Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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This is a developing story. Friday - First 13 Israeli and 10 foreign hostages released (JTA) - Hamas released 13 Israeli hostages into Egypt on Friday, Nov. 24, a sign that the four-day ceasefire brokered between Israel and the terror group that runs Gaza was holding. Ten Thai nationals and one Filipino national were also released in a surprise additional deal that Egyptian officials said they had brokered. Thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners were released from Israel as part of the agreement,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Capitol Police arrested activists from two left-wing Jewish groups protesting outside the Democratic Party headquarters and calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. At least two Democrats in Congress said police evacuated them from the building during the protest, the latest in a string of high-profile actions by the groups, IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace. The police said that the protesters with the two Jewish groups and a third organization, Democratic...
(JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the non-Jewish widows of the children and grandchildren of Jews may emigrate to Israel under its Law of Return. The 4-3 ruling this week was an example of the court’s role in determining Israeli policy, a capacity that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had sought for months to diminish prior to the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas on Oct. 7. Critics of the judicial overhaul contended that sapping the judiciary of its power endangered Israeli democracy. The ruling is...
(JTA) — It was one of the few questions that united all five candidates at what was a no-holds-barred Republican primary debate: What would they advise Israel’s prime minister as he wages war against Hamas? The uniform answer: Finish them. Israel and antisemitism featured large in the latest GOP primary debate in Miami on Wednesday, in part because a cosponsor of the debate was the Republican Jewish Coalition, which got to ask two questions, a first for a Jewish group. But they would have been asked even without the RJC’s influence, becau...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives censured Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American Democrat, for her rhetoric in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, including using the term “from the river to the sea.” The 234-188 vote late Tuesday night saw 22 Democrats vote to censure Tlaib, and was sure to sharpen divides among Democrats over Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. Some Democrats vehemently defended Tlaib’s right to free speech and others said the “From the river to the sea” term signifies the elimination...
(JTA) — A Jewish billionaire investor and philanthropist quit the board of Columbia Business School, saying the campus had become unsafe for Jews since the launch of the Israel-Hamas war. “With blatantly anti-Jewish student groups and professors allowed to operate with complete impunity, it sends a clear and distressing message that Jews are not just unwelcome, but also unsafe on campus,” Henry Swieca said in an Oct. 30 letter obtained Tuesday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My resignation is an expression of my deep concern for the directi...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Younger voters are less likely to back Israel, support among Democrats for Israel’s conduct has declined and Americans overall are wary of being drawn into a Middle East war. Those are three takeaways from a series of polls on Israel, the Palestinians and the war in Gaza that have been published in the more than three weeks since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. In that attack, Hamas terrorists killed 1,400, wounded thousands, took more than 200 captives and sparked a war in which Israel’s stated goal is to depose the terro...
(JTA) — Israeli forces rescued an Israeli soldier from the Gaza Strip, the first such successful operation since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, and the first since the terror group assumed control of the territory in 2007. “Last night, our forces liberated Pvt. Ori Megidish from Hamas captivity,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday in a statement. “Ori was abducted on the black morning of October 7th. Welcome home Ori! I commend the [Shin Bet security service] and the IDF for thi...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration convened a meeting with Jewish leaders on Monday on what it says is an “alarming” rise in reports of antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Doug Emhoff, the Jewish Second Gentleman who launched a task force on antisemitism last year along with the Biden administration’s plan to counter anti-Jewish bigotry, will convene the meeting, which will take place at the Department of Education. “The Biden-Harris Administration is taking multiple actions to address the alarming...
LAS VEGAS (JTA) - Mike Pence chose a Jewish gathering to announce his exit from the presidential race, with a veiled warning that his onetime boss, Donald Trump, posed a threat to a robust American foreign policy that he said was vital to Israel's interests. Pence, the former vice president, elicited gasps and cries of "We love you!" when he addressed a presidential forum at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas. "I came here to say it's become clear to me this is not...
(JTA) - When Rome lit up a landmark this week in blue and white following Hamas' deadly invasion of Israel, it joined many other cities and countries across the globe that have bathed their most prominent buildings in the colors of the Israeli flag, including the White House, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House. The landmark Rome chose, however, isn't its most iconic building, nor its biggest. But it does hold a special resonance for Jews. The Arch of Titus, in the city's historic...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden said he is designating experts to help in the effort to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. The announcement came following U.S. confirmation that there are Americans among the more than 100 captives the terror group took back to the Gaza Strip in its invasion of Israel. “We’re working on every aspect of the hostage crisis in Israel including deploying experts to advise on assist and recovery,” Biden told a round table of Jewish leaders invited Wednesday to the White House for a briefing on what...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. State Department confirmed that there were at least 25 Americans among the hundreds of people killed after Hamas invasion of Israel. “At this time, we can confirm the deaths of nine U.S. citizens,” said a State Department statement released early Monday. “We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected.” The front page of the State Department’s website on Monday morning was headlined “Israel Under Attack” with a link to information. “The United States unequivocally con...
