Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - An Orthodox rabbi from the Netherlands has called on the country's Jews to immigrate to Israel following mass antisemitic assaults in Amsterdam, accusing Dutch authorities of failure to address the root causes of the incident. Two rabbis from the country's large Progressive community disagreed with the remarks by Rabbi Meir Villegas Henriquez, an Orthodox rabbi and mohel from Rotterdam's Ohel Abraham beit midrash (Jewish study center). The debate reflects a growing sense of insecurity...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Anti-Israel activist organization CodePink has collected 15,000 signatures on a petition urging Trader Joe’s to remove Israeli products from its stores, while Jewish community groups have launched a counter-campaign encouraging supporters to purchase these same items. “As the Israeli genocide continues to devastate Gaza and the broader Middle East, companies like Trader Joe’s must take a stand,” CodePink states in their petition. “By stocking Israeli products, Trader Joe’s supports a system that perpetuates s...
(JNS) — A group of about a dozen masked individuals protested outside a theater performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at American Legion Devereaux Post 141 in the Detroit metropolitan area, yelling vulgar insults and waving a swastika flag. For approximately 30 minutes on the night of Nov. 9, men described as in their 20s chanted, among other things, that “Anne Frank was a whore,” according to The Detroit News. Frank was a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam who kept a diary of her life in hiding there with her family until the...
(JNS) — Jewish groups mourned the execution of Arvin Netanel Ghahremani, 20, in Iran on Monday and condemned the Islamic Republic for its decision to kill the young Jew, who allegedly killed a man in self-defense. “His life ended under a system that allowed discrimination and cruelty to guide his fate. Shame on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” stated the World Jewish Congress. “Our condolences are with his family through this tragedy and utter lack of justice.” Ghahremani “was attacked with a knife by a non-Jewish man to whom he had loaned mone...
(JNS) - Majed El Shafie, founder and president of the Canadian nonprofit One Free World International, didn't mince words when he spoke about Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, at a "Rally for Humanity" at the Toronto-area synagogue Sephardic Kehila Centre on Sunday evening. "Let me not sugar coat it. We have an idiot of a prime minister. The only prime minister who didn't go to Israel of the G7," said Shafie, whose nonprofit supports persecuted religious minorities. "The only one who...
(JNS) — Leaders of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement hosted a special reception honoring the president of the Berlin state parliament on Monday night at the Jewish Learning Institute headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. About 50 guests gathered to honor Cornelia Seibeld, president of the Berlin State Assembly, and other German representatives to express gratitude for the government’s support of Israel and commitment to combating rising Jew-hatred throughout Europe. Yehuda Teichtal, chief Chabad rabbi in Berlin, presented Seibeld with an award in rec...
(JNS) — More than 60 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were arrested during a recent counter-terror operation in Judea and Samaria, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israel Defense Forces announced in a joint statement on Tuesday. Local district heads and ground-level operatives were detained, along with university students active in PFLP cells, according to the statement. Among those detained were leaders of the PFLP-affiliated Union of Women’s Committees, including Abla Sa’adat, wife of the organ...
(JNS) - President-elect Donald Trump announced that the "great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years" and "highly respected" Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, will be the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the next administration. Huckabee "loves Israel and the people of Israel and likewise, the people of Israel love him," Trump stated. "Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East." A Southern Baptist pastor and governor for more than a decad...
(JNS) — The State Department waived terrorism sanctions on the Palestinian Authority just before the American election on Nov. 5, even as it admitted that the P.A. continues to fund terrorism in violation of U.S. law. The waiver enables the P.A. to skirt American sanctions for another 180 days, until it comes up for renewal under a Trump White House, The Washington Free Beacon reported. The State Department, in a non-public notice to Congress, said that the P.A. and the PLO, the dominant force in the P.A., are not complying with agreements t...
Kushner returns to advise Trump on administration By Ariel Kahana (Israel Hayom via JNS) — New details emerged Sunday morning about Donald Trump’s developing administration. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has returned to closely assist the president-elect in preparations for building the new administration. Kushner, 43, was among the key figures in Trump’s first administration and led many of its successes. Since the 2020 election, he and his wife, Ivanka, Trump’s daughter, have avoided public and political activity, partly to provide t...
(JNS) — The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis told JNS exclusively that it has released a new “teacher-friendly curriculum,” which addresses “the history of the Jewish people in the land of Israel from ancient to modern times.” “This state social-studies-aligned curriculum situates Jewish history in the larger context of Middle Eastern and world history,” the media watchdog told JNS. “Students learn how geography and the development of religious, cultural and political movements from ancient to modern times have crea...
(JNS) — Argentine President Javier Milei on Tuesday officially appointed Geraldo Werthein, a Jewish businessman and former ambassador to the United States, as the country’s foreign minister. Werthein is a former Argentine ambassador to the United States whose ancestors escaped Jewish persecution in Russia in the early years of the 20th century. He took office at an inauguration ceremony at the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, known as the Cancillería. Unusually for the predominantly Catholic country, the inau...
(JNS) — At a press conference on Wednesday outside the United Nations National Security Council in New York, a former hostage of Hamas in Gaza delivered a scathing indictment of the international body’s failure to intervene on her behalf. “Not a single humanitarian agency saw me or treated me,” said Mia Shem. “Where was the Red Cross? Where was the U.N. demanding that they have access to us?” Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon, also spoke at the press conference, describing the U.N.’s “complete moral failure” as “unforgivable.” Whi...
(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) — 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) — 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) - 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) — 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...
(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...
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...
(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...
(JNS) — American Airlines has announced that it is suspending service to and from Tel Aviv through the end of next summer. The move, which was reported by Israeli travel agencies on Sunday, means AA’s daily non-stop service from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Tel Aviv will not resume until September 2025 at the earliest. “To provide customers with certainty when planning travel to Tel Aviv, we are expanding our travel alert to allow customers whose travel plans are impacted to rebook their itinerary for travel involvi...
(JNS) — Iran’s supreme leader has instructed the country’s Supreme National Security Council to prepare for another assault on Israel, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The report, which cited three Iranian officials with knowledge of the matter, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the decision on Monday after reviewing a report from senior military commanders on the extent of damage to Iran’s missile production capabilities and air defense systems around Tehran, critical energy infrastructure and a main port in the south. Khamenei was sai...
