Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the non-Jewish widows of the children and grandchildren of Jews may emigrate to Israel under its Law of Return. The 4-3 ruling this week was an example of the court’s role in determining Israeli policy, a capacity that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had sought for months to diminish prior to the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas on Oct. 7. Critics of the judicial overhaul contended that sapping the judiciary of its power endangered Israeli democracy. The ruling is...
(JNS) — U.S. officials have quietly suggested ways Israel could reduce civilian casualties in its campaign to eradicate Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including using smaller munitions. During his second Middle East visit in less than a month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday about “concrete steps that can and should be taken” to minimize civilian deaths. Blinken didn’t go into detail about what those steps would be. State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller also wouldn...
(JNS) — Israel Air Force fighter jets struck the home of Hamas politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip overnight Nov. 15 as Israeli forces continued their operations in the enclave. The residence “was used as terrorist infrastructure and often served as a meeting point for Hamas’s senior leaders to direct terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers,” the army said. Haniyeh resides in Qatar, where he has an office under the protection of the Gulf country’s government. Haniyeh is worth an estimated $4 billion and has homes...
(JNS) - Israeli forces continue to battle Hamas terrorists deep inside the Palestinian enclave. A humanitarian corridor for Gazan The IDF on Tuesday again opened a humanitarian corridor for Gazan civilians to evacuate to the safe zone south across the Wadi Gaza. It is the fourth consecutive day that Israeli troops have facilitated the movement of Gazans from the north, despite coming under attack by Hamas terrorists. Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces' Arabic-language spokesman,...
(JNS) - Israeli soldiers prayed at a sixth-century synagogue in Gaza on Tuesday for the first time in decades. In recent days troops entered Gaza City, where the headquarters of Hamas is located, as they pursue their mission to dismantle the terrorist organization after the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,400 persons in Israel, nearly all civilians. There is a synagogue in the Rimal neighborhood built in 508 C.E., during the Byzantine period. A mosaic featuring King David with a lyre and his name...
(JNS) — Israel forces captured a Hamas stronghold in western Jabaliya after 10 hours of fighting, the IDF said on Thursday. Troops from the 933rd Nahal Infantry Brigade battled Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists both above and below ground at the site in northern Gaza, known as Outpost 17. “The troops completed the takeover of the outpost after 10 hours of fighting, during which they eliminated terrorists, captured many weapons and uncovered terrorist tunnel shafts, including a shaft located near a kindergarten and leading to an...
(JNS) — Judea and Samaria leaders sharply criticized the Biden administration on Monday following a report that it had barred a shipment of rifles from going to Israeli civilian volunteer defense forces. The New York Times reported on Sunday that U.S. State Department officials had received “assurances” from Jerusalem that 24,000 M-16 rifles to be purchased from the United States by Israel would only go to uniformed police officers. Many Israeli towns and villages, particularly in Judea and Samaria, have armed volunteer defense forces, calle...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces is intensifying its maneuvers in Gaza City against Hamas, military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated on Nov. 6, adding that the growing number of Hamas terrorists and field commanders being eliminated is creating pressure on the terrorist army that rules the enclave. Addressing IDF efforts to demolish the underground terror tunnel network dubbed "the metro," Hagari said that Hamas, which deliberately places tunnel shafts under hospitals, mosques, schools...
(JNS) — As rockets from Gaza continue to rain down across Israel following the carnage of the Hamas attack on the western Negev that began on Oct. 7, and foreign nations including the United States consider further evacuations of their citizens, many new immigrants to the Jewish state are for the first time facing the harsh reality of living at war. Dov Lipman, former member of the Knesset and CEO of the Yad L’Olim NGO, shed light on how traumatic the last few weeks have been for olim in Israel. He made aliyah from the U.S. in 2004. “Ke...