(JTA) - One, just out of the army, told his dad "I love you" and "I'm sorry" then went quiet. One who just joined the army has no family nearby, so a stranger is keeping him company in the hospital. One was a peace activist. These are some of the stories beginning to emerge as Israel strives to identify the hundreds of people who are dead and dozens who are missing after Saturday's attack on southern Israel by Hamas. There are no figures yet on the number of North Americans killed or abducted...
(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu used his address to the United Nations to tout the prospect of a diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to broach a topic that he has previously downplayed: Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Israeli prime minister also used the end of his 25-minute speech to herald the benefits — and warn of the dangers — of artificial intelligence, largely reprising what he told tech mogul Elon Musk in a live streamed conversation earlier in the week. And he did not mention one burning issue that has preoccupied Israe...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration is aiming to counter antisemitic discrimination in federally-funded transit systems, housing, food programs and other areas — one of the most major actions the White House has taken since it unveiled a far-reaching strategy to combat antisemitism in May. On Thursday, the administration announced that it is instructing eight cabinet departments to extend civil rights protections to victims of antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry. The decision marks a broad expansion of the 1964 Civil Rig...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As of November, Israelis will be able to enter the United States without a visa, a major change that Israel has long sought and that will ease travel for hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program, which now includes 41 countries, means that Israelis traveling to the United States will no longer have to go through a months-long visa application process that carried the threat of denial. It also means that Palestinian-Americans living in the West Bank and Gaza will be able to enter Isr...
(JTA) — After months of icy relations, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met face to face for the first time since Netanyahu’s return to office late last year — with both appearing eager to convey that the U.S.-Israel alliance remains on solid footing despite their disagreements. The two leaders have been at odds for the better part of a year over a range of issues, from Netanyahu’s effort to weaken the Israeli court system to his far-right governing partners to the Biden administration’s attempts to reenter a...
(JTA) — In a blistering letter, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he no longer deserves a medal she gave him eight years ago — her city’s top honor — because of what she called his willful Holocaust denial. Hidalgo’s letter to Abbas, delivered on Thursday, comes after U.S., German and Israeli diplomats as well as U.S. Jewish groups across the political spectrum condemned a speech Abbas delivered in which he peddled falsehoods about the Holocaust and distortions about Judaism and the Jews. Abb...
(JTA) - Jewish groups in the United States and in Hawaii are launching relief efforts following the devastation caused by wildfires that have killed more than 50 people so far. The wildfires have all but destroyed the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, which Hawaii's Jewish governor, Josh Green, toured on Thursday with Brian Schatz, the state's Jewish senator. "What we saw today was likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history," Green said in a statement. The fires have had...
(JTA) — Federal agents arrested a West Virginia man on Thursday for allegedly threatening jurors and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, which culminated last week in a death sentence. The man who was arrested, Hardy Lloyd, 45, is “a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district of West Virginia. The statement said Lloyd “made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses dur...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) - The overriding feeling in this city now that the gunman convicted of murdering 11 Jews here in 2018 has been sentenced to death is gratitude. Not for the penalty itself, which was the preference of some but not all of the victims' families and which some local Jews openly opposed, and not even for the end of a trial whose long delay protracted communal trauma. Instead, the gratitude is for people - those who made the trial happen, those who supported the victims' family member...
(JTA) — For decades, armchair analysts scrutinizing the mysteries of the President John F. Kennedy assassination have fixated on who, exactly, opened his future assassin’s mail while he was under CIA surveillance. As the conspiracy theory went, that person would have understood Lee Harvey Oswald’s relationship with the Soviet Union and thus could unlock new information about a possible Communist plot against Kennedy — or a U.S. government plot to obscure his true killer. Last month, a new document dump in the ongoing declassification of Kenn...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - In an extraordinary swipe at a popular Fox News Channel host, a White House official condemned Greg Gutfeld's claim that "you had to be useful" to survive Nazi death camps. "What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday - and has so far failed to condemn - is an obscenity," Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday in an unsolicited email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The comment came as Gutfeld berated a Jewish cohost who was critiquing a Florida Depar...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — “If I have chance, will continue war,” appeared in a scrawl on a notepad, projected onto large TV screens in the courtroom. The image showed a note taken by a psychiatrist in early June as he assessed Robert Bowers, the man who murdered 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. The psychiatrist, George Corvin, was working for the gunman’s lawyers, in an attempt to demonstrate that the gunman is mentally ill and so should not receive the death penalty. His testimony is part of the final phase of the trial, in which t...
