Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — A massive quarry dating to the Second Temple period has been uncovered in Jerusalem, offering a new glimpse into the capital’s ancient past, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday. The quarry, which was unearthed in the city’s present-day Har Hotzvim industrial park several weeks ago, is one of the largest ever found in Jerusalem, the state-run archaeological body said. Two stone vessels, impervious to ritual defilement according to Jewish law, were uncovered at the s...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 29 rejected Hamas’s charge earlier in the day that Jerusalem is preventing a ceasefire agreement with new conditions and demands. “The Hamas leadership is preventing an agreement,” he said according to a statement from his office. “Israel neither changed, nor added any condition to, the [ceasefire] outline. On the contrary, as of now it is Hamas which has demanded 29 changes and has not responded to the original outline,” the statement continued. “Israel stands on its principles ac...
(JNS) — Israel’s response to Saturday’s Hezbollah rocket barrage that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights will be “tough,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday during a visit to Majdal Shams. “With Iranian backing, Hezbollah attacked here with an Iranian missile, taking the lives of 12 pure souls. Twelve boys and girls who played soccer here and, sadly, could not make it to a shelter,” the premier said as he placed a wreath at the disaster site on behalf of the government. “We embrace the families who are going through indescr...
(JNS) — The Knesset plenum voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. The resolution, put forward by MK Ze’ev Elkin of the New Hope-National Right party with support from the Yisrael Beiteinu Party and the Land of Israel Caucus, passed by 68 to 9. The Land of Israel Caucus, the mission of which is to strengthen Israeli control of Judea and Samaria, includes members from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition as well as Benny Gantz‘s centrist National Unity P...
(JNS) — Israel’s new “Air Force One,” dubbed Wing of Zion, took off for the U.S. Tuesday on its first official flight, but will have to return to the Jewish state to pick up the prime minister. The double transatlantic round trips on the $200,000 flights come amid a reported tiff between the Prime Minister’s Office and Israel Aerospace Industries over the size of the new plane, which can sit 60 passengers, fewer than the expected entourage of aides, security detail and journalists accompanying the premier. It was not immediately clear why...
(JNS) — Google’s parent company Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz in a deal worth some $23 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If the agreement is inked, it would represent the California tech giant’s biggest-ever buy (scorching the previous record of $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2012). It would also mark a significant achievement for Israel’s high-tech sector. “This is the largest acquisition to ever happen in the Israeli high-tech sector. It’s a sign of the strength of...
(JNS) — Saturday’s assassination attempt on former president and presumptive Republican nominee for the White House Donald Trump “is not only a heinous crime, it is also an attempt to assassinate American democracy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday morning, Netanyahu said that he “would like to send him in my name, in the name of my wife, Sara, in the name of the ministers of the Israeli government and in the name of the entire people of Israel our best wishes fo...
(JNS) - Nearly 350 Hamas terrorists, including 100 members of the terror group's elite Nukhba Force, managed to infiltrate Kibbutz Be'eri in southern Israel on Oct. 7 due to catastrophic failures by the Israel Defense Forces in their readiness and response, according to the first part of the IDF's internal probe of the attacks. "The IDF had difficulty creating a clear picture of what was happening in the kibbutz until the afternoon hours of Oct. 7, even though the yishuv emergency team had an...
(JTA) — As expected, on July 4, 1976, the United States celebrated its bicentennial with a flurry of patriotic pride and hype. The surprise was that the day also brought one of the most miraculous events in Jewish history: Israel’s rescue of 102 hostages being held over 2,500 miles away at an airport in Entebbe, Uganda. A week earlier, on June 27, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a radical West German group hijacked an Air France airliner full of Israeli pas...
(JNS) — The Hamas terror group has agreed to a hostages-for-ceasefire framework and mediators are negotiating the details and implementation, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday night, July 10. The Post‘s David Ignatius said that though the framework is in place, officials warned that a final agreement is unlikely to be imminent as the details of the deal are complex and will take time to work through. One U.S. official suggested that Hamas’s acquiescence to the terms was at least in part prompted by the fact that the terror group is in...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Sunday night outlined Jerusalem's red lines in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations with the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip. "The plan that has been agreed to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war," according to the PMO. The statement also credited Netanyahu with pressuring Hamas into returning to the...
(JNS) — A senior Iranian general on Monday told family members of Hamas terrorists killed in Gaza that the Islamic Republic was prepared to launch another attack on the Jewish state, similar to its massive missile and drone strike in April. “We await an opportunity for ‘True Promise II’ … in which I do not know how many missiles will be fired,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace forces commander Brig.-Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh told the family members, who were visiting Iran. Iran’s next attack, said Hajizadeh, “will lead to a complete v...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the release of the director of a Gaza hospital where Hamas was embedded “a severe mistake and a moral failure” and demanded the establishment of a team to approve future releases. Shifa Hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya was released on Monday morning along with close to 55 other Palestinian prisoners. The hospital was proven to have been used to keep hostages and house weapons and ammunition intended to kill Israelis. Salmiya was arrested in November on suspicion of involvement with Ham...
