Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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An American professor is speaking out about an archive of Jewish texts, records and materials he discovered in an Iraqi government building during the 2003 war. Dr. Harold Rudd was instrumental in salvaging much of a Jewish archive damaged during an American airstrike in Baghdad and retrieving the documents for restoration in Washington, D.C. Rudd, a Pentagon consultant at the time, was on the ground during the initial American invasion of the country. But after an American missile struck the...
(JNS) — Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made pointed comments on Monday directed at the Biden administration for its criticism of the Israeli government’s policies. “No country is as ethical as Israel, and no military is as ethical as the IDF. Anyone in the world who criticizes us is a hypocrite,” the Religious Zionism Party head said during an interview with IDF Radio. “No nation has been fighting an existential war against terrorism for decades more cleanly and carefully than the Jewish nation,” the minister continued. “I’m not even talkin...
(JTA) - A Russian court has extended the pretrial detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for another three months. In a hearing on Thursday at Lefortovo District Court that was closed to press, a judge ordered Gershkovich to remain in detention until at least Nov. 30, a court spokeswoman said. Investigators from the FSB, a Russian state security agency, had requested the extension. Gershkovich, 31, is the American-born son of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union. He was...
(JNS) — Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy told JNS late last month that he supports most of former President Donald Trump’s policies on Israel and that he wanted to go further than the former president with respect to the Abraham Accords. In a recent interview with The Washington Free Beacon, Ramaswamy articulated a rather different aspect of his “Abraham Accords 2.0,” including ending military funding to Israel by 2028. “If we’re successful, the true mark of success for the U.S. and for Israel will be to get t...
(New York Jewish Week) — On his first trip to Israel as mayor, Eric Adams made all of the expected stops — meeting with the prime minister and president, visiting the Western Wall and the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, sampling from the offerings of the country’s tech scene. But he added another, less traditional agenda item: a meeting with two organizers of the ongoing mass protest movement against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul. The 40-minute meeting, which took place Tuesday at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, made Adams o...
Israeli jailed in Madagascar for smuggling tortoises (JNS) — A Madagascar court has sentenced an Israeli man to two years in prison for attempting to smuggle dozens of rare tortoises out of the country, local media reported on Monday. The man, whose identity remains under gag order, was also fined $400. The 39-year-old from Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem, was arrested two months ago at the airport after 59 rare tortoises were found in his possession. According to Ynet, the prosecution is seeking a sentence of 10 years in prison, with a f...
(JNS) — Earlier this summer we saw multiple media outlets using various methods to attempt to separate Jews from their holiest site, the Temple Mount. Now National Geographic continues this trend in a long article by Andrew Lawler that privileges the Muslim narrative regarding the site. (“An unprecedented look inside one of Jerusalem’s holiest—and most controversial—landmarks,” August 15.) The article does not ignore Jewish claims, but subtly denies their credence. For example, Lawler states that “Many Jews believe the dome [of the Rock] sta...
Perhaps you've heard the news. Fires torching hundreds of properties. Entire households burned to the ground. Every personal belonging lost. Thousands of lives destroyed. The devastation has been unprecedented, and it will take years to rebuild that which can be rebuilt. But the personal tragedies and lives lost may never heal. If you're in the West, you may have heard about the tremendous loss in Maui, Hawaii. Wildfires have left a trail of death and destruction. As horrible as that is, that's...
Jerusalem merchant arrested after charging US tourist $1,900 for ashtray (JNS) — Police detained a merchant in Jerusalem’s Old City this week after he allegedly scammed an American tourist by charging her almost $1,900 for an ashtray using her credit card. Earlier this month, the man approached a woman, who is in her 60s, after seeing her smoking near his shop. He proceeded to give her an ashtray. Eventually, after thanking him for the gesture, she asked to buy it, to which he responded that it would cost 30,000 shekels (about $8,000), but she...
(JNS) — The Biden administration pressed forward with plans to allocate hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians despite concerns within the administration that those funds could end up supporting the Iran-backed terror group Hamas. According to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, U.S. State Department officials expressed those concerns privately, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws barring the United States from sending funds into areas run by Palestinian terror groups. The a...
(JTA) - For the first time in 800 years, the British city of York, whose Jewish population was decimated in a medieval pogrom, will be home to a rabbi. Rabbi Elisheva Salamo arrived in York from California last week after decades of pulpit work in the United States, Switzerland and South Africa. She will take a part-time pulpit at the York Liberal Jewish Community, which is affiliated with a denomination akin to the American Reform movement. The congregation was founded in 2014 and now has...
(JNS) — In back-to-back social-media posts on Aug. 5, the U.S. State Department stated that it “strongly” condemned two attacks—one of which it blamed on “Israeli extremist settlers” and a second incident that “killed one and wounded two others.” It did not note that the latter attacker was a Palestinian terrorist, nor that the person killed was Israeli. The first post from the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs on X (formerly Twitter) condemned “strongly” an Aug. 4 “terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers that killed a 19-year o...
