Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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KIBBUTZ HAZOREA, Israel - Fifteen young men and women, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings and to each other, dance around a bucolic field, twisting their bodies to trance music blasting through their headphones. Beyond their earphones is silence, except for the constant rumble of fighter jets taking off from Ramat David air base in the nearby Jezreel Valley. Yet the aircraft and the dancers are connected. Some of these jets are heading south toward Gaza, to bomb the hideouts and munitions...
(JNS) - A group composed of some 7,000 mothers of Israeli soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip held up huge posters depicting the children of senior U.S. officials as IDF recruits during a protest in front of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's Tel Aviv hotel on Tuesday. The message: What if it were your children fighting in the Gaza Strip? Would you continue to demand the resupply of the enemy? The group behind the protest, Imahot HaLohamim ("Mothers of Combat Soldiers") is demanding an...
(JNS) — CNN anchor Jake Tapper interviewed Dor Steinbrecher, the brother of hostage Doron Steinbrecher, a nurse and veterinarian from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, who told him that a Red Cross worker had dismissed a concern from their mother for needed medication, rebuking the family that they should be more concerned about Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, Steinbrecher described his 30-year-old sister’s experience on the morning of Oct. 7. He told Tapper how she called their mother and cried, saying she was lying under her bed in a safe roo...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces struck some 150 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, as ground operations continued in Khan Yunis and Al Maghazi, the IDF said on Wednesday. IDF forces uncovered more than 15 tunnel shafts in the Al Maghazi area, and seized rocket launchers, missiles, UAVs and explosive devices during targeted raids on Hamas sites. Israeli troops also destroyed a machine used for manufacturing rockets, according to the military. During operational activity in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, IDF ground forces d...
(JNS) — The musician and actor Idan Amedi, 35, who plays Sagi in the Netflix series “Fauda,” was reportedly injured seriously while serving as a reservist with the Combat Engineering Corps in Khan Yunis in Gaza. “We would like to share with everyone that Idan has been injured in action in Gaza. Idan is one of the kindest, warmest, and most passionate people, loved by all of us. His love of music is a very special part of our set,” the television show posted. “Together let us pray for his ful...
(JTA) — One woman was killed and 17 injured in a terror attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana on Monday, a rare fatal incident in central Israel amid the country’s war in Gaza. Two Palestinian men carried out the attack on Monday afternoon, stabbing people and ramming others with cars in Raanana, a suburb of about 75,000 north of Tel Aviv with a large population of English-speaking immigrants. The woman who was killed was identified as Edna Bluestein, 79, and two additional victims were seriously injured, including a 16-year-old boy. The...
(JNS) — The families of 132 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas on Tuesday held a protest march in an attempt to disrupt the transfer of aid to Gaza, calling on Israel to halt the flow of aid until their loved ones are freed. “What do we get in return? We think that if we’re talking humanitarian [matters], this aid should be in exchange for our hostages,” said Carmit Itzhaki, whose niece Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was abducted from the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7. “Hamas was under pressure to bring in supplies and therefore went along wit...
(JNS) - The Startup Nation meets the Bible. Israeli technology that measures the Earth's magnetic field has verified an ancient narrative, researchers said on Thursday. A new study scientifically corroborates the conquest of the Philistine city of Gath by Hazael, king of Aram-Damasus, as described in 2 Kings 12:17. The breakthrough technology, which was achieved by researchers at four Israeli universities, enables archaeologists to identify burnt materials discovered in excavations and estimate...
(JNS) — Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the government’s “recusal law“—an amendment to Israel’s Basic Law: The Government—from taking effect until after new elections are held. In its 6-5 ruling, the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, argued the law was “clearly a personal amendment” meant to shield Netanyahu from the consequences of violating a 2020 conflict of interest agreement, and therefore constituted an illegitimate abuse of the Knesset’s power to pass Basic Laws. The delay was supported by former c...
(JNS) - Hamas terrorists murdered about 100 members of Kibbutz Be'eri and visitors on Oct. 7. Of the 30 who were kidnapped from their homes, 19 have been released and the body of Judith Weiss was recovered. As of this moment, 10 kibbutz members are still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. Members of Be'eri who returned from Hamas captivity, returned to the devastated kibbutz this week to pay their respects to their neighbors and friends who were murdered or are still being held hostage. Oren...
Soldiers serving in Gaza are experiencing unusual infections, including severe foot fungus, Yedioth Ahronoth has reported. Long campaigns with soldiers standing sometimes for hours at a time, and the compromised hygiene in Gaza have increased the risk of serious foot and leg conditions. Medical staff report many reservists are suffering from painful lesions on the feet and legs. Soldiers may not take off their shoes or change their socks for many days which also raises the risks of infections. In addition, many soldiers in Gaza complain of...
(JNS) — Israel accused the United Nations on Wednesday of not doing enough to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Defense Ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the territories, responded to a tweet by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini blaming Jerusalem for subjecting Gazans to “collective punishment with too little humanitarian aid allowed in.” The agency tweeted...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces are investigating a possible terrorist tunnel that soldiers discovered near Jewish communities in the Hebron Hills in Judea. In a viral video shared to social media earlier this week, an IDF reservist claims that "after a long period in which residents of Telem and Adora in the West Hebron Hills heard digging noises," troops were sent to inspect Palestinian structures in the area of Khirbet Tayibe. "To our surprise, in addition to illegal construction, we found...