(JTA) - Early in her senior year in high school in Washington D.C., Elie Ravitz-Basser realized that the Israel-Gaza war would upend her college plans. "I applied to four universities in the United States early in the fall, but everything changed after October 7," she said. "At that point, I decided to attend college only in Israel, surrounded by people who share my Jewish values." Ravitz-Basser is set to start her bachelor's degree this fall in Jerusalem, pursuing a double major in English and...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Liora Argamani, whose daughter Noa was held captive in Gaza for 246 days following Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, died Tuesday after a prolonged battle with brain cancer. Argamani's final wish-to see her daughter one last time-was granted just three weeks before her passing, after Israeli forces rescued Noa in a daring raid last month to free her and three other Israeli hostages, marking a poignant end to a story that captivated Israel and the world. The 61-year-old nurse, who...
(JNS) — The Israeli government is advancing the approval of 6,016 housing units in dozens of towns throughout Judea and Samaria, the Supreme Planning Council of the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration said on Tuesday. The body was set to meet on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the advancement of the building plans, some 2,400 of which were expected to receive final approval, Israel’s Channel 12 News broadcaster reported. Among the projects on the agenda of the Supreme Planning Counc...
The Israeli military denied a New York Times report that its leadership is pressing for a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. (JNS) — Israeli forces have killed over 900 terrorists during the ongoing offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday. “What we saw with our eyes … over 900 dead terrorists, including commanders, at least one battalion commander, many company commanders and many operatives,” Halevi said during a visit to a forward logistics base in southern...
Shin Bet made the highly controversial decision to release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza where terrorists were embedded. Although Shin Bet claimed there was no concrete evidence to justify holding the prisoners, they added that there was “not enough room in current incarceration facilities.” Politicians and families of hostages reacted with outrage at the decision to release Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the Shifa hospital director who had been held since November 28. An IDF source told The Jerusalem Post in...
(JTA) — Israel’s Labor and Meretz parties announced on Sunday that they would unite ahead of the next election in a bid to revive the country’s left and maximize its share of parliament. The new party, called the Democrats, is the latest attempt to stem the more than 20-year decline of the Israeli left. Labor, which governed Israel for its first three decades, is now the smallest party in Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Meretz, to Labor’s left, did not receive enough votes in the most recent election to enter Knesset at all — effectively...
(JTA) - Almost nine months after Hamas terrorists stormed the Nova music festival, killing more than 360 revelers and abducting 40 others to Gaza, tens of thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv's HaYarkon Park on Thursday evening for what organizers dubbed a "healing concert." The concert was the first official event held by the Tribe of Nova since Oct. 7, when the trance music community became synonymous with Israel's catastrophe. Many survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre attended as part of an...
(JNS) - More than 2,000 participants on Birthright Israel programs gathered on Monday for a gala evening in central Israel that marks the highlight of the organization's summer trips to Israel. The Birthright Israel Mega Event at Mini Israel Park in Latrun took place in solidarity with the Israel Defense Forces as soldiers continue to fight Hamas in the Gaza Strip, keeping in mind the hostages taken captive on Oct. 7 from Jewish communities in southern Israel who are still being held there. It...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces is pursuing a phased approach in its ongoing offensive against Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah, Gaza. By dividing Rafah into sub-areas and deploying a single division—the 162nd—rather than two, the IDF and the Israeli Cabinet have taken a slower path, but one that has avoided another crisis with the United States. According to Israeli military assessments, Hamas’s final functioning brigade will be dismantled in Rafah within weeks. Its defeat will mark a major milestone in the war that began on Oct. 7 with Ha...
(JNS) — With intense fighting in the Gaza Strip winding down, Jerusalem will deploy more troops to the northern border to defend against increasing Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Channel 14 on Sunday night. “The intense phase of the fighting against Hamas is about to end,” he told “Patriots” host Yinon Magal, adding: “It doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah.” He added that the Israeli military will continue to “mow the grass” in Gaz...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The Israeli healthcare system is preparing to deal with pregnancies resulting from sexual assaults during captivity. An article was published in the June issue of the Israel Medical Association’s journal “HaRefuah” to instruct medical teams on addressing this “sensitive, difficult-to-comprehend, yet unavoidable matter.” The piece, written by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Leah Shelef, former head of the Air Force’s psychology department and current dean of Sapir College’s School of Social Work, and Professor Gil Zalsman, direct...
(JTA) - The musician Jonny Greenwood is pushing back on critics who say he should abandon a plan to tour with an Israeli collaborator because of the Israel-Hamas war. Greenwood and Dudu Tassa, an Israeli rock star from a prominent Mizrahi musical family, are scheduled to perform together on the European festival circuit this summer, a year after they released a joint record that featured singers from across the Middle East. Some of the dates were rescheduled after the pair canceled shows in the...
