Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — A massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake centered in southern Turkey killed more than 2,300 people combined in that country and Syria early on Monday, toppling buildings and causing shockwaves felt across the region, including Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Israel. Emergency medical services in Turkey and Syria said that the death toll was expected to rise in both countries as hundreds of people potentially remained trapped under collapsed structures. The quake struck just after 4 a...
ISTANBUL (JTA) — Israel is sending aid to Turkey and Syria in the wake of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has left over 2,000 dead as of Monday evening here. Israel will send medication, tents and other supplies to Syria, its neighbor that it considers a hostile state, according to Hebrew language media. The Israeli military will also send rescue teams to both countries, the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. That embassy was only recently formally re-established after years of diplomatic t...
(JNS) - Over the course of his illustrious career, Israel "Izzy" Tapoohi has helmed some of the most recognizable Israeli franchises, including Africa-Israel Investments, Bezeq, Israel Bonds and the Israel Electric Corporation. But, as he announces his retirement at year's end, Tapoohi, 76, says nothing has been more fulfilling than his role over the last six years as president and CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, the non-profit organization that raises funds in the United States to...
(JNS) — The Jewish Federations of North America and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee have launched fundraising campaigns to provide humanitarian aid to people in Turkey after the devastating earthquakes today. Thousands have been killed in what officials are calling the worst quake to hit the region in decades. The initial one registered at a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale, causing massive damage to buildings, homes and medical facilities in Turkey and Syria. An aftershock, which registered more than 7.5, exacerbated the d...
This winter, the city of Odessa, Ukraine, feels like the heart of darkness. The city is constant bombardment by the Russian military, freezing nighttime temperatures commonly fall below zero, and electricity is only available for six hours per day: three in the morning and three at night. Amid these desperate circumstances, Avraham Wolff, the chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, is trying to bring some light - and heat. He's doing so with jerry-rigged car batteries to provide warmth and...
Israel passes important hurdle to enter US visa waiver program (JNS) — Fiscal year 2022 saw a significant drop in the number of Israelis refused visas to enter the United States, for the first time falling under the 3 percent threshold to qualify for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, the U.S. Embassy in Israel said in a statement. “Israel has made one huge step toward the visa waiver program,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides tweeted on Monday. However, he continued, much work remains to be done. The U.S. Visa Waiver Program allows citizens o...
(JNS) - As of the new year, a total of 1,116 global entities have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Working Definition of Antisemitism. According to the Combat Antisemitism Movement, this includes 18 U.S. states that adopted the IHRA definition via legislative or executive actions in the course of 2022, bringing the total number to 30. American cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., El Paso and Wichita have all adopted the definition, as have seven out of the 10...
(JNS) - Israel's Foreign Ministry revealed that it had sent a letter to world leaders calling on them to help secure the release of Israelis being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The letter was sent to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric Egger,and Pope Francis, among others. Hamas released an undated video purportedly of Israeli captive Avera Mengistu, who crossed into the Gaza Strip on his own accord in 2014....
(JNS) — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a vocal defender of the Jewish state, recently rebutted an absurd Holocaust parallel drawn by President Joe Biden. When asked by a reporter whether immigration was a basic human right, Biden responded, “Well, I think it is a human right if your family is being persecuted, if you’re being dealt with in a way—like I thought it was a human right for you know, Jews in Germany to be able to go and escape and get help where they could. But the other side of this is, there’s also, the people in this coun...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday stressed the importance of bilateral relations with the United States in a meeting with top officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Netanyahu met with AIPAC President Betsy Korn, CEO Howard Kohr and Israel Director Cameron Brown. The Israeli leader also emphasized that the country's main struggle has been-and remains-against Iran. Netanyahu earlier this month addressed the AIPAC Political Leadership Forum,...
(JTA) — An exodus of Jews from Russia since President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine has drawn widespread attention over the last year. But according to statistics released recently by Russia’s official statistics bureau, the country’s Jewish population had fallen sharply long before the tanks began rolling. The statistics, published last month by Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, showed that just 82,644 people identified themselves as Jews on the national census, conducted in 2021. Another nearly 2,000 people identif...
Pentagon transferring arms stationed in Israel to Ukraine—report (JNS) — The Pentagon is dipping into a store of American ammunition in Israel to help Ukraine replenish its dwindling supply of artillery shells, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. “With stockpiles in the United States strained and American arms makers not yet able to keep up with the pace of Ukraine’s battlefield operations, the Pentagon has turned to two alternative supplies of shells to bridge the gap: one in South Korea and the one in Israel,” the Times reported,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the group's conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American electoral politics. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's "Political Leadership Forum" this week is closed to press. But it offers the latest...
