Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — The German government has agreed to allocate $1.5 billion in Holocaust reparations this year, setting a new record for how much the country is spending to support survivors. The increase from a total of $1.4 billion last year is due to a rise in the amount the government is paying to reimburse survivors’ medical expenses. But the sum paid directly to survivors has once again declined, reflecting the accelerating deaths of survivors. And the growth in the total package is expected to end soon as the number of living survivors plu...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on July 24, his fourth time appearing before the legislative body. The Netanyahu speech, coming against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, is meant to demonstrate American support for Israel at a time when Israel has come under widespread criticism for its military campaign and Netanyahu faces a possible arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. “We look forward to hearing the Israeli government’s vision for defending democ...
(JNS) — United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan called the leadership of the Palestinian Authority “Ali Baba and the forty thieves,” speaking during a meeting of Arab countries that was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Axios, citing five sources, reported that a shouting match erupted during the April 29 meeting in Riyadh that also included the top diplomats of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, as well as top P.A. official Hussein al-Sheikh. The meeti...
(JNS) - BBC news anchor Helena Humphrey was ridiculed after asking former IDF International Spokesman Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Conricus on Sunday whether Israel should have warned Gaza's civilians before launching Saturday's rescue operation. Referring to the high Arab casualty count reported by Hamas sources, Humphrey asked, "Would there have been a warning to those civilians for them to get out on time?" Conricus, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a...
(JNS) — A journalist and a doctor were among the family members holding Israeli hostages in their home in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Sunday night. “Following checks by the IDF and the Shin Bet, it can be confirmed that [journalist] Abdullah al-Jamal was an operative of the Hamas terrorist organization, who kept the hostages Almog Meir, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv in his family home in Nuseirat,” the military said in a statement posted to X. “Abdullah’s family home held hostages alongside family m...
(JNS) — Speaking at a Michigan Democratic Party fundraiser, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Saturday that she mourns the Palestinians killed during Israel’s raid that freed four hostages. “Before I begin, I just say a few words about the morning which I know weighs heavily on all of our hearts,” Harris said, per Fox News. “On Oct. 7, Hamas committed a brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent people and abducted 250 hostages,” she said. “Thankfully, four of those hostages were reunited with their families tonight. And we mourn all of the in...
(JNS) — The Biden administration has talked about negotiating a unilateral deal for the release of five Americans held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, NBC News reported on Monday. The talks wouldn’t include Israel and would take place via Qatari mediators, two current senior U.S. officials and two former ones told NBC. One of the current officials called it a “very real option.” The five American hostages were abducted on Oct. 7 when the terror group invaded Israel. They are Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Neutra and Kei...
(JNS) — Five days after U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a multi-stage outline for a hostage release deal and ceasefire, debate within Israel has intensified over the costs and merits of the plan, as well as the extent to which Biden’s claim that this is an Israeli proposal reflects reality. Biden’s three-staged proposal envisages a temporary truce lasting six weeks to enable the release of tens of Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners, and a return of Gaza civilians to the north of the Strip. This would...
Herzog hosts families of IDF spotters kidnapped by Hamas (JNS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog and his wife Michal on Tuesday hosted the families of five female Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were kidnapped from the IDF Field Observers base in Nahal Oz by Hamas on Oct. 7. Karina Ariev, Liri Albag, Daniela Gilboa, Naama Levy and Agam Berger have been held captive in Gaza ever since. Last month, The Hostages and Missing Families Forum released video footage of their abduction filmed by the terrorists themselves. During the meeting, the H...
(JNS) — U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that Israel has accepted the ceasefire proposal President Joe Biden revealed on Friday, and that “the ball is in Hamas’s court.” “We are waiting for a response from Hamas,” said Sullivan. He acknowledged that the terror group in Gaza might well choose to continue the conflict instead. “That wouldn’t be terribly out of character for a vicious and brutal terror group, but what we hope they do in the end is see that the best pathway to an end to this war, the return of all t...
(JTA) - Claudia Sheinbaum swept to victory in Mexico's presidential election Sunday, giving the country of more than 120 million a woman leader and a Jewish leader for the first time. Sheinbaum's election makes Mexico by far the biggest country to have a Jewish head of state. Only Israel (9.5 million) and Ukraine (38 million) currently have Jewish leaders. Sheinbaum's Jewish ties are centered mostly on her family story - her grandparents came to Mexico after fleeing persecution in Europe - and l...
(JNS) — Beijing will provide $69 million in aid to the Palestinians and an additional $3 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, Xi Jinping, the president of China, said on Thursday. “Since last October, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has escalated drastically, throwing people into tremendous suffering,” Xi said at the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing, the Associated Press reported. “War should not continue indefinitely,” he said. Xi also said there should be an international conference to press for the end of the war....
(JNS) — China will host several Arab leaders in Beijing this week with the Palestinian issue on the agenda, the foreign ministry said on Monday. The visitors are to include Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government has played a key role in the indirect truce talks between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. Israel’s Abraham Accords allies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain will also be in China, the former represented by UAE President and ruler of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the latter by Kin...
