Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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By David Isaac (JNS) - An alarming increase in illegal Arab construction along the Judea and Samaria security barrier has come to light thanks to research by Israeli NGO Regavim. Analyzing photography obtained through aerial reconnaissance, Regavim discovered tens of thousands of illegal structures built along the barrier, which runs roughly along the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line that followed Israel's War of Independence. Much of the Arab construction is new, created within the last 10...
(JNS) — Five Hamas leaders secretly planned the bloody invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, with 70 commandos from the terrorist group’s elite Nukhba Force leading the charge across the Gaza border, the London-based, pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Wednesday. Citing Palestinian sources close to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s “military” wing, the newspaper disclosed that these 70 terrorists received training that focused on infiltrating Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip. They pledged secrecy following...
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed support for “tangible steps” towards the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip during a meeting with Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday. Sources cited by Sky News Arabia described the tête-à-tête, during which Blinken also touched on “administrative reforms” in the P.A. that Washington would like to see, as “tense” and marked by “arguments.” Abbas reportedly demanded that Blinken push Israel to unconditionally release all tax...
(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...
(JTA) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that if Israel were faced with a “second Holocaust,” he could understand why it would remove Palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip. The statement came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel has no intention of doing so. DeSantis’ remarks at a Republican presidential debate came on the eve of opening arguments at The Hague, where Israel faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The debate was the final one ahead of the Iowa Republican caucuse...
(JTA) — France’s newest prime minister is getting attention for the two firsts he brings to the job: Gabriel Attal, at 34, is the country’s youngest ever prime minister, and its first to be openly gay. He says another facet of his identity also shapes him: His late father’s Jewishness. Attal’s mother raised him and his siblings in her Russian Orthodox Christian faith. But his father, the film producer Yves Attal, was Jewish, born in Paris to Tunisian Jewish and European Jewish parents. “My father said to me, ‘Perhaps you’re Orthodox but yo...
(JNS) — Two U.N. human rights experts on Monday called for full accountability for the multitude of alleged crimes, including sexual torture, committed against civilians by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, saying they amount to war crimes. Alice Jill Edwards, special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said violations include killing, hostage-taking, torture and sexual torture. “As armed Palestinian groups ra...
(JNS) — Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan ripped the U.N. General Assembly during a Tuesday morning meeting, while holding up a cake with the face of Kfir Bibas, who will turn one year old in the coming days. Bibas, along with his family, was taken hostage by Hamas during their massacre on Oct. 7. “A quarter of Kfir’s life has been spent as a hostage. He was kidnapped before he could even learn to say ‘mama’” said Erdan. “Is he getting the food and vitamins he needs to grow and develop? Is he crawling? How can a baby be a...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Americans for Peace Now, a left-wing pro-Israel organization, is calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, the first American Zionist group to do so after more than three months of fighting. “Continuing this devastating war poses unacceptable risks for Israel, Gazan civilians and the entire region,” James Klutznick, the group’s chairman, said Monday in a statement. “For the sake of the security and wellbeing of civilians in Israel and in Gaza, the Biden administration must push Israel to bring about an immediate cessation...
Yonkers Public Schools fires coach, kicks player off team over Jew-hatred (JNS) — The fourth-largest school district in New York, Yonkers Public Schools, announced on Monday that it has fired a high school basketball coach and kicked a student-athlete off the team at Roosevelt High School following an antisemitic incident at a Jan. 4 game. During that game, a student at the public school told a player from the Leffell School, a private Jewish day school in Hartsdale, N.Y., “I support Hamas, you f**king Jew.” “The Yonkers Public Schools along w...
(JNS) — American and British forces shot down 21 Houthi drones and missiles over the southern Red Sea on Tuesday night, according to U.S. Central Command. Two U.S. security officials told CNN that the number of Houthi drones and missiles intercepted by naval forces was actually 24 and that it was “one of the largest Houthi attacks that occurred in the Red Sea in recent months.” CENTCOM tweeted early on Wednesday that a “complex attack of Iranian designed one-way attack UAVs (OWA UAVs), anti-ship cruise missiles, and an anti-ship ballist...
(JNS) - Israeli forces have completed the destruction of Hamas's military capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press briefing on Saturday night, three months into Israel's war with the terrorist group. "We have completed the dismantling of Hamas' frameworks in the north of the Gaza Strip, and we will continue to deepen the achievement and strengthen the barrier and the defense elements at the border," Hagari said. He added...
Palestinians captured by the IDF in the Gaza Strip are angry about the way Hamas used civilians to protect themselves and would prefer Israeli rule as the soldiers have treated them better, according to recordings of interrogations released by the IDF. “I felt that we are human shields,” said Muhammad Darwish Amara, a terrorist from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. “Why would we protect them? We also want to be saved.” The man, who looked to be in his 20s, said that Hamas forces had forced him and others to go with them instead...
