Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Eylon Levy, the English-language spokesman for Israel widely praised for defending the beleaguered country in English-language media, has been suspended and is unlikely to return to his role, Israeli media is reporting. According to the Israeli media reports, Levy was suspended over his response on X, formerly Twitter, to Britain’s top diplomat, who had called for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, where Israel is waging war against Hamas. Levy’s response, which has since been deleted, rejected the idea that Israel was preventing aid f...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces’ Central Command, which is responsible for Judea and Samaria, has established a team to investigate alleged terror tunnels in the area. The unit, which was established several months ago, consists of engineering and intelligence specialists, as well as civilian experts, Ynet reported on Tuesday. “The special team acts upon intelligence needs or reports from the field and knows how to bring all the capabilities required to inspect them [the tunnels],” a security source told the site. He added, “In the past, we h...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - A rare and exciting archaeological find has been unearthed in Jerusalem, providing an extraordinary glimpse into the ancient past. During excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Western Wall Plaza, a small-stamped clay seal was discovered dating back to the First Temple period around 2,700 years ago. The clay seal contains ancient Hebrew writing indicating it belonged to the "Governor of the City" of Jerusalem, the highest municipal position...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night hit back at U.S. President Joe Biden for claiming that the Jewish state’s “incredibly conservative government” risked losing it international support. “Since the start of the war, I have been leading a diplomatic campaign to block pressure designed to end the war prematurely and to secure strong support for Israel,” said Netanyahu in a video message. “We have had considerable success. Today, a Harvard-Harris poll was published which shows that 82 percent of the American publ...
By (JNS) — Iran-backed terror groups are plotting to turn the Islamic holy month of Ramadan into the “second phase of Oct. 7” and set the Middle East on fire, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant charged on Tuesday. “The main goal of Hamas is to take Ramadan, with an emphasis on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, and turn it into the second phase of their plan that began on Oct. 7. This is the main goal of Hamas, and it is being amplified by Iran and Hezbollah,” Gallant said following a situational assessment at the Israel Defense Forces’ C...
(JNS) - "I can't allow myself to get caught in the emotional rollercoaster around hostage negotiations," said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui, 35, was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. "It is hard if not impossible to survive that when your loved one is being held captive by a terror organization," he told JNS. On Oct. 7, some 200 terrorists stormed Kibbutz Nir-Oz, murdering 40 residents and abducting 80 more. "I have been worried for Sagui's life since then. Every day is another day that the...
(JNS) — Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the “military wing” of Hamas, fired 40 Grad rockets in two barrages at army bases near Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday morning. Only 10 crossed the border and several were intercepted, according to the Israel Defense Forces. A building in Kiryat Shmona was hit, causing damage but no injuries according to police. The Hamas terror group says its Lebanon branch fired a barrage rockets at the Kiryat Shmona area this morning. Police said they were dealing with rocket debris at several sites in the Kiryat Shmona area. “Prop...
(JNS) — Israeli security forces killed three Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, including a commander, during overnight operations in Judea and Samaria early Tuesday, according to Israeli media reports. The three terrorists were eliminated in Tubas in northern Samaria and the nearby al-Fari’ah camp, located east of Nablus (Shechem), according to the reports, which cited the P.A.’s official Wafa news agency. One of the terrorists, Ahmed Daraghmeh, 26, was reportedly a commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad-affiliated Tubas Batta...
(JNS) — The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah fired a “significant” rocket barrage at northern Israel on Tuesday morning. The Iranian proxy said the attack was a response to an Israeli strike the previous day in the Beqaa Valley which killed a senior Hezbollah commander. According to Hezbollah, the barrage targeted the Israeli Air Force’s air control base on Mount Meron, which has been attacked multiple times since Hezbollah joined the war in support of Hamas a day after the Oct. 7 mass invasion of southern Israel. The IDF later in the morning...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to not cave to international pressure demanding a ceasefire in the war against Hamas. "There is considerable pressure on Israel at home and abroad to stop the war before we achieve all of its goals, including a deal at any price to free the hostages," said Netanyahu during a visit to the IDF Sky Rider Unit at the Zikim Base along the border with the Gaza Strip. "We very much want to achieve another release and we are prepared to go far but...
(JNS) — The Knesset plenum on Wednesday voted 99-11 to back the government’s decision to reject any unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, amid reports the Biden administration is considering such a move. All coalition lawmakers and most members of the opposition Yesh Atid, National Unity and Yisrael Beiteinu parties voted in favor of supporting Sunday’s Cabinet statement against “international diktats regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.” The Labor Party boycotted the vote and its members were not in attendanc...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces in the coming days will start an internal investigation into the military’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre and the period preceding the cross-border invasion. Army commanders will be leading the probe, including from the Gaza Division; Unit 8200, the Military Intelligence Directorate’s main information-gathering unit; the Southern Command; and the Operations Directorate, responsible for preparing the IDF for war. The investigation is expected to conclude towards May, after which external inves...