(JNS) — U.S. House of Representatives Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday in Jerusalem that judicial reform should have no bearing on American military support for Israel. Speaking to Israeli journalists about the divisive domestic debate regarding the ruling coalition’s legislative initiative, the New York lawmaker expressed the importance of maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge “regardless of where Israel lands in terms of the judicial reform effort.” Jeffries, who is leading a delegation of 24 House Democrats...
US tops list of tourists to Israel (JNS) — Some 2.25 million foreign tourists entered Israel in the first seven months of the year, with the largest group coming from the United States, figures the Central Bureau of Statistics released on Sunday show. The total was nearly double that from the same period last year as the world was recovering from the coronavirus pandemic but still lower than in 2019. The statistics also showed that 5.75 million Israelis went abroad in the first seven months of the year. Of course, this includes many citizens w...
(JNS) — U.S. defense guarantees under an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement would make Gulf states’ nuclear ambitions “unnecessary,” according to Jerusalem’s top diplomat. The Americans would be able to provide protection against Iranian aggression in the region, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen argued in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “[A] defense pledge could reassure Middle Eastern nations, primarily Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,” he wrote. “This approach would make individual nuclear ambitio...
(JNS) - The Philippine government is expanding its partnership with Israel to strengthen the archipelagic country's agricultural sector. The move follows a meeting between Philippine Senior Undersecretary for Agriculture Domingo Panganiban and Israeli Ambassador to Manila Ilan Fluss on July 31, during which they discussed collaborative projects to enhance bilateral training, internships and other professional exchanges. The meeting also focused on enhancing market access of Philippine fresh...
(JNS) — Iran is working to seize control of an extensive network of Syrian military industry facilities, collectively known by their French acronym of CERS, or the Scientific Studies and Research Center in English, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Alma Research and Education Center. The Alma Center is a defense research group that specializes in security challenges faced by Israel in Lebanon and Syria. The report also warned of the possibility of Hezbollah taking possession of chemical substances present as CERS, which are b...
(JNS) — The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations implored its Security Council to help clamp down on Hezbollah’s repeated provocations along the Israeli-Lebanese border. “The Middle East is a powder keg on the cusp of being ignited” due to “Hezbollah’s violent escalations, blatant violations of Security Council resolutions and dangerous military advancements,” Gilad Erdan wrote late last week to the U.N. council. The Iran-backed, Lebanese terror group Hezbollah controls Southern Lebanon. Security Council resolutions and pronouncement...
Israeli teen demand for plastic surgery up (JNS) — The Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons in Israel reported on Tuesday a 37 percent increase in the demand for plastic surgery among teenagers during the summer holiday season. The main demands are for ear-pinning, nose reshaping and breast augmentation procedures. “Social networks influence the changes in the beauty model among teenagers all year round, but during the holidays we see a dramatic increase,” said Dr. Meir Cohen, chairman of the Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons in Is...
(JTA) – An association for American anthropologists has voted to formally boycott Israeli academic institutions, seven years after shutting down a similar vote, in a sign of the shifting tides of the Israel debate on American college campuses. The American Anthropological Association, which represents thousands of anthropologists in academia and the professional space, announced that its members had voted to endorse a resolution that forbids the association from collaborating with Israeli academic institutions. More than 70 percent of the a...
Israel rebukes Amman over harassment of religious Jews By Etgar Lefkovits (JNS) — Israel has lodged an official complaint with Jordan over the repeated harassment of religious Jewish tourists at border crossings, the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said Tuesday. The protest expressed in a letter from Foreign Minister Eli Cohen came two weeks after a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews said they were asked to cut off their sidelocks after being detained for two days at the Jordanian side of the Yitzhak Rabin/Wadi Araba border crossing north of Eilat. It...
(JNS) - Just as Israel's president was settling in following a busy day in Washington, a gift came his way from the Capitol, courtesy of the Jewish state's opponents. Less than 24 hours before he was to address a joint session of Congress, the House passed a Republican-sponsored resolution stating that Israel is not a racist or apartheid state. The resolution's filing was inspired by a flippant insult hurled at Israel by the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who, under heavy...
(JNS) - U.K. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis was officially honored as Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire during a "moving" ceremony at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, his office announced. King Charles III bestowed Britain's highest honor upon Rabbi Mirvis in the 2023 New Years Honours, which were publicly announced earlier this year, recognizing his "significant services to the Jewish community, to interfaith relations and to education." The 2023 honors list was the first approved by...
TEL AVIV (JTA) — President Joe Biden has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet in the United States soon, after months of holding off on inviting him to the White House. The invitation was extended and accepted during a phone call between the two leaders on July 17. Israeli prime ministers typically receive an invitation to Washington shortly after taking office, but Biden, who has known Netanyahu for decades, has so far held off on inviting him to the capital. This invitation may not exactly end the wait: According to r...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden’s concerns about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of Israel’s courts system should be taken into account by the Israeli parties seeking a compromise, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said after meeting Biden. Herzog’s advice, effectively aimed at Netanyahu and appearing only in his comments in Hebrew to Israeli media after his White House meeting on Tuesday, was unusual in a foreign leader insisting that the United States had a role to play in a matter of internal debate. “It’s not...
