Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Fourteen Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), urged U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 13 to condition U.S. aid to Israel. “We call on your administration to ensure that all future foreign assistance to Israel, including weapons and equipment, is not used in support of gross violations of human rights, including by strengthening end-use monitoring and financial tracking,” wrote the lawmakers. The other signers were Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.)...
(JTA) — Frankfurt’s administrative court ruled that the city can’t cancel a Roger Waters concert after calling him “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.” Waters, the former frontman of the band Pink Floyd, took legal action and prevailed on Tuesday after Frankfurt officials said in February they would cancel his concert in May. The city can appeal the ruling. The Frankfurt court ruled that because Rogers “did not glorify or relativise the crimes of the Nazis or identify with Nazi racist ideology” in past concerts, it...
‘Leave New York’s yeshivas alone,’ writes Wall Street Journal (JNS) — “Are Jewish moms and dads who send their children to religious schools lawbreakers? Or are they exercising their right to live by their beliefs—even if those beliefs are out of fashion with modern American sensibilities?” So asks William McGurn, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, in an op-ed in the paper. The piece comes to the defense of Orthodox Jews, who have come under regular fire in The New York Times, and who are being investigated by the state’s educa...
(JNS) - There are no words to describe a trip to the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The camps are surprisingly well-preserved and are a living testament to the most heinous crime in modern human history: the systematic extermination not just of every Jew, but of the attempt to annihilate every single one to the extent that shockingly detailed records were kept on so many of the 6 million killed. Visitors to the camps witness the cruelest of inhumane living conditions of the...
(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) — U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will lead a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel later this month and become the second-ever House speaker to address the full Knesset, his Israeli counterpart Amir Ohana announced on Tuesday. Ohana described McCarthy as a “steadfast supporter and longstanding friend of Israel,” and noted that it would be the top Republican official’s first trip outside the U.S. since assuming his post in January. “This is a clear expression of the strong and unbreakable bond between Israel and its closest a...
Omar no longer a speaker at US Commission on Religious Freedom event (JNS) — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has compared boycotts of Israel and of Nazi Germany, was slated to deliver opening remarks at a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom event on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims, according to a listing shared on Twitter. But the event is now slated for May 1, without the congresswoman on the docket. Rabbi David Saperstein, director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Jud...
(JNS) - This year's March of the Living, the annual tribute to the 6 million held at the site of the former German death camp Auschwitz in Poland, was conducted under the theme of "Honoring Jewish heroism in the Holocaust." The event took place April 19, on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was the first time since the global pandemic that the March was held in its full format, with delegations from well over 25 countries and 10,000 participating. It falls one day before the historical...
(JNS) — Victims and relatives have yet to claim millions of belongings that Nazi authorities stole from Jews and others during the Holocaust, a British official said on March 28 during an international conference of Holocaust representatives in London. Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom government’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, complained that international auctioneers are profiting from stolen artwork and other valuable artifacts as survivors who can identify their previous possessions dwindle. “We need to get a grip on this in the n...
(JTA) — When Israel and Poland agreed to resume Israeli youth trips to Polish Holocaust sites last month, their agreement stipulated that new sites be added to the students’ itineraries, including some that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, is now calling those additions “inappropriate” and “problematic.” In statements to Haaretz published on Monday, leading historians condemned the development, arguing that the new trip rules advance what they call Poland’s trac...
(JTA) — Berlin police are investigating a pro-Palestinian rally where demonstrators allegedly chanted “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel,” phrases that if verified could be criminal offenses under Germany’s strict post-World War II hate speech laws. Hundreds of people showed up in the Kreuzberg and Neukölln neighborhoods on Saturday at a rally organized in response to the police clashes with Muslim worshipers at the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last week. In video captured by a watchdog called Democ, many were also sh...
Palestinian terror cell arrested in Jenin (JNS) — Israeli forces on Tuesday arrested a terrorist cell in Jenin, in northern Samaria, that intended to carry out an attack “in an immediate time frame.” Five terrorists were detained during the operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Border Police, according to a statement from the IDF. The IDF’s Duvdevan undercover counterterror unit, a paratrooper patrol and a Shin Bet-directed military unit conducted the morning arrests, seizing ammunit...
(JNS) — Nearly half a century ago, the U.S. Congress proclaimed 1978 as a year of education, and over the next four and half decades the president has annually proclaimed Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s Hebrew birthday, the 11th of Nissan, as education day in his honor. Now, following the bipartisan tradition, U.S. President Joe Biden has announced that day, which this year fell on April 2, as a national “Day of Education and Sharing” to commemorate the life of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe. “On Education and Sharing Day, we honor the memor...
