Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — An Israeli low-cost airline is planning to launch flights between Israel and New York this winter, ending the wartime monopoly on the popular route by Israel’s flagship carrier El Al, the Israeli Ministry of Transportation said on Wednesday. The move, which envisions four weekly flights on Israir from Tel Aviv to Newark Liberty International Airport, comes at a time when flights on U.S. carriers to and from Tel Aviv remain suspended due to the security situation, and as El Al is facing an investigation for price gouging on tickets due...
(JNS) — The son of the late American evangelist, Billy Graham, heads a list of Israel’s top Christian Allies around the world, recognized for their unwavering faith-based support for the Jewish state. The fifth annual list released Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Israel Allies Foundation comes at a time when evangelical Christian support for Israel has served as a bulwark and counterweight against international criticism of Israel for the yearlong war against Hamas in Gaza. The American evangelist and missionary Franklin Graham, 72, of...
(JNS) - RISHON LEZION, Israel - When the young American social media consultant volunteering in Israel saw a handsome IDF soldier recuperating in the hospital rehabilitation ward, she offered him a Fruit Roll-Up. Miami-born Danielle Yablonka, 23, was tired of standing and listening to the older women on her solidarity mission talking, and, eyeing a soldier sitting nearby, was sure he would welcome the snack. "Israelis are supposed to like everything American," she told JNS. But Daniel Kopylov,...
(JNS) — A Muslim political strategist from the United Arab Emirates and a Jewish entrepreneur based in Dubai are promoting the landmark Abraham Accords during a joint tour of Australia this week, seeking to combat antisemitism and spread Jewish-Arab coexistence. The unusual 10-day mission to Australia comes as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza enters its second year, with Jewish communities facing a sharp rise in antisemitism around the globe. “We are standing shoulder to shoulder and sending a message of Arab-Jewish solidarity,” Eitan N...
(JNS) — The U.S. should halt federal funding to universities that back antisemitism and incitement against Jewish students, and professors who voice such hate in their classrooms should be ousted from campus, the lieutenant governor of Texas said. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick spoke as the academic year opened in the United States after months of often violent and antisemitic anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses the previous year that stunned the American Jewish community in ways not seen World War II. “There is no room for terrorizing Jewish stu...
(JNS) - MAGHAR, Israel - After seven months fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza with his elite military reserve unit, 32-year-old Eyal Ghanam is now heading to the country's volatile northern border for a two-month stint. For Ghanam, a member of Israel's small and strongly patriotic Druze community, military service runs deep in the family; his father's 25-year Israel Defense Forces career saw him rise to become infantry brigade commander of the northern Gaza Strip before Israel's unilateral...
(JNS) — HAIFA—The rows of hospital beds with adjacent oxygen units line the underground parking lot. Four operating rooms, a maternity ward and a dialysis center are among the facilities that Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus, aka Rambam Medical Center, has set up three levels down in its parking garage. The largest hospital in northern Israel has created the biggest underground hospital in the world, and is gearing up for what could be an all-out war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The three-floor, $140 million Sammy Ofer Fortified Under...
(JNS) - MAJDAL SHAMS, Israel - The pictures of 12 smiling children line the shattered gate of a soccer field, above wreaths of flowers. The blackened remains of bicycles lie next to the bomb shelter the boys and girls were rushing to after a siren went off during their weekend game in this windswept Druze village in the Golan Heights. "Donated with love for the safety of the People of Israel," reads a sign on the shelter, pockmarked by the shrapnel from the Iranian-made Hezbollah rocket that...
(JNS) - American-Jewish actor Michael Rapaport said on Monday that the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, and the wave of antisemitism that it triggered across the United States, were deeply personal for him and enhanced his connection with Judaism. Rapaport spoke to JNS on the sidelines of the annual Pulse of Israel conference in Jerusalem, where he received the "Leadership of Zion Award" from the hands of CEO and founder Avi Abelow. The comedian has emerged as a leading voice for Israel in Hollywood, at a...
(JNS) - The lone Republican Jewish lawmaker in the Florida State legislature said Tuesday that he could never have imagined considering whether it was safe for Jews to live in the United States, even though the Sunshine State is the "gold standard" for fighting antisemitism. Randy Fine spoke after months of often violent antisemitic protests across the U.S. that have shaken American Jewry in ways not seen since World War II. "I would never have thought that I would live at a time when I would wo...
Sderot, Israel (JNS) - Israel is fighting against the enemies of the United States in a war orchestrated by Iran, helped by Russian intelligence and funded by money from China, said Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, in Israel on Monday. A former Republican presidential candidate known for her stalwart support for Israel, she spoke during a solidarity visit to communities near the Gaza Strip and just days after announcing that she would be v...
(JNS) - The Meisels did not know that their son was serving in Gaza when he was called up for reserve duty immediately after the outbreak of the war, but when the longtime volunteer medic fell in battle, they knew exactly how best to commemorate his memory: a bullet proof ambulance for Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service. Master Sgt. (res.) Nitai Meisels, 30, served in an elite tank unit. He was killed in December, during a mission to locate hostages in a Palestinian refugee camp in the...
