Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday welcomed the swearing-in of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government. “I look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been my friend for decades, to jointly address the many challenges and opportunities facing Israel and the Middle East region, including threats from Iran,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House. “The United States is working to promote a region that’s increasingly integrated, prosperous and secure, with benefits for all of its peop...
(JTA) — Jewish leaders in Italy had strong words for the president of the country’s parliament after he published a post on Instagram honoring the history of the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a neo-fascist party founded in the wake of World War II. Ignazio la Russa, a senator from Cologno Monzese, a municipality in Milan, wrote alongside a picture of an MSI campaign poster: “In memory of my father, who was one of the founders of the Italian Social Movement in Sicily and who chose the path of free and democratic participation with the MSI t...
Knesset passes ‘Smotrich-Deri’ amendment (JNS) — Israel’s Knesset on Tuesday morning passed an amendment allowing Shas Party head Aryeh Deri to serve as a minister and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich to become a second minister in the Defense Ministry. The amendment to Basic Law: The Government, which passed by a 63-vote majority following an all-night filibuster, merged two bills. The first limits a law prohibiting elected officials convicted of a criminal offense from serving as a minister to apply only to those serving active...
(JNS) - Rabbi Mendy and Rivky Hertzel will move to Zambia early next year to establish a Chabad House and assist the small but thriving Jewish community in the southern African nation. Zambia has not had a rabbi in over 60 years. Rabbi Hertzel told JNS, "In February of this year, they tasked me to go to Zambia and investigate the possibility of establishing a permanent Chabad presence here. After a three-month stay, I saw firsthand that the country was a good fit for us to establish a Chabad...
(JNS) - It's been a difficult decade. 2020 was the year of coronavirus-pandemic panic and the general collapse of established norms. This was compounded by the Black Lives Matter riots that set off a moral panic about race, with the mainstreaming of fringe ideas and intersectionality. 2021 was a little better, as the world gradually shook off its COVID paranoia. But it was notable mainly for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that has roiled American politics ever since, the disastrous withdrawal from...
(JTA) — Yes, Lionel Messi will forever be the face of Argentina’s long-awaited World Cup championship on Sunday. But the voice of the victory belongs to the Argentinean Jewish sportscaster who cried as he announced the win. Andres Cantor, a prominent soccer announcer, responded to Argentina’s game-winning penalty shot with his signature elongated “Gooooooool!” In a video clip that has gone viral, Cantor can be seen grabbing onto his broadcast partner as he yells “Argentina, campeon de mundo!...
(JNS) — A video of U.S. President Joe Biden saying that the nuclear deal with Iran is “dead” but that Washington will not announce as much surfaced on Tuesday, Dec. 20. The footage, which was apparently taken during Biden’s visit to California early last month, shows a woman asking him to declare that the 2015 agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is no longer in effect. “President Biden, could you please announce that the JCPOA is dead?” the Iranian-American woman asks, as the American president approaches...
(JNS) - It is being dubbed the "Christian Birthright." The group of 120 American college students had just crisscrossed Israel on a nine-day journey, visited the requisite sites including a Friday night at the Western Wall, stops in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and must-see places such as the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, before diving into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its diversity of narratives, security and multi-faith briefings, and visits to border areas. At first glance, the boisterous,...
(JNS) - Washington should steadfastly stand by the Jewish state, U.S. Congressman Dr. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said last week. "It is an American interest for Judea and Samaria - indeed all the land of the Bible - to remain a part of Israel. Unification of these biblical lands benefits people of all religions, ensuring religious freedom and access for all. It is not an obstacle to peace but a chance for real peace," said Harris during a visit to the Binyamin region. He vowed to ensure that the U.S....
(JNS) — In 2018, the Trump administration signed into law the Taylor Force Act to prevent the U.S. government from sending funds to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues to fund terrorism. Now, a new lawsuit supported by victims of terror is seeking to compel the Biden administration to follow suit. Filed by America First Legal, a new firm founded and led by former Trump presidential senior advisor Stephen Miller, the lawsuit identifies the Biden administration funding the P.A. with more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars as a v...
Secretary at Nazi concentration camp guilty of complicity in over 10,500 killings (JNS) —The former secretary of the Nazi commander of the Stutthof concentration camp was convicted on Tuesday of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people. Irmgard Furchner, 97, who worked as a typist at the camp in the German-annexed Free City of Danzig between 1943 and 1945, received a two-year suspended jail term. While Furchner was a civilian, the judge presiding over the case in northern Germany agreed she was aware of what took place at S...
(JNS) — From Tampa Bay to Edmonton, a campaign intends to Shine A Light on antisemitism this Hanukkah. “You can’t dispel darkness with darkness. You have to dispel darkness with light,” Adam Teitelbaum, executive director at the Israel Action Network and associate vice president for public affairs at Jewish Federations of North America, told JNS. “The ability to shine a light on the multiple ways in which antisemitism manifests in today’s society is an incredible opportunity for the coordination and collaboration of institutions across not...
(JNS) — Unilever plc announced on Thursday that its legal battle with the independent board of its wholly-owned autonomous subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s, over the brand’s sale of ice cream in Israel, has been resolved. The Vermont-based ice cream company announced in July 2021 that it would not renew the Israeli franchise agreement for the following year, saying that the sale of its ice cream in Judea and Samaria, commonly called the West Bank, was inconsistent with the brand’s values. This was met with a class-action lawsuit by a U.S. shareho...