Over the last few weeks, while Israel has been roiled by demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, and President Isaac Herzog has warned about the possibility of civil war, American Jews have been watching with grave concern. Even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a delay in the government plan to overhaul the judiciary that sparked the mass protests, tensions in Israel remained high. It was precisely at this fraught moment that UJA-Federation of New York decided to bring a group of rabbis from the New York area...
Biden administration floats Iran agreement that would ease some sanctions (JNS) — Move over JCPOA. There could be a new Iran nuclear deal in town. Biden administration officials have been floating a proposed agreement with Tehran among European and Israeli partners. The terms “would include some sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran freezing parts of its nuclear program,” Axios reported. An Israeli official and a Western diplomat told Axios that Iran has rejected the proposal. The Republican Jewish Coalition also rejected it. “The Biden a...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A law passed by Israel’s government yesterday has sparked a strong rebuke from the Biden administration, words of caution from some of Israel’s strongest supporters in the Senate — and damage control from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new law repeals a portion of Israel’s 2005 disengagement, in which it withdrew settlers and troops from the entirety of the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank. While much of Israel and the world focused on the evacuation from Gaza, opponents...
(JTA) - Even though he hasn't officially declared his Republican presidential campaign (yet), Ron DeSantis has been pitching his governance of Florida as a model for running the United States - telling Fox News last week, for example, that "we can get America back on track and back on our foundations" by following Florida's example. This week, he repeated the pitch with a twist: His close relations with Israel are a template for the U.S.-Israel relationship, he said - and he's ready to make...
Agatha Christie novels edited to remove offensive references to Jews By Gabe Friedman (JTA) — HarperCollins has revised multiple novels by the famed British mystery writer Agatha Christie to remove references to Jews and other minorities deemed offensive by sensitivity readers. The edits, which the British Telegraph first reported on Sunday, add Christie to a growing list of authors whose work is getting tweaked for contemporary audiences. Roald Dahl, the children’s book author whose family recently apologized for his antisemitism, also had...
(JTA) — Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to London, the United Kingdom’s chief rabbi is calling for “Jewish unity” in Israel and around the world in response to dramatic protests against proposed changes to the Israeli judicial system. “I never thought that we would witness a time when citizens of Israel, including respected leaders, are openly speaking about the possibility, God forbid, of civil war,” Ephraim Mirvis wrote in a short op-ed in the Jewish Chronicle, the U.K.’s oldest Jewish newspaper. “At...
(JNS) — Hours after China brokered a surprise deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a reporter asked U.S. President Joe Biden what he thought about the two countries, which come out of rival Islamic branches that have competed for centuries over guardianship of the faith, re-establishing diplomatic relations. “The better the relations between Israel and their Arab neighbors, the better for everybody,” he said. Critics ridiculed the president’s non sequitur, but Biden’s statement raises the question of what impact the deal—and importantly...
Israel ranked fourth happiest country in world (JNS) — Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to a report produced by the U.N.-affiliated Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Based on Gallup World Poll data, the study leverages six key factors to help explain variation in self-reported levels of happiness across the world: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption. The report was released on Monday to mark the International Day of Happiness, which was established when the U.N. G...
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor released the 2022 edition of its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Monday. The reports “cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements,” stated Foggy Bottom. “The report embodies the importance of human rights for American diplomacy and for our vision of an open, free, prosperous and secure world,” Antony Blinken, U....
(JTA) — A delegation of U.S. Jewish federation leaders is lobbying in Israel against the government’s planned overhaul of the judiciary, a rare step that underscores the degree to which the proposed changes have rattled the U.S. Jewish establishment. The delegation came to Israel for 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, and includes representatives of more than 30 U.S. Jewish communities. The delegation met with lawmakers from the governing coalition as well as the parliamentary opposition. Their main focus was on a proposal that would all...
(JNS) — Teachers and schools of the U.N. agency that runs education and social services for Palestinian Arabs “regularly call for the murder of Jews,” a new report by two Israeli NGOs finds. Teaching materials of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees “glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism,” said the report, titled “UNRWA Education: Reform or Regression.” In December 2022, at UNRWA’s Al-Maghazi Middle School for Boys B in t...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — An Israeli nonprofit that studies Palestinian society has found a troubling possible linkage between U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and the scope of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Palestinian Media Watch released a study this week that analyzed statistics taken from periodic reports published by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, from 2011 (the year the nonprofit exposed the P.A.’s terror-rewarding pay-for-slay policy) through 2022. It found that when aid to the P.A. dropped, such as during the Trump a...
