Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated at about 4:30 a.m. local time that he was dispatching two rescue planes to Amsterdam following a "very violent incident against Israeli citizens." "The harsh pictures of the assault on our citizens in Amsterdam will not be overlooked," Netanyahu's office stated, adding that he "views the horrifying incident with utmost gravity and demands that the Dutch government and security forces take vigorous and swift action against the rioters, and...
(JNS) - Amid a sharp increase in Jew-hatred after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in southern Israel, many elected officials and university presidents stood silent. That's why Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center gathered Jewish groups to "find ways to start fighting back," Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the Israeli nonprofit's president, told JNS. Shurat HaDin aimed "to retake the streets, to retake the campuses, to retake the social media, to combat antisemitism in a way that we haven't,"...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — As midnight arrived on the East Coast, it appeared increasingly likely that Donald Trump would retake the presidency — a victory that would reshape the United States and that could change its relationship with Israel while ushering in an administration whose domestic priorities do not match those of most American Jews. That victory was confirmed early Wednesday morning when news agencies called Wisconsin for Trump, confirming that he had passed the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win. The tally made clear that Trump...
(New York Jewish Week) — Republican Rep. Mike Lawler retained his seat in New York’s 17th Congressional District in a race that saw both candidates vie for the area’s large Jewish vote and spar over support for Israel. The race was one of several swing districts in New York State that could sway control of the House. Lawler defeated Democratic challenger Mondaire Jones in the district, which covers territory north of New York City in Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess and Westchester counties. Lawler won around 57 percent of the vote, 16 points ahead...
(JTA) — California voters did what was widely expected and elected Rep. Adam Schiff, a Jewish Democrat, in the senate race to replace the late Dianne Feinstein, another Jewish Democrat, who died while in office last year after serving in the role for more than 30 years. Schiff, who currently represents parts of greater Los Angeles in the U.S. House of Representatives, defeated Steve Garvey, a former star baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had hoped to beat the odds and become the first Republican to be elected to a statewide o...
(JNS) — Amsterdam police detained 62 people in connection with a series of antisemitic assaults against Israeli soccer fans, which resulted in five moderate injuries and about 20 to 30 minor ones, in the Dutch capital, the city’s prosecutor René de Beukelaer said at a Friday press. The five injured people were treated in the hospital and discharged, De Beukelaer said during the briefing with Femke Halsema, the Amsterdam mayor. Witnesses described about 100 men, whom they described as Arabs, assaulting Israelis in a coordinated manner on Frid...
(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) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated at about 4:30 a.m. local time that he was dispatching two rescue planes to Amsterdam following a “serious incident of violence against Israeli citizens.” “The prime minister takes the horrific event very seriously and demands that the Dutch government and the Dutch security forces act firmly and quickly against the rioters and ensure the peace of our citizens,” Netanyahu’s office stated, in Hebrew. Earlier in the day, Maccabi Tel Aviv lost 5-0 to Ajax Amsterdam in a Europa League socc...
(JNS) — The United Nations said in a letter Tuesday that finding a replacement for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which Israel banned for its terror ties, was Jerusalem’s responsibility. “If UNRWA is no longer able to operate it would be the responsibility of the Israeli authorities to replace its services that it delivers to civilians, in education, in health, and all sorts of other areas,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ chef de cabinet, Courtenay Rattray, wrote to...
(JNS) — El Al flew about 2,000 passengers to Ben Gurion-Airport over the weekend on eight emergency flights from Amsterdam, the Jewish state’s flag carrier said, following a coordinated assault on Israelis there on Thursday night. Most of the emergency flights left on Friday and two flew on Saturday with special permission from the chief rabbis of Israel, who determined that the circumstances justified this violation of observing the Shabbat. “All passengers have boarded the flights free of ch...
(JNS) - Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu "see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects," the Israeli premier said on Sunday following phone calls with the American. "In recent days, I have spoken three times with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump," Netanyahu revealed in written remarks published by the Prime Minister's Office on Sunday afternoon. The "very good and important talks" were meant to "further enhance the steadfast bond" with Washington, Netanyahu said. "We see...
(JNS) — The dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday led to a battle of narratives as the Prime Minister’s Office said Gallant was fired over disagreements connected to the war’s conduct while the opposition tried to frame the move as petty politics. Four opposition leaders held a joint press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Wednesday, accusing Netanyahu of dismissing Gallant in order to pass a “draft-dodger bill” needed to placate h...
(JNS) — Police in Amsterdam on Sunday arrested several dozen people at an unauthorized anti-Israel protest rally at a square where, days earlier, Muslims assaulted Israeli soccer fans. The arrests at Dam Square followed a temporary municipal ban on the anti-Israel demonstrations that regularly take place there. The ban followed the coordinated assault on Thursday by at least 100 Muslim men on fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team who were leaving a match against the local Ajax team. Fiv...