(JNS) — U.S. spy agencies verified Israeli claims that Hamas and another Palestinian terrorist group used Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a command center and to hold hostages, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. In late November, the Israel Defense Forces released extensive video evidence of terror tunnels under Shifa Hospital—the Gaza Strip’s largest medical facility—saying it “unequivocally” proves the modus operandi of Hamas, “which systematically operates from hospitals.” The terrorist group held at least three of the estimated 240 h...
(JNS) — At least 100 Iranians were killed and scores of others were wounded on Wednesday in two reported explosions at a commemoration ceremony for slain Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in the city of Kerman, some 600 miles southeast of Tehran, emergency services said. Local media cited officials as claiming the blasts were the result of “terrorist attacks.” Several gas canisters exploded at the entrance to the cemetery, according to Nournews, a news outlet with close ties to the regime. The explosions took place 10 minutes apart, accor...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration condemned calls by two Israeli government ministers for Palestinians to be removed from the Gaza Strip. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, also condemned the call. The criticism comes as gaps remain between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over who will govern Gaza on the day after Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, the terror group that controlled the territory prior to its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. While Biden has pushed for the Wes...
(JNS) — Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday reiterated his support for the voluntary resettlement of Gazans, a day after being condemned by the U.S. for taking this stance. “More than 70 percent of the Israeli public today supports a humanitarian solution of encouraging the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs and their absorption in other countries, understanding that a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism where two milli...
Rock star Alanis Morissette uncovers her family’s Holocaust history on PBS’ ‘Finding Your Roots’ By Jacob Gurvis (JTA) — Seven-time Grammy Award winner Alanis Morissette explores her family’s Jewish past, which she said was kept a secret from her for most of her life, on Tuesday night’s season premiere of the PBS celebrity genealogy series “Finding Your Roots.” “I think I found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s. I didn’t know,” Morissette tells host and Harvard University history professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the episode, a snippet...
DENVER - Orlando community members recently joined 2,500 Zionists in Denver, Colorado, for Jewish National Fund-USA's Global Conference for Israel. Emotions ran high as attendees embraced the dozens of Israelis in attendance who experienced the horror and aftermath of the attacks. These same Israelis have been working around the clock with Jewish National Fund-USA to address the immediate needs of those affected while also planning for the region's future. "After so much tragedy, it was...
(JNS) — The United States has delivered more than 10,000 tons of military weapons and equipment to Israel since the start of the war on Oct. 7, Channel 12 reported on Monday. These shipments have arrived in 244 cargo planes and 20 ships. The Hamas terror group invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, murdering 1,200 people, mostly civilians, precipitating the launch of “Operation Swords of Iron” with support from Washington. According to the report, Israel’s Defense Ministry has acquired nearly $2.8 billion in additional purchases from th...
Leader of Lebanon’s tiny Jewish community dies at 80 By Andrew Silow-Carroll (JTA) — Isaac Arazi, who as former president of Lebanon’s tiny Jewish community led the rehabilitation of Beirut’s abandoned Magen Avraham synagogue, died Tuesday. He was 80. A lawyer for the community, which numbers less than 30, confirmed his death to Agence France-Presse. Arazi headed the Lebanese Jewish Community Council, which represented the remnant of the estimated 22,000 Jews who lived in Lebanon before the civil war that lasted from 1975-1989. Terrori...
(JNS) - Israeli forces were involved in a heavy exchange of fire with Hezbollah on Tuesday after anti-tank missiles fired from Lebanon struck a church in the village of Iqrit in the Western Galilee, wounding at least 10 Israelis, including a soldier reportedly in "serious" condition. The wounded included an Israeli civilian in his 80s and nine Israel Defense Forces soldiers, per local media. The troops were reportedly hurt while evacuating the wounded civilian under missile fire. IDF and Magen...
(JTA) — Birthright Israel on Tuesday announced that it would resume its free, 10-day educational trips to Israel in January after suspending them amid the ongoing war with Hamas. Around 350 participants, students and young adults primarily from the United States, are expected to travel to Israel beginning the week of Jan. 5, 2024, the organization said in a statement. The 350 participants are a small fraction of the 23,000 Birthright had planned to send to Israel this year. Still, the resumption of the programs is a powerful symbol of a p...
(JNS) — Hamas should be removed from power when the conflict in Gaza ends, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a year-in-review press briefing at the State Department on Wednesday. “Everyone would like to see this conflict end as quickly as possible, but if it ends with Hamas remaining in place and having the capacity and the stated intent to repeat Oct. 7 again and again and again, that’s not in the interest of Israel,” Blinken said. “It’s not in the interest of the region,” he added. “It’s not in the interest of the world.” It...
(JNS) — Since Oct. 7, the International Red Cross has been helping imprisoned Palestinian terrorists receive controversial stipends from the Palestinian Authority, according to Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch. According to PMW, incarcerated Palestinians fill out forms to receive the stipends, and the Red Cross delivers the paperwork to Ramallah. “The role of the International Red Cross in this process is central,” explained PMW director Itamar Marcus. “The international health organization is involved in this because as they visit prisone...