(JNS) — Speaking at the annual Combat Antisemitism Movement Advisory Board meeting Wednesday night, chairman Natan Sharansky underscored the importance of countering the global rise of antisemitism. “For the last 20 years, we could say antisemitism is on the rise, so what makes this year different?” said Sharansky, addressing the online meeting. “In the past, we’ve talked about antisemitism on the left, and antisemitism on the right. This year it became mainstream.” The Combat Antisemitism Movement facilitates a non-partisan movement to...
(JNS) — The White House announced on Thursday that Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will travel to Europe this month to participate in Holocaust remembrance events. Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, is set to visit Krakow, Poland, from Jan. 26 -29. On Jan. 27, Emhoff, joined by U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, is slated to visit the Memorial and Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He will also participate in a wreath-laying ceremony and attend the annual commemoration of International H...
(JTA) — The zoo in Cologne, Germany, has gotten its first check from the $26 million gift promised by the widow of a Holocaust survivor who credited the city’s residents for saving him during the war. Elizabeth Reichert willed the funds to the Cologne Zoological Garden in 2017 in honor of her husband Arnulf, who died in 1998. Both Reicherts were born in Cologne and met during World War II, when Elizabeth was part of the local anti-Nazi resistance network and Arnulf, a German Jew, was in hiding with the network’s help. “They only survive...
(JTA) - Pinchas Goldshmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who fled the country earlier this year, said other Russian Jews should leave before it's too late in an interview with the Guardian. "When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community," Goldschmidt told the Guardian. "We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime." He...
(JNS) — The Eretz HaKodesh and Coalition for Jewish Values organizations criticized a letter — written by The Jewish Federations of North America, The Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod and the World Zionist Organization — which expressed concerns over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government. Netanyahu’s cabinet was sworn in last Thursday. “It is our duty to share with you our deep concern regarding voices in the government on issues that could undermine the long-standing status quo on religious affairs that could affect the...
(JNS) — Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said he was “overjoyed” when he heard that the U.N. Security Council was holding an emergency meeting Thursday over the “quiet, orderly, uneventful” visit of an Israeli government minister to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. “I figured that if this important body is meeting to discuss such a trivial matter, then we clearly achieved world peace overnight,” Gilad Erdan said, mocking the council’s decision to submit to the Palestinians’ demand for a discussion on the matter. Unsurprisingly, much...
US and Israel must ‘stand together’ on Iran, Netanyahu tells AIPAC (JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the AIPAC Political Leadership Forum through a video call from his office in the Knesset on Monday, speaking about the importance of U.S.-Israel cooperation on Iran in the pro-Israel lobbying group’s first major conference since the COVID-19 pandemic. “The time has come for Israel and the United States, along with other countries, to stand together, and I look forward to discussing this with President Biden and his team...
(JNS) — A former Massachusetts state legislator is being condemned by Jewish and Zionist organizations for accusing Israel of “being on a mission to kill Palestinians.” During her final week in office, Democratic Rep. Jamie Zahlaway Belsito, who represents the fourth Essex district in the northeastern part of the state, took to Twitter on Dec. 29 to attack Israel and its new government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The US must acknowledge that the @Israel administration is an apartheid run thuggery terrorist regime on a mission...
(JTA) - Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth - commonly referred to as the United Kingdom's chief rabbi - can now add a "Sir" to his title. Mirvis will be named a "knight commander of the order of the British Empire," according to King Charles' New Year Honours list. Since 1890, the U.K. has announced new knighthoods and other chivalric honors only twice a year, on New Year's Day and on the birthday of the ruling monarch, which in the...
(JTA) — Lithuania’s parliament passed a law this week to set aside over 37 million euros ($38 million) as restitution for Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Ingrida Šimonytė, Lithuania’s prime minister, introduced the bill in the Seimas, Lithuania’s national legislature in Vilnius, on Nov. 15, proposing to nearly double the money the government had already set aside for restitution claims in a country where 90% of its Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Today only 5,000 Jews remain in the country. The World Jewish Restitution Organizat...
(JNS) — B’nai B’rith International condemned the U.N. General Assembly’s request that the International Court of Justice issue a legal opinion concerning Israeli policies on Palestinian-claimed territories. The referral was endorsed by a UNGA committee in November and has now been rubber stamped by the assembly’s plenary. “The UNGA—in which Palestinians enjoy an automatic majority, including the overwhelming share of nearly 60 Arab and Muslim governments—annually passes more condemnations of the Jewish state than all other 192 U.N. member sta...
Bank of Israel hikes interest rate to highest level since 2008 (JNS) — The Bank of Israel Monetary Committee has increased the country’s interest rate to 3.75 percent — representing a 0.5 percent rise, the central bank’s largest since 2008. “Inflation in Israel is 5.3 percent over the past 12 months,” the Bank of Israel stated, reported Globes. “Economic activity in Israel remains strong, but the growth rate appears to have slowed relative to the first half of 2022.” Since the Bank of Israel increased the rate from its all-time low of 0.1 perc...
