Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Jared Genser, a Washington, D.C.-based international human rights lawyer, has extracted hostages and political prisoners from some of the world's worst dictatorships - usually in one-off deals following years of negotiation and on a rare occasion involving large sums of money. But he's concerned that piecemeal dealmaking with rogue actors encourages more kidnappings. So, Genser is proposing a new multilateral approach to fighting hostage-taking by nations like Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela,...
(JNS) — Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built. Asked on Wednesday whether, given the United Nations’ sizable presence in Gaza via a variety of agencies, there had been any indication to the global body that tunnels were being constructed underground, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “No is clearl...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Wednesday at his office in Jerusalem with Argentine President Javier Milei, who has promised to move his country’s embassy to the capital and designate Hamas a terrorist group. “I’m delighted to welcome you, President Milei, and your delegation, to Israel. You’re a great friend of the Jewish state. We are delighted with your decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move your diplomatic post there, and also, of course, an embassy,” began Netanyahu. “We share the desire for...
By Judy Lash Balint (JNS) — Palestinian children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says. “In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.” The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the...
(JNS) — An Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza will take place in three stages over several weeks, sources in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah claim. Parallel to this, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas is said to be preparing certain reforms under U.S. pressure that he hopes would allow him to return to power in Gaza. The emerging ceasefire agreement will occur in three phases, according to the high-ranking sources and reports in the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel. The basic formula is the release of one Israeli hostage for 30 i...
New Title VI probes of Harvard, UMich, New School, USF, Indiana (JNS) — The U.S. Department of Education announced five new investigations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Law. Harvard University, the University of Michigan, The New School (New York City), Indiana University-Bloomington, the Butler School District 53 (Illinois) and the University of South Florida are all being probed for violations “for discrimination involving shared ancestry.” Campus Reform said it filed the complaint against Indiana, a public university. The Educa...
(JNS) — The heads of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus on Feb. 7 pressed Dutch legislators to cut funding to UNRWA altogether, as Israel seeks alternatives for the U.N. body over its ties to Palestinian terrorism. The discussion, at the Dutch House of Representatives, comes amid Israeli calls for UNRWA to be replaced by responsible aid agencies; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the work and functions of UNRWA need to be preserved. “With the recent horrific reports verifying UNRWA employees’ complicity in the Oct. 7...
BERLIN (JTA) — Police in Berlin have arrested a 23-year-old man who allegedly attacked and seriously wounded a Jewish student in a bar on Friday. The Jewish student and his family say the attack was a hate crime. The victim, Lahav Shapira, 30, was hospitalized and underwent surgery for non-life-threatening injuries to his face. He is the grandson of Israeli athletics coach Amitzur Shapira, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972. His older brother, Shahak Shapira, is a prominent comedian and w...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A conflict that started on a tiny perimeter of land on Oct. 7 is, less than four months later, reverberating throughout the region, from Lebanon in the north to Morocco in the west, Iran in the east and Yemen in the south. “This is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday at a press conference. “I would argue that we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 19...
(JNS) - U.S. President Joe Biden is harming Israel's efforts to demilitarize the Gaza Strip by demanding that Jerusalem scale back its military offensive against the Hamas terror organization, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Channel 12 on Monday. Biden is "to some extent hampering the war effort by this desire to force Israel to engage in I think what he refers to as 'low-intensity combat'... That's sort of the kind of messaging that America has been giving Israel,"...
Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv for first time since Jan. 1 (JNS) — Air-raid sirens blared across Tel Aviv and its suburbs on Monday afternoon, warning of incoming rockets from the Gaza Strip for the first time since Jan. 1. Local reports said at least 10 rockets were fired towards the greater Tel Aviv area, sending millions of civilians racing for shelter. Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades “military” wing confirmed it fired a volley of rockets at the city “in response to the Zionist massacres of civilians.” There were no reports of casualties...
(JNS) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was set to meet on Tuesday with major donors to the embattled U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the United Nations’ Palestinian-only refugee organization. A number of major donor countries announced in recent days the suspension of their contributions to the agency amid revelations that 12 UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. The information was provided to UNRWA by Israel. Nine of the 12 employees had their contracts terminated, while anoth...