By Josh Hasten (JNS) - Standing on the roof of her apartment building on the eastern tip of the central Israeli town of Rosh HaAyin, just meters away from the security barrier, Moriah Tzafar shares a grave concern. "We see [Palestinian Authority] cars driving around, getting closer to us. What are they doing here? The area is a closed military firing zone [Zone 203]. We see them carrying out tours of the fence line. There are cars, people, illegal housing, and they're getting closer. We report...
(JNS) — President-elect Donald Trump wants Israel to wrap up its wars against Iran and its regional terror proxies with a “decisive victory,” campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko told Channel 12 News on Wednesday. “I would say he expects them to end it by winning it, one hundred percent; that’s how he always talks about ending wars,” the Jewish Republican Party spokesperson told the Israeli news broadcaster. “Donald Trump always says he wants less innocent people to die—that is his stance whether we’re talking about the war in Gaza, whether...
(JNS) — The Knesset on Thursday night approved the appointment of Israel Katz as defense minister, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Yoav Gallant from the position earlier this week. The legislature also approved Gideon Sa’ar’s appointment to replace Katz as the Jewish state’s foreign minister. The Knesset voted 58-0 in favor of the appointments, with opposition lawmakers boycotting the session. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant was legal, Israel’s attorney general informed the country’s High Court on Thursday....
(JNS) - A video clip of two Hamas terrorists discussing Almog Sarusi, 27, one of the hostages taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023, was aired by Israeli public broadcaster Kan News on Wednesday. Sarusi was killed along with five other hostages in a Hamas tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza. His body was discovered along with those of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Carmel Gat and Ori Danino. The video was found on a USB flash drive in the tunnel near where the bodies were...
(JNS) — Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas demanded on Monday that the U.N. sanction Israel for alleged breaches of its charter and failure to implement resolutions, Ramallah’s Wafa news outlet reported. Addressing the U.N.’s World Urban Forum in Cairo, Abbas said Israel should be penalized for what he called its “failure to fulfill its obligations upon gaining U.N. membership in 1949 and for not adhering to General Assembly resolutions 181 and 194,” according to the Wafa news report. U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 was adopted i...
(JNS) — An Israeli law that will allow Jerusalem’s Education Ministry to dismiss teachers who carry out or publicly support acts of terrorism, as well as cut off funding for educational institutions that glorify terror, passed its third and final reading in parliament, the Knesset said on Tuesday. The law, called the Bill for Prohibition on Employment of Teaching Personnel and Withholding Budget from Educational Institutions due to Identification with Act of Terrorism or with Terrorist Organization, passed with a vote of 55-45 on Tuesday, aft...
Biden and Harris concede Trump victory (JNS) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke individually with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, acknowledging Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections and offering to assist with his transition into power. Biden called Trump and “expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition while emphasizing the importance of working to bring the country together,” the White House said on Wednesday. His vice president, Kamala Harris, called Trump to concede the electio...
(JNS) — An American soldier who was critically hurt six months ago while on the Biden administration’s Gaza-aid pier mission died of his injuries last week, the U.S. military announced on Monday. Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, 23, served in the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia and was injured in a non-combat incident on May 23. He died on Oct. 31. The fallen soldier “was injured while supporting the mission that delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza in May 2024 and was receiving treatment in a...
When Jacquelyn Berger, Ph.D., along with her son Jeffrey and his family and daughter Marni Stahlman and her family, expressed a desire to acquire a Torah with a history of Jewish survival for Chabad of Greater Orlando, little did they dream their search would uncover a Torah buried by a rabbi to prevent its inevitable destruction by Nazis in the darkest days of the Holocaust. Dr. Berger feels that donating this Torah is a means to give a legacy of inspiration and joy to her family and way of sho...
(JNS) — Ayelet Samerano, whose 21-year-old son Yonatan Samerano was shot by Hamas terrorists and abducted by a UNRWA social worker on Oct. 7, 2023, is relieved that her desperate calls for action are finally being answered. “Today we’re seeing the results of our hard work,” she told JNS, after the Knesset passed two laws on Monday that make it illegal for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to operate on Israeli soil, and for Israeli officials to work with the U.N. agency. Sameran...
Rachel Greenspan has been appointed as the new executive director of Shalom Orlando. Greenspan, formerly interim co-executive director, is now responsible for all of Shalom Orlando's many facets including the J, its Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center, the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, Camp J, RAISE, and more. Along with her two bachelor's degrees in Early Childhood Education and Child Psychology, Greenspan's career experience makes her well suited for all these roles. She...
(JNS) — Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday passed by a large majority two laws that prohibit UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and make it illegal for state officials to be in contact with representatives of that controversial U.N. aid agency for Palestinians. The Knesset passed the laws, which followed exposures about UNRWA staff’s complicity in the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, despite pressure by the United States and other countries to desist for fear that it would complicate humanitarian projects in Gaza and beyond. Axi...