By Eliyahu Freedman TEL AVIV (JTA) — Daniel Ozeri found himself returning to the worst moments of his life on a recent Sunday — not inside his own mind, but inside a Tel Aviv convention center. Ozeri was in Expo Tel Aviv, a sprawling complex in the city’s north where the Nova music festival — which ended when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 — has been recreated in exacting detail. At least 364 party-goers were murdered and 40 taken hostage at the festival on Kibbutz Re’im, which quickly became a powerful symbol of Israel’s loss. Ozeri, like so many ot...
(JNS) — Arabs vandalized an archaeological site in Israel’s biblical heartland that millions of Jews and Christians revere as the location where Joshua built an altar, an Israeli NGO said on Thursday. The reports of renewed damage to the site on Mount Ebal known as Joshua’s Altar, which is under joint control with the Palestinian Authority, highlights anew the need for the preservation, upkeep and safeguarding of Israeli archaeological sites in P.A.-controlled areas after decades of neglect. Isr...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops in the northern Gaza Strip, during which he said that the war against Hamas is not nearly finished. "We are not stopping; we are continuing to battle. We will be intensifying the fighting in the coming days, as this will be a long war. It is not close to over," Netanyahu told soldiers. "We are proud of you and trust you. We see the determination and the desire to continue until the end," he added. Netanyahu was joined by Israel...
(JNS) - Two Israeli reserve soldiers recently discovered a small, well-preserved Byzantine-era oil lamp at a military staging area in southern Israel near the Gaza border, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. The find, by Nathaniel Melchior and Alon Segev, part of the 404th Battalion within the Israel Defense Forces' 282nd Fire Brigade, sparked a chain of events that led to the 1,500-year-old artifact's safe handover to the IAA. "During one of our wanderings in the field, I...
(JNS) — South American and African countries have already expressed interest in taking in Palestinian Arab refugees from the Gaza Strip in return for monetary compensation, Likud Knesset member Danny Danon said on Monday. Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, who has floated the idea of the transfer of Gazans as part of his five-point plan for the post-war period, told Israeli broadcaster Kan Reshet Bet that Israel should “make it easier” on those Palestinians who wish to leave the Strip for other countries. Danon noted that Ca...
(JNS) — A group representing some 60,000 evacuees from northern Israel is calling on the Biden administration to back a military campaign to push Hezbollah away from the border. Lobby 1701 is named after the U.N. Security Council Resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and mandated that the Iranian terrorist proxy stay north of the Litani River, which is around 18 miles from the Israeli border. The Lebanese Shi’ite group has entrenched itself along the border in violation of the resolution. Lobby 1701 argues in its letter to the Ame...
(JNS) — An Olympic champion who won Israel’s first-ever world gold in gymnastics is auctioning off the medal to raise money for the Gaza border communities devastated in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists. Artem Dolgopyat, 26, won the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on floor exercise in Belgium on the very day of the massacre, when thousands of Hamas terrorists burst into southern Israel and overran nearly two dozen Israeli communities, murdering 1,200 people, most civilians, abducting 240 others to Gaza and laying waste to the...
(JNS) — Shai DeLuca, a Canadian-Israeli interior designer, won a defamation suit on Dec. 22 against an anti-Israel Toronto restaurant owner who called him a terrorist and killer. “As much as this was my personal suit against Foodbenders, and Kim Hawkins, the win is a collective win and belongs to the Jewish community as a whole,” he told JNS. “What we are witnessing—the trampling through the streets of Western countries—is reminiscent of Europe in the 1930s. Instead of ‘Sieg Heil,’ we’re...
By (JNS) — An investigative report published earlier this month purports to show that senior Israeli and American officials had in hand financial intelligence showing the flow of tens of millions of dollars to Hamas and failed to act on it. That funding, the report alleges, helped Hamas pay for its military infrastructure, laying the foundation for its Oct. 7 massacre. As Israel now looks to take apart Hamas piece by piece militarily, there is a renewed focus on disrupting its funding. Erel Margalit, Israeli hi-tech entrepreneur and former m...
(World Israel News) — In an address to a Knesset hearing Monday attended by families of hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described how an International Red Cross Representative told him “no” when he asked her to deliver crucial medicine to hostages. “I met with the Red Cross; I handed over a box of medicine for some of the hostages. Some of them really need it.” He continued, “I told a representative to take this box to Rafah; she said no. It was a difficult conversation.” When describing the difficulties with the Red Cross...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out his preconditions for peace with Gaza in a Monday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, saying, “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.” “These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza,” Netanyahu wrote. The outline for a peace agreement came as Israel pushed its ground offensive farther into Gaza in its campaign to destroy the Hamas terrorist group. The counter-o...
(JNS) — Hamas used a flammable, suffocating gas that causes a loss of consciousness within minutes of exposure to flush out and kill female IDF observers (“tazpaniot“) from the Israeli army’s Nahal Oz command center on Oct. 7. Families of IDF observers received a harrowing minute-by-minute briefing from a reserve officer after an army investigation into the final moments of their loved ones, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday. The main revelation was that terrorists threw a deadly substance into the communications room, one that causes suffoca...
