. It supports Israel's foes, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often uses international forums as opportunities to slam the Jewish state-particularly its treatment of Palestinians. But in December,... Full story
KFAR CHABAD, Israel (JTA)-In an otherwise deserted field at the center of this rural Israeli village, a Brooklyn brownstone presents an incongruous sight. If it looks like it would fit perfectly in Crown Heights, that's because it already does. The three-story apartment house topped by three gables is a brick-for-brick reconstruction of 770 Eastern Parkway, the storied headquarters of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and his Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The address is... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Israel’s government approved a compromise to expand the non-Orthodox Jewish prayer section of the Western Wall, putting to rest the decades-long fight between Women of the Wall and Israel’s haredi Orthodox religious establishment. The deal achieves what had been an elusive goal: an interdenominational consensus on Judaism’s holiest site with official recognition. The non-Orthodox prayer section at the wall will become much larger and more accessible. But haredi control of the Orthodox section will also be solidified, though... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Its backers call it a victory for transparency. Opponents say it smacks of dictatorship. Either way, a new bill requiring certain Israeli nongovernmental organizations to publicly declare their foreign government funding is moving toward passage after it was approved by a Cabinet committee on Sunday. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who proposed the bill, said it uncovers foreign meddling in Israeli affairs. "The transparency law, which passed the ministerial committee for... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It has the highest poverty rate among affluent democracies, the fourth-worst income inequality and the seventh-lowest government spending on social services. Those are among the dismal conclusions of the State of the Nation report, an annual set of papers on Israel's economy and society released last week by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, a socioeconomic think tank. There is some good news sprinkled in, but the prognosis is mostly grim. Here are six figures that... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The hardest part was loading the assault rifle. That's not because he was a newbie, unaccustomed to the workings of a Tavor rifle. Rather, 1st Sgt. Izzy Ezagui had lost an arm in combat. He'd overcome seemingly insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles and got a posting on a base in the Negev. And so his next challenge began: He had to prove he could still fight. Ezagui is the only combat soldier with an amputation to serve as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces reserves. For him,... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The chain of events is familiar: Israel's security forces detain a terrorism suspect, deny him access to his lawyer and interrogate him. The detainee alleges that he was tortured during the interrogation. His lawyers decry the abuses and are backed up by Israeli human rights groups. Supporters of the detainee riot in the street, injuring Israeli forces. The Israeli government denies the charges and condemns the rioters. It's a progression that has occurred time and again with... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Sitting in front of a computer at the center of Israel's largest army base, a soldier stares at the screen, moving pixel by pixel over a satellite photograph, picking out details and finding patterns. A few years ago N.S., who has autism, thought the Israel Defense Forces wouldn't take him. N.S., who like other soldiers could not give his name due to IDF protocol, spent his childhood in mainstream classroom settings, where he had focused on studying film and Arabic, but expected... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—During last week’s climate summit outside Paris, the 195 delegate countries—including Israel—committed to implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improving their goals every five years. The aim: Keep Earth from warming more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. “This demands international discipline, which is not easy, but for the good of humanity, I hope that it will be found,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the climate talks, told his Cabinet on Sunday. “It... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It was 2 a.m. when Illana Attali's friend's screams woke her. Her friend had just heard about the series of coordinated terror attacks on Paris-a wave of violence that would kill at least 129 people on Friday. A Paris native who moved to Tel Aviv five years ago, Attali, 31, had been on a desert hike with two friends and had turned off her phone. When she first heard about the attacks, she thought it was just a bad dream. All three friends began sobbing and decided to head back to... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Some 100,000 people joined together in central Tel Aviv on Saturday to pay tribute to slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but they were divided over what exactly they were rallying for. The demonstration, which marked the 20th anniversary of Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist incensed by his government's efforts to reach a peace accord with the Palestinians, was called "Remembering the murder, fighting for democracy"-a nod to the slaying's universal lesson of respecting... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem prior to the establishment of Israel, for inspiring Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe, he meant to show the long history of Palestinian anti-Semitism. Regardless of his intent, Netanyahu was hit with a tsunami of backlash from historians and politicians who accused him of distorting history. Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League and the German government have all criticized... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The assassin's bullet that killed former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago on Nov. 4 also stunted the center-left party that championed peace: Rabin's once-mighty Labor. In the two decades since Rabin's slaying at the hands of a Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir-the killer opposed a peace deal with the Palestinians-Labor has fallen from being Israel's founding party and moderate-left flagship to competing among a handful of opposition factions, a perennial loser in... Full story