(JNS) — Sixty-three percent of Israeli Jews oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, and most believe terrorism will either stay the same (27.5 percent) or increase (44 percent) should one be created, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s eleventh War in Gaza survey, published on Wednesday. The survey puts the majority of Israeli Jews at odds with the Biden administration, the European Union and other international players pushing Palestinian statehood in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. It also underscores the diffe...
(JTA) — At least one Israeli was killed in an early morning shooting attack on the highway leading from the Israeli West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to Jerusalem. Eleven others were wounded in the terror attack Thursday morning, one seriously. The three gunmen were killed at the scene by security forces. The attack occurred amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and amid an accompanying rise in violence in the West Bank. Hours earlier, a house in northern Israel was hit by a missile fired from Lebanon. Another missile shot by the Houth...
(JTA) - Last summer, Jared Armstrong traveled from his adopted home of Israel back to the United States to confront a problem - running basketball clinics across the country in a bid to improve Black-Jewish relations. Now, following Hamas' Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, the professional basketball player is bringing his clinics to the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, where he lives, aiming to provide kids with a diversion and a chance to have fun as the war continues to rage just miles away in...
(JNS) - A rare multi-compartment stone container dating back around 2,000 years has been revealed to the public for the first time at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The box, carved from soft limestone, measures 30 x 30 cm (about 12 x 12 inches) and and is divided into nine equal-sized interior compartments. The box was discovered in a destruction layer inside an ancient store dated to the end of the Second Temple period that once stood alongside the Pilgrimage Road in the City of David. The...
(JNS) — Israeli forces seized cash and financial documents from an underground compound in Khan Yunis showing direct Iranian financial support for Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces disclosed on Tuesday night. “We found official documents from 2020 detailing the funds transferred by Iran to Hamas between the years 2014 and 2020 and to [Hamas leader in Gaza Yahyah] Sinwar. More than $150 million were transferred from Iran to Hamas,” said IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. The intelligence indicated a “direct connection from Iran to Hamas—a...
(JNS) — The National Library of Israel has embarked on a massive project to collect and archive all published materials about the Oct. 7 massacre, both the good and the bad. While scholars and the curious public explore the new library building in Jerusalem and its Israel, Judaica, Humanities, Islam and Gershom Scholem collections, Chaim Neria is quietly gathering more recent—and sometimes painful—printed and digital items associated with the murder by Hamas of some 1,200 people. “The significance of this project to Israel and the Jewish...
(JNS) — During his call on Sunday with U.S. President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the U.S. administration’s move to sanction four residents of Judea and Samaria over purported “settler violence,” Axios reported. Netanyahu’s protest signaled his belief that the sanctions, allowing the imposition of penalties on Israeli officials directly or indirectly involved in vaguely defined “settler violence,” could have implications for the entire country, including the political and defense establishment...
(JNS) — Israeli forces in Gaza recently found a secret document written by a senior Hamas official detailing the terrorist group’s psychological warfare strategy against the Israeli public, Channel 12 reported on Monday. Furthermore, the document was discovered at a site visited by Hamas’s senior leader in the Strip, Yahya Sinwar, according to the report. However, it was unclear whether the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre had penned the paper. The document orders that photos and videos of the Israeli hostages continue to be published “due...
(JNS) - The Israeli Defense Ministry has approved the purchase of more than 200 armored vehicles for civilian security squads in parts of the country facing increased security risk, including Judea and Samaria, the Gaza envelope and the Lebanon border. The purchase is estimated to be worth around 150 million shekels ($41 million), the ministry announced on Tuesday. The project is "intended to strengthen the resilience of the localities and the standby units" and provide a "quick response during...
(JNS) — The Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has spurred a historic level of Jewish philanthropy, with the largest emergency fund set up when the war broke out alone raising nearly $800 million, the Jewish Federations of North America said on Monday. The surge in donations following the Hamas massacre that triggered the now four-month-old war created a huge surge in interest in giving to the Jewish state as it fights the Islamic terrorist group after years of decline in giving. “In these past months, we have witnessed our community comin...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces is expected to increase troop activity in northern Gaza in the coming weeks following attempts by Hamas to reestablish a foothold there. Israel’s Army Radio reported that the military is planning to carry out extensive raids due to increased activity by the terror group in northern Gaza, which included a rocket barrage on Sunday night that set off air-raid sirens in Ashkelon for the first time in nearly a month. The report also noted a recent gun battle near the coast in northern Gaza in which IDF soldiers kil...
(JTA) - The Israeli military has rescued two hostages in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the second such rescue since Hamas took hundreds of Israelis captive on Oct. 7. The overnight rescue operation, which was announced in the early hours of Monday morning, Israel time, comes as the Israel Defense Forces are shifting their focus to Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where there are currently more than a million Palestinians. The rescue operation also comes as negotiations toward a...
(JNS) — An Israeli army reservist stumbled upon an ancient Assyrian scarab amulet while hiking in northern Israel’s Nahal Tabor Nature Reserve during a day off, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. “I received a two-day leave from the reserves and decided to take advantage of the two sunny days for a trip,” said Erez Abrahamov, 45, a resident of Paduel. “During the trip, I saw something shimmering in the ground. At first, I thought it was a bead or an orange stone. After I picked it up, I noticed that it had engraving...