(JNS) - The head of South Africa's second-largest church visiting Israel in solidarity with the Jewish state said Sunday that the South African government is out of sync with the people in its stance on the war with Hamas by supporting a terror organization. The unequivocal remarks by the South African Christian leader against the ruling African National Congress come just weeks before general elections in South Africa, which has emerged as one of Israel's most vocal critics in the world over...
(JNS) - "A farmer does not leave his land." Six months after losing his wife, his 15-year-old son and one of his legs in the Oct. 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, Avida Bachar is back on his land. Walking with a cane and a prosthetic leg after nearly half a year in the hospital, the 50-year-old farmer stares out at the avocado plantation in Kibbutz Be'eri, where he was born and which lies less than a mile from the border with Gaza. On Oct. 7, Bachar's wife and son...
(JNS) - A group of more than 20 parliamentarians from around the world will gather in Jerusalem this weekend, in the largest political solidarity mission to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre. The Christian lawmakers will add their voices to calls to dismantle UNRWA over its ties to Hamas terrorism and speak out against Iran as the chief origin of regional terrorism, and are expected to voice opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. The three-day Israel Allies Foundation Chairman's...
(JNS) - The head of a prominent group of American Christian media broadcasters urged members in the association to cease using the term "West Bank" when reporting about Israel's biblical heartland. The announcement by the National Religious Broadcasters during their annual Christian Media Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, comes amid an intense media war of narratives in reporting about Israel as the war against Hamas in Gaza rages for a fifth month. "NRB opposes the use of the erroneous term...
(JNS) — The Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has spurred a historic level of Jewish philanthropy, with the largest emergency fund set up when the war broke out alone raising nearly $800 million, the Jewish Federations of North America said on Monday. The surge in donations following the Hamas massacre that triggered the now four-month-old war created a huge surge in interest in giving to the Jewish state as it fights the Islamic terrorist group after years of decline in giving. “In these past months, we have witnessed our community comin...
(JNS) — The heads of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus on Feb. 7 pressed Dutch legislators to cut funding to UNRWA altogether, as Israel seeks alternatives for the U.N. body over its ties to Palestinian terrorism. The discussion, at the Dutch House of Representatives, comes amid Israeli calls for UNRWA to be replaced by responsible aid agencies; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the work and functions of UNRWA need to be preserved. “With the recent horrific reports verifying UNRWA employees’ complicity in the Oct. 7...
(JNS) — Scores of Christian supporters from around the world gathered in Israel’s parliament on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus in a show of solidarity amid the war against Hamas in Gaza. The event, which came on a somber day following the single deadliest attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out three and half months ago underscored the growing force of faith-based diplomacy around the globe. “Over the last 20 years, you have proven in the best possible way what true fr...
(JNS) - An art exhibition is debuting Thursday at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the memory of the Shoah is fresh on the minds of Israelis following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The exhibition, titled "Bigger Than Me," features six oil paintings and some 10 additional sketches by the Israeli artist Shai Azoulay. It has been given added significance following the Hamas massacre, the worst single-day attack on the Jewish people since the...
(JNS) — A proposal to encourage the voluntary emigration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as part of a post-war plan is no longer being considered due to opposition from the Biden administration, a leading Israeli lawmaker said Wednesday. The idea, which former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. MK Danny Danon of the ruling Likud Party and MK Ram Ben Barak of the opposition Yesh Atid Party raised anew in a meeting with dozens of foreign diplomats at the Knesset on Wednesday, is not on the government agenda due to American pressure, Danon told J...
(JNS) — An Olympic champion who won Israel’s first-ever world gold in gymnastics is auctioning off the medal to raise money for the Gaza border communities devastated in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists. Artem Dolgopyat, 26, won the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on floor exercise in Belgium on the very day of the massacre, when thousands of Hamas terrorists burst into southern Israel and overran nearly two dozen Israeli communities, murdering 1,200 people, most civilians, abducting 240 others to Gaza and laying waste to the...
(JNS) - A pair of eyeglasses. In 66 days, that is the only trace found of the 70-year-old American-Canadian teacher who was shot by Hamas terrorists when out for a walk with her husband on the grounds of their southern Israel kibbutz the morning of Oct. 7. Judi Weinstein Haggai is currently the oldest woman among those kidnapped by Hamas that day whose fate is unknown. In all, more than two months after the attack, 117 people are still being held by Hamas-along with the bodies of 20 people...
(JNS) - Is it OK to eat? Can we look out the window? Is it alright to leave the room? These were among the questions that scores of traumatized Israeli children held hostage for over 50 days by Hamas in Gaza asked doctors and social workers during their first days of freedom and recuperation earlier this month. Slowly, the children began to regain their trust. A half-smile; an immediately granted after midnight request for schnitzel and mashed potatoes. After some days, they were released from...
(OFAKIM, Israel, JNS) — A reverential silence fell on the room as the four American-Muslim women bowed their heads in prayer on Friday for the victims of the Hamas attack on Israel. Moments earlier, the interfaith crowd in the apartment in this western Negev city, which included Muslims, Jews, a white-turbaned Sikh, a mixed Israeli family and Mayor Yitzhak Danino, stood mesmerized as the Arabic words of supplication for the Israelis murdered in the massacre were intoned. “The Muslim world was...