(CAMERA via JNS) - Unsurprisingly, the International Court of Justice played along with the cynical attempt by Hamas's ally South Africa to halt the Israeli military operation launched to destroy the terrorist organization after its horrific Oct. 7 massacre. Equally unsurprising is that the ICJ justified its ruling by relying on a thin, distorted and inaccurate set of "facts." In its May 24 ruling, the court relied on a handful of dubious, generalized and misleading claims made by various...
US health, human services secretary appears to recognize ‘Palestine’ (JNS) — Xavier Becerra, the U.S. secretary of health and human services, appeared to recognize “Palestine” as a formal entity and referred to a “cycle” of violence between Israelis and Palestinians during a speech at the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. “The health and security of each nation is irrevocably connected to the health and security of people everywhere,” the former California attorney general said at the gathering of the body which is part of...
(JNS) — Recent moves by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court at the Hague are having no tangible effect on the Israel Defense Force’s ongoing Gaza operation, aimed at dismantling Hamas’s remaining battalions in Rafah city. While the courts have signaled a disturbing willingness to cooperate to varying degrees with “lawfare” initiatives against Israel, aimed at delegitimizing Israeli military actions to defend the country against a genocidal terrorist group, this has had no obvious influence on how the Israe...
(JTA) – For months, Zoe Buckman, a Brooklyn artist with more than 72,000 followers on Instagram, has posted about the hypocrisy she sees in critics of Israel who downplayed atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. On Monday, she again decried hypocrisy. But this time, she aimed her criticism in large part toward fellow supporters of Israel. "Folks who do not condemn loss of civilian life in Palestine are akin to the many who refuse to condemn 10/7, h@mas and what is being done to the h...
(JNS) — The United States and Europe stayed away from a United Nations General Assembly tribute to the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The so-called “Butcher of Tehran,” said to be responsible for the killings of thousands of Iranian dissidents, died on May 20 in a helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and six others. “The United States will not attend today’s United Nations tribute event for President Raisi in any capacity,” Nate Evans, spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in a sta...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is scheduled to pay a solidarity visit to Israel next week. Haley, who served as ambassador during Trump’s presidency, plans to tour communities near the Gaza border as well as in the north of the country during her visit, which is set to begin on Monday, according to former Israeli U.N. envoy Danny Danon, who is to accompany her. She is also scheduled to meet with Israeli leaders and senior security off...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden told a Jewish gathering that he will ensure that Israel will have “everything it needs” to fight Hamas, a pledge that comes after weeks of tension between the governments over his pause on the delivery of large bombs. “I’ll always ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas, and all its enemies,” Biden told a White House reception on May 20, marking Jewish American Heritage Month. The crowd of several hundred in the Rose Garden cheered and applauded. Biden also denounced t...
(JNS) — Close to three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from a new $320 million floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast was stolen on Saturday en route to a U.N. warehouse, Reuters reported on May 21. Eleven trucks “were cleaned out by Palestinians” on the journey to the World Food Programme warehouse in Deir El Balah in the central Strip, with only five truckloads making it to the destination. “They’ve not seen trucks for a while,” a U.N. official told Reuters. “They just basically mounted on the trucks and he...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei oversaw a memorial service at Tehran University on Wednesday to honor President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and others killed in a recent helicopter crash. “Oh Allah, we didn’t see anything but good from him [Raisi],” Khamenei said in the standard prayer for the dead in Arabic. Iran’s acting president, Mohammad Mokhber, stood nearby and openly wept during the service. People then carried the coffins out on their shoulders, chanting, “Death to America!” fol...
(JNS) — The Hamas terrorist organization has profited at least $500 million off humanitarian aid coming into the Gaza Strip since the start of the war on Oct. 7, according to a report that aired on Israel’s Channel 12 last week. Veteran analyst Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the broadcaster on Thursday that, according to a calculation he made with “a friend—I don’t know if I’m allowed to mention his name,” Hamas earned “no less” than half a billion dollars from the aid. “We provide [this] for...
(JNS) - The Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Wednesday evening released a video of Hamas terrorists abducting female Israel Defense Forces spotters on Oct. 7. Footage taken by body cameras of the terrorists reveals the violence and trauma experienced by five of the seven spotters captured alive from the Nahal Oz base. Another 15 field observers serving there were murdered during the attack. The video running time is 3 minutes and 10 seconds. It was edited and censored to exclude the most...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Hamas kidnapped field observers who were from the Nahal Oz base on Oct. 7. Five are seen in the abduction video released at the request of their families. Agam Berger Agam Berger, aged 19, is the twin sister of Li-Yam, born two minutes before her. She's a gifted violinist, playing since she was 8. She had only been in the position for one day when she was kidnapped from IDF's Nahal Oz Base. Her mother, Mirav, said in March, "Agam was supposed to be stationed at the...
