Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israel will not agree to the “delusional demands” Hamas is making to release the 136 remaining hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on Feb. 7. Bowing to the terrorist organization’s demands will lead to another massacre and a “major disaster” that no Israeli citizen will accept, he emphasized, speaking from his office in Jerusalem. “We are on our way to total victory,” he declared. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory is within reach....
(JNS) — Scores of Christian supporters from around the world gathered in Israel’s parliament on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus in a show of solidarity amid the war against Hamas in Gaza. The event, which came on a somber day following the single deadliest attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out three and half months ago underscored the growing force of faith-based diplomacy around the globe. “Over the last 20 years, you have proven in the best possible way what true fr...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday set out the country’s core demands for ending the war against Hamas in Gaza. “The essential goal is, first of all, the elimination of Hamas. To achieve this goal, three things are needed,” Netanyahu told journalists ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv. “The first requirement is the collapse of Hamas’s battalions. To date, we have leveled 17 out of 24 battalions. Most of the remaining battalions are in the southern Gaza Strip and Rafah—we wi...
(JNS) — A video clip making the rounds in Hebrew media features Ofakim Mayor Yitzhak Danino revealing disturbing details of a conversation he had with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as the Oct. 7 attack unfolded, in which he pleaded for army helicopters to save the small southern city, which Gallant promised but were never sent. Located 18 miles east of the Gaza Strip, Ofakim suffered more than 50 dead during the Hamas attack. The death toll would have been still worse but for the heroic actions of local residents, most armed only with h...
(JNS) - Despite a military closure, on Monday a diverse group of hundreds of protesters from all over Israel gathered at the country's Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza for the sixth day in a row, to demonstrate against the flow of humanitarian aid into the Hamas-controlled enclave. The demonstrators, including relatives of those murdered or kidnapped during Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre and of soldiers fighting the terror group in Gaza, avoided police checkpoints by driving through fields and...
(JNS) - In an exuberant display of support for re-establishing Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip, 5,000 activists filled three large halls to overflowing at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem on Sunday night. A kind of Zionist revival meeting, the conference featured music, a cheering crowd, and a parade of rabbis and politicians delivering speeches and prayers. Religious Zionists made up the vast majority of the participants, with a smattering of haredim or ultra-Orthodox....
(JNS) — Israel’s National Security Minister, Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened on Tuesday to bring down the government if it reaches a “reckless” hostage deal with Hamas. His tweet came amid apparent progress on an agreement to free the 136 captives remaining in Gaza whom the terrorist group abducted during its Oct. 7 attack on the northwestern Negev. In an apparent response to Ben-Gvir’s tweet, opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X that his Yesh Atid Party and its 24 Knesset members would give the government full back...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces will retain full security control over the Gaza Strip after the war with Hamas ends, giving it the freedom to operate there similarly to the way it currently does in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday. “After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control [it] militarily, but won’t control it in a civilian sense,” Gallant told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee dur...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces troops foiled a Palestinian stabbing attack in the Tekoa area in the Gush Etzion region of Judea on Monday. Soldiers from the Tabor Battalion of the Etzion Brigade shot and killed a terrorist who attempted to stab them while they were guarding a military position near the Arab town of Taqua, located near the Israeli community of Tekoa. The 16-year-old terrorist was identified as Rani Yasser Chalaf a-Sha’ar from Taqua. No Israelis were injured in the attack. Clashes broke out after residents who tried to reach the...
(JNS) - Founded in 1916, Kfar Giladi is one of Israel's oldest kibbutzim. Located less than a mile from the Lebanese village of Odaisseh, it is currently evacuated. Nisan Zeevi is a member of the kibbutz's local security squad. "If Israel does not address the threat Hezbollah poses, residents of northern Israel are at risk of another murderous invasion similar to Hamas's Oct. 7 attack," Zeevi told JNS. "On Oct. 7, we woke up to the horrors of Hamas's massacre and were certain that Hezbollah...
(JNS) - An art exhibition is debuting Thursday at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the memory of the Shoah is fresh on the minds of Israelis following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The exhibition, titled "Bigger Than Me," features six oil paintings and some 10 additional sketches by the Israeli artist Shai Azoulay. It has been given added significance following the Hamas massacre, the worst single-day attack on the Jewish people since the...
(JNS) - Hundreds of demonstrators prevented humanitarian aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip from Israel at the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Wednesday. The protesters from the "Order 9" movement demanded that "no aid goes through until the last of the abductees returns, no equipment be transferred to the enemy." (An Order 8 call-up notice is an order for the emergency mobilization of an IDF reserve soldier outside the framework of regular reserve duty. Many were issued after Hamas's Oct....
By Sveta Listratov (JNS) - Israeli actor-singer-songwriter Idan Amedi, best known for starring in the hit Netflix show "Fauda," recounted to reporters on Thursday his experience fighting in Gaza and the blast that had him hospitalized for over two weeks. "We are dealing with an enemy that doesn't care about anything. This is a just war and the enemy we are facing is beyond Hamas, we have found weapons in schools, assorted institutions and private homes. The world needs to know that," said...