(JNS) - Months after her nomination was held up due to prior antisemitic comments, the U.S. Senate confirmed Elizabeth Frawley Bagley to the post of ambassador to Brazil on Wednesday. The nomination has been blocked in June by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a tie, party-line vote. It came after comments by Bagley, a longtime diplomat and Democratic Party donor, were uncovered by The Washington Free Beacon. Bagley's nomination was suddenly discharged by the committee last week. Her...
Biden sets up task force to fight antisemitism and Islamophobia By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after Doug Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, chaired a roundtable with Jewish organizational leaders, President Joe Biden has set up an interagency task force to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia. The group’s first task is coming up with a strategy to tackle the rise in antisemitism. “This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antis...
(JNS) - Now that the shock has worn off, the question for Birthright is who will step up. Last week, Miriam Adelson, Birthright Israel's most generous donor, addressed a board meeting of the organization known for bringing tens of thousands of young Jews to Israel each year. She and her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, through the Adelson Family Foundation, have contributed nearly $500 million to Birthright over the past 15 years, but, after slashing the foundation's annual commitment nearly in...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration will base its relationship to Israel’s incoming government on the actions it takes, not the people installed in positions of power, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a speech Sunday. Blinken’s speech, to the conference of the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group J Street, was notable because it offered the first official response to deepening questions about how the White House would work with a Israeli government that includes far-right parties. Until now, sources close to the a...
Iran executes four convicted of working with Israel’s Mossad (JNS) — Iran on Sunday executed four men convicted of cooperating with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Reuters reported. Three other people received prison sentences of between five and 10 years. “This morning, the sentences of four main members of the gang of mobsters related to the Zionist intelligence service were executed,” the Mizan Online website reported. Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency reported last week that those sentenced to death had been charged with “the crime...
(JNS) - On September 16, 2018, Israel lost one of its fiercest defenders when a knife-wielding Arab stabbed Efrat resident Ari Fuld in the back at the Gush Etzion Junction, south of Jerusalem. Fuld used his last breaths of life to chase down and shoot the attacker, wounding him and saving the lives of other Israelis in the terrorist's path. Fuld, 45, not only defended Israel on the battlefield in the IDF's Golani Brigade, and as a reservist in the Second Lebanon War in an elite paratrooper...
(JTA) — Nearly seven months after they were denied boarding in Frankfurt, a group of more than 100 Hasidic Lufthansa passengers are getting paid for their troubles. The airline is paying each passenger $20,000 plus giving them $1,000 to reimburse them for expenses incurred during the May incident, according to Dan’s Deals, the discount travel website that first reported the incident at the time. After legal fees and some other expenses, each passenger will net approximately $17,400, the site is reporting. Lufthansa would not confirm the dol...
IRONMAN Israel competition draws 2,500 competitors (JNS) — Patrick Lange of Germany took first place in the IRONMAN Israel-Middle East Championship in Tiberias on Friday, with a personal best time of 07:42:00. In the women’s pro category, Ruth Astle from Great Britain finished first, with a time of 08:41:13. The event featured two races: a full distance one and a shorter race. The full distance race included a 2.3 mile swim in the Sea of Galilee, a 111-mile bike ride and a 26-mile run. More than 800 Israeli and 400 international athletes com...
(JTA) – Birthright Israel is drastically cutting back on the number of free trips it plans to offer to Jewish young adults, scaling back its operations by up to a third, the organization announced Monday. The cuts come amid what the organization said is a mix of financial pressures: inflation, heightened travel expenses in a post-COVID world and dwindling fundraising support. It plans to make added appeals to its top donors but still expects to heavily reduce its Israel trips in 2023 to as few as 23,500 participants, down from 35,000 this y...
(JNS) — U.S. Jews who participated in Birthright trips to Israel are more highly identified and engaged in communal life than their peers who did not, according to an analysis of the Pew Research Center’s 2020 survey of American Jews conducted by researchers at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. The profound disparity in attitudes and behavior also held true when the analysts took into account differences in the respondents’ backgrounds. Among the adults surveyed by Pew, nearly 45 percent had been eligible to pa...
(JTA) — Elon Musk bantered with Kanye West and trolled the Anti-Defamation League this weekend, in the latest of mounting signs that he is choosing to let the platform become a free for all after acquiring it last month. West, the rapper and designer who also goes by Ye, had been banned from Twitter last month for threatening Jews; he returned to the platform Nov. 4 and was swiftly banned again after he launched a new round of anti-Jewish invective. “Testing Testing Seeing if my Twitter is unblocked,” West tweeted midday Sunday. Several hours...
(JTA) — It was unseasonably cold on Sunday morning when thousands of rabbis crowded on risers in front of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn to snap a photograph. The group photo is a signature moment during any gathering of the Orthodox movement, allowing the movement to create a visual record of its growth: Unique among Hasidic movements, Chabad is known for sending rabbis and their wives to far-flung locations around the globe to minister to local Jews, regardless of denomination or beliefs. (A picture taken at a smaller gathering o...