(JNS) — A UN Watch report released this week further bolsters the assertions of UNRWA’s critics that the Palestinian aid agency, rife with terrorism supporters, is beyond repair. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, has come under fire after The New York Times broke the story on Sunday that 12 staff members took part in the Oct. 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists rampaged through Israel’s south, murdering some 1,200 persons, mostly civilians. At least 15 countries, including the U.S., have suspended funding to the organ...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A growing number of countries has suspended funding to the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in the wake of allegations that a number of its staffers were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in Israel. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, protested the cuts, saying that they were accelerating an oncoming famine in the Gaza Strip. The agency was founded to administer relief to Palestinian refugees and their descendants and is the main provider of aid in Gaza, where it emp...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that more than 100 Hamas terrorists had been caught in the previous 36 hours, as the IDF pushes forward in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. “Hamas is collapsing into its own tunnels that it painstakingly dug. Every place it thought would be a trap for IDF soldiers becomes an area where we hit it,” Gallant told soldiers serving in the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit. “In the past day and a half, we have over 100 captives, some of them who came up from underground, in the Khan Yu...
As Gazans passed through the humanitarian corridor from Khan Younis, many were heard yelling “down with Hamas,” potentially signaling growing discontent with the Iran-backed terror group’s command over Gaza. IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced that a humanitarian corridor has been established in a Bedouin area Al-Mawasi to protect Gazan civilians from the IDF military operations in Khan Younis. While tens of thousands were evacuating the area, many were heard yelling slogans against Hamas. “The people want to topple Hamas,” and oth...
(JNS) - Dozens of Palestinian children in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah held a rare protest against Hamas on Wednesday, calling on the terrorist organization to release Israeli hostages and end the war so they can return to their homes. Outside Deir al-Balah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the children held white pieces of paper reading, "Yes to giving back the prisoners" and expressing wishes to return to homes in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. "Will these cries and d...
(JNS) — Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich fired back at Qatar for supporting Hamas terrorism after the Arab Gulf state attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday for alleged remarks about Doha’s role as a mediator in hostage talks. “Qatar is a country that supports terrorism and finances terrorism. It is the patron of Hamas and is largely responsible for the massacre committed by Hamas of Israeli citizens,” the Religious Zionism Party leader tweeted in response to an earlier tweet from Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs o...
Accused killer of Samantha Woll charged with first-degree murder (JNS) — Michael Jackson-Bolanos, 28, faces multiple charges for allegedly stabbing to death Detroit Jewish leader Samantha Woll on Oct. 21. In a hearing on Tuesday, Judge Kenneth King set an arraignment date for Jan. 30 and added an additional charge of first-degree premeditated murder. Prosecutors had already charged Jackson-Bolanos with murder, home invasion and lying to police. Woll had served as president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue and worked on multiple p...
(JNS) — Hamas on Sunday released a statement denying its members committed atrocities on Oct. 7. The denial is a complete reversal for the terrorist group and a total disavowal of its own footage, after it supplied GoPro cameras to its operatives so that they could capture for posterity their horrific deeds on that day. “Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people, is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters,” Hamas stated in the 16-page document, claiming it only targeted Israeli...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Fifteen Jewish Democrats, including some pro-Israel stalwarts, slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he rejected the idea of creating an independent Palestinian state after the Israel-Hamas war. “We strongly disagree with the prime minister,” said the brief statement released Friday morning by the office of Rep. Jerry Nadler, the New York representative who is the unofficial dean of Jewish House Democrats. “A two-state solution is the path forward.” The statement — which comes amid rising calls from some Jew...
(JNS) — Israeli intelligence material handed to the United States reveals the extent of United Nations Relief and Works Agency staff participation in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. The New York Times on Sunday published details regarding the involvement of 12 UNRWA employees in the Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel—10 Hamas operatives and one affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Wall Street Journal also reviewed the dossier, publishing additional findings from the Israeli intelligence reports on Monday, including that aro...
(JNS) — The European Council, which represents the national governments of all 27 European Union member states, agreed on Tuesday to impose sanctions on Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar in response to the Islamist group’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel that claimed at least 1,200 lives and wounded thousands. The terrorist leader was already placed under sanctions by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2015 and 2023, respectively. Effective immediately, Sinwar will be “subject to the freezing of his funds and other financial asset...
By Andrew Bernard (JNS) — The United States plans to re-designate the Yemen-based Houthi militant group as a terrorist organization following its repeated attacks on Red Sea shipping that have wreaked havoc on international trade, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security advisor, said. That designation of the Iran-backed group will take effect 30 days from the announcement in order to allow for “humanitarian carve-outs” intended to ensure that the sanctions do not harm the Yemeni population, according to Sullivan. The Houthis control 70 perce...
(JNS) — Medicines destined for Israeli hostages, but most of which will end up serving the Hamas terrorist organization, arrived in Egypt on Wednesday and are on the way to the Gaza border. “A senior Hamas official said that for every box provided for the hostages, 1,000 boxes would be sent in for Palestinians,” AP reported. Israel also agreed to allow more aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. A controversy has arisen within Israel over the terms of the deal, which allow the shipment to pass through without IDF inspection. According to Chann...
