Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 45 of 45
(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...
(JNS) - The remains of a 12-year-old Israeli girl, burned alive alongside her twin brother and great-aunt in the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southwestern Israel, have been identified by archaeologists sifting through the rubble, family members said on Sunday. Liel Hetzroni was murdered, together with her twin brother Yanai and their 73-year-old great-aunt Ayala, in the attack on Kibbutz Be'eri after they were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, who were then engaged in a firefight with...
(JNS) - Nine months old. The smiling red-haired baby had recently started to crawl after rocking on all fours. Kfir Bibas lived with his parents and 4-year-old brother in a kibbutz in southern Israel. On Oct. 7, their lives were changed forever as the family-mom Shiri, dad Yarden, and the two kids-was abducted by Hamas to Gaza when the Islamist terrorists overran the area and went on a murderous rampage. At nine months old, Kfir is the youngest of the roughly 240 hostages-including 32...
(JNS) — “This is a second Holocaust for me,” said survivor Ruth Haran, 87, who is reliving a childhood nightmare. Twice now, she has made it out alive from the inferno. But the death, the destruction and the fear have all returned and come full circle for the great-grandmother, eight decades after the Holocaust. Her son and two other family members were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israeli communities in southern Israel. Seven other members of her family, including her daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, aged 3 and 8, we...
(JNS) - The messages kept coming in to Kibbutz Holit's emergency WhatsApp group. "Save us, save us," "Where is the army?" "They are trying to burn down the houses" and "There's gunfire." A 7-year-old girl reported that she was hiding in a closet; a 15-year-old reported that his parents were killed and that he was shot in the stomach; a woman reported that she was suffocating from the smoke in the safe room of her burning house. And a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor huddled in the safe room of his...
(JNS) — A 73-year-old grandmother, her 43-year-old son and barely 10-month granddaughter. Three generations of one Israeli family brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were laid to rest Sunday side by side, the infant sharing the same coffin as her father. In ceremonies across the country, a nation in mourning was burying its dead from the worst assault on Israel in half a century, and the most deadly one-day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In many cases, the c...
(JNS) - "You're not going out. You are not going out." Those were 63-year-old Vivian Roitman's fateful words to her 72-year-old husband Menachem on the morning of Oct. 7, after the Hamas terrorists who had ransacked their home in southern Israel and failed to open the door to the safe room in which they were hiding had left the house. She didn't know it then, but the terrorists would be back less than two hours later for another attempt to murder or kidnap them, and then again for a third...
(JNS) - The Hamas gunman aimed his rifle at the elderly couple in their home in Ofakim, southern Israel, early Saturday morning. He held a grenade on Rachel Edri's head, began screaming "Allah Akbar" and announced he was a "martyr." But Edri maintained her composure. Thinking quickly, she offered the group of five terrorists refreshments, and later a meal, engaging them in small talk, playing for time until security personnel could arrive. For the next 20 hours, Rachel and her husband, David,...
(JNS) - A cache of weapons believed to have been hidden by Jews during their revolt against the Romans nearly two millennia ago has been uncovered in the Judean Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The cache, comprising four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords and a shafted weapon, were found in a crevice in a cave in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea about two months ago. They were apparently hidden by Judean rebels after being seized from the...
(JNS) - A peace deal with Israel is a clear Saudi interest and will likely lead to further accords with additional Muslim countries, the acting American ambassador to Israel said Thursday. The remarks by Stephanie Hallett, the chargé d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, were the latest indication that American-led negotiations to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are in high gear, with an accord thought possible in early 2024. "Saudi Arabia is the preeminent target of...
(JNS) — In a dramatic turn of events, Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, said on Wednesday that it is terminating its longstanding relationship with its U.S. fundraising arm, amid an intra-organizational financial dispute which is the subject of an Israeli government investigation. The decision to cut ties with the American Society for Yad Vashem, which was established over four decades ago in order to assist with funding for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center and is its largest donor arm after the Israeli government, was take...
(JNS) - A concerted effort is underway by some mainstream churches to convince evangelical Christians to be less supportive of Israel, the incoming head of an evangelical organization headquartered in Jerusalem says. Rev. Peter Fast, CEO-elect of Bridges for Peace, spoke in an interview with JNS. The remarks come two months after the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem lambasted Israeli restrictions on the number of worshippers allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City...
(JNS) - Holocaust distortion and trivialization and banalization are on the rise around the globe, even as outright denial is relegated to the fringes of society, the head of Yad Vashem said. The remarks come at a time when multiple European countries seek to whitewash their roles in World War II by highlighting the heroes among their countrymen while obscuring or outright denying the actions of collaborators who participated in the murder of six million Jews. "The good news is that outright Hol...
(JNS) - An exhibition of Holocaust-era items from the collections of Yad Vashem whose stories are intertwined with Jews from Germany will open in the Bundestag next week, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jerusalem-based Holocaust remembrance center announced Tuesday. The exhibition, titled "Sixteen Objects," was inaugurated on Jan. 24 by the Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, on his first-ever visit to Germany, and Bundestag President Bärbel Bas. Initiated by the German...
(JNS) - An ancient Jerusalem pool that was used by millions of Jewish pilgrims during the time of the Second Temple two millennia ago as a ritual bath before ascending the Temple Mount, and revered by Christians as the site where Jesus cured a blind man, will be fully excavated and then opened to the public, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. The Pool of Siloam, located in the southern portion of the City of David, the ancient epicenter of Jerusalem, and just outside the Old...
(JNS) - It is being dubbed the "Christian Birthright." The group of 120 American college students had just crisscrossed Israel on a nine-day journey, visited the requisite sites including a Friday night at the Western Wall, stops in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and must-see places such as the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, before diving into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its diversity of narratives, security and multi-faith briefings, and visits to border areas. At first glance, the boisterous,...
(JNS) — The group stood in prayer for the State of Israel. An American evangelical bishop took the stage to lead in the singing of Israel’s national anthem at the culmination of a gala opening evening at a Jerusalem banquet hall. It certainly was not your standard international conference or foreign press association gathering in Israel. Welcome to the 2022 Christian Media Summit in the Holy Land. At a time of rising global antisemitism and deep divisions among Israelis spilling out into growing tensions with Diaspora Jewry over the makeup of...
(JNS) — The Start-Up Nation is returning to its agricultural roots. The country once famed for Jaffa oranges and Jordan Valley dates, and later cherry tomatoes, is coming full circle, with century-old agricultural know-how meeting 21st-century high-tech. That, at least, is the impression one gets at the pristine offices of the Kinneret Innovation Center, which is emerging as a leading Israeli tech hub for agriculture, water and sustainability. Situated in an area known more for Christian tourism and date trees, this off-grid location is the l...
(JNS) — In a renewed push of faith-based diplomacy, three heads of the U.S. Congressional Israel Allies Caucus have written to the leaders of more than two dozen countries urging them to vote to shutter two anti-Israel U.N. institutions in a vote that will come before the General Assembly later this year. The appeal comes as the Palestinians pushed through a draft resolution at a U.N. committee Friday over the objections of the U.S. and Israel calling on the International Court of Justice to issue a legal opinion on Israel’s “prolonged occupati...