(JNS) — While the Israel Defense Forces is gaining ground against Hamas by the day, destroying it as a military force will take time, according to former IDF officers. Professor Gabi Siboni, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and who holds the rank of colonel (res.), told JNS that the Israeli campaign will be “very long.” In Gaza, Hamas has built up the most fortified terror base in the world, he said, both above and below ground. With so many homes in Gaza containing weapons and being linked to under...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Among the 21 soldiers who died in the building collapse in Maghazi, the central Gaza Strip, was Master Sgt. (res.) Elkana Vizel, 35, a resident of Bnei Dekalim in southern Israel. Vizel, married to Galit and a father of four, worked as a teacher at the Naom School in Bnei Dekalim, where his wife also works. On Tuesday, just hours after he was killed, it emerged that he had prepared a letter ahead of time for the event of his being killed in action. "If you are reading...
(JNS) — On the eve of the war, Hamas possessed an estimated 30,000 armed terrorists, divided into five territorial brigades and 24 battalions across the Gaza Strip. It had a sprawling weapons production industry, much of it underground, and distributed the weapons through hundreds of miles of tunnels. It had an estimated rocket arsenal of some 15,000 projectiles, and death squads on the border preparing to conduct the worst mass murder of Jews since the Second World War. More than 100 days into the fighting, the Hamas war machine has sustained...
(JNS) - "My heart is split in two," said Zvika Mor, whose 23-year-old son Eitan remains captive in Gaza. As Israel on Sunday marked 100 days since Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, Mor said, "On the one hand, we feel the concern and longing for Eitan, and it's very painful. We miss him so much and want him to be safe with us again." But there's another part of the situation he and the families of captives are trying to come to terms with, he continued. "The other half? The national interest. We are very h...
(JNS) — As the Israel Defense Forces battles Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the country’s Judea, Samaria and Jordan Valley regions are experiencing a parallel rise in terror incidents, according to data published by Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) on Tuesday. Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 15, Rescuers Without Borders first responders recorded more than 2,600 attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults. Amo...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces will keep fighting in the Gaza Strip until Hamas’s “significant military and governing capabilities” are eliminated and the 130-plus hostages held captive by the terror group are returned, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday, mere days after announcing a significant reduction in military operations in Gaza. “If the fate of Hamas is not complete dismantlement, we will not be able to live in the State of Israel,” Gallant told members of the Israeli Navy’s Shayetet 13 naval commando unit...
(JNS) — Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday launched over 50 rockets into southern Israel, according to local authorities. The barrage, one of the largest launched from Gaza in recent weeks, appeared to target the southern city of Netivot, setting off sirens there and other nearby towns. Footage shared to social media showed some two dozen interceptions by the Iron Dome air defense system. The rate of rocket launches from Gaza has dropped significantly amid the Israel Defense Forces’ ongoing ground operation in the Strip. On...
(JNS) — Israeli forces continued to target terrorists and infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, over the past 24 hours eliminating a Hamas interrogation chief and destroying a launch site used to fire rockets at Netivot. Bilal Nofal, a Hamas operative responsible for interrogating individuals suspected of involvement in espionage activities against the terrorist organization in the southern Gaza Strip, was killed in an airstrike, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Nofal also played a role in advancing Hamas’s research and...
(JNS) — More than 85 percent of his city has been evacuated as Hezbollah continues to launch rockets across the border from Lebanon, but Kiryat Shmona Mayor Avichai Stern is, without a doubt, calm, cool and collected. “Hezbollah’s Radwan Force is right here on the fence. You can see it from the town. When I see them start to leave their positions, I understand that something must be happening in a short while and there will probably be a rocket attack,” he said matter-of-factly. “They fire anti-tank missiles at our houses, since it is so clo...
(JNS) - Palestinian laborers from Judea and Samaria should not be allowed to return to work across the Green Line inside Israel's pre-1967 territory, a dozen Likud lawmakers wrote in a letter to Cabinet members made public on Wednesday. "The time has come to say explicitly that no more Palestinian workers will be allowed to enter Israel," read the letter, which received backing from Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat and Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli. "Besides our security...
(JNS) — Israeli officials denounced a Hamas propaganda video, which claimed that two hostages who the terror group held captive in the Gaza Strip were killed in an Israeli Air Force strike, on Monday night as psychological terror. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said during a press conference that Israel had not targeted nor attacked the building in which Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, were held. “This is a lie of Hamas,” Hagari insisted. “We do not attack a place where we know there may be hostage...
(JNS) — Israeli forces operating in central Gaza have found the largest weapons manufacturing site discovered since the start of the war, containing rockets capable of reaching north of Tel Aviv, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday. The weapons plant was part of a massive tunnel system 30 meters (nearly 100 feet) underneath the Al-Bureij camp, according to the IDF. The rockets produced in the facility had a range of over 100 kilometers (62 miles), the IDF said. Other weapons factories were also found for the production of e...