(JNS) — “This is a second Holocaust for me,” said survivor Ruth Haran, 87, who is reliving a childhood nightmare. Twice now, she has made it out alive from the inferno. But the death, the destruction and the fear have all returned and come full circle for the great-grandmother, eight decades after the Holocaust. Her son and two other family members were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israeli communities in southern Israel. Seven other members of her family, including her daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, aged 3 and 8, we...
(JNS) — Menachem Levy says he is “used to death.” A member of Tel Aviv’s chevra kadisha (“sacred society”), he is among a relatively small number of experts in Israel responsible for preparing tens of thousands of bodies each year for Jewish burial. Yet, he says, nothing he has ever seen prepared him for the jarring scenes he encountered in Israel’s south, where he joined with volunteers, led by ZAKA, in collecting the bodies and body parts of victims of Hamas brutality for burial. “Ther...
(JNS) — In an apparent attempt to reassure Gaza City residents after Israeli tanks were seen on Monday on Salah al-Din street, the city’s main highway, Hamas announced that “a number of tanks reached an agricultural area and escaped from the place under the fire of the resistance.” However, the Israel Defense Force’s pressure on northern Gaza continues. The army is still advising residents to move to the south as it continues to strikes Hamas positions and strongholds. In contrast to the initial days of fighting, Palestinian rescue services wer...
This story was produced as part of the JTA Teen Journalism Fellowship program. (JTA) - After her husband left abruptly to join his army unit, Meytal Blumenthal Gordon realized she still hadn't disassembled her sukkah, the temporary structure the family put up during the Sukkot holiday at their home in Jerusalem. She wasn't physically capable of doing so alone. "Two sweet boys, teenagers, came and they took down the sukkah and helped me organize it," Blumenthal Gordon said. "We actually had a...
(JNS) - The messages kept coming in to Kibbutz Holit's emergency WhatsApp group. "Save us, save us," "Where is the army?" "They are trying to burn down the houses" and "There's gunfire." A 7-year-old girl reported that she was hiding in a closet; a 15-year-old reported that his parents were killed and that he was shot in the stomach; a woman reported that she was suffocating from the smoke in the safe room of her burning house. And a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor huddled in the safe room of his...
(JTA) — Israeli forces rescued an Israeli soldier from the Gaza Strip, the first such successful operation since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, and the first since the terror group assumed control of the territory in 2007. “Last night, our forces liberated Pvt. Ori Megidish from Hamas captivity,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday in a statement. “Ori was abducted on the black morning of October 7th. Welcome home Ori! I commend the [Shin Bet security service] and the IDF for thi...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces’ ground forces made significant gains in northern Gaza on Oct. 31, as Israeli Air Force fighter jets, acting on Shin Bet intelligence, launched a large-scale strike on Hamas’s Jabaliya Battalion and killed its commander, along with a large number of other terrorists, the military stated. IDF troops commanded by the Givati Brigade operated in a Hamas military stronghold in the northern Gaza Strip and killed approximately 50 terrorists, while in parallel, ground troops in Gaza are continuing counterterrorism activ...
(JNS) — The Jewish state is fighting a war against “the forces of barbarism” for itself and for all decent countries, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told foreign reporters on Monday. “It is a time for everyone to decide where they stand,” he said. Netanyahu hopes that the world will back Israel, because “Israel’s fight is your fight,” and should “Hamas and Iran’s axis of evil win, you will be their next target,” he said. The “horrors of Hamas” show that the 21st century has not moved “beyond the barbaric horrors of the past” toward...
(JNS) — Eden Zechariah had told her family she was coming home when terrorists started shooting at the outdoor music festival she attended Oct. 7. Her boyfriend, Ofek Kimchi, was killed trying to protect her and she was dragged off to Gaza alive. Her mother, Orin Ganz Zecharia, talks about her on video: “If there’s something you can’t miss about Eden, it’s her smile. She used to write down thanks every day for everything she has: thanks for her job, for her parents, for her friends. She really wanted things to be good. The world can’t stand to...
(JNS) - The Gaza Strip is a complex piece of land that has been at the center of disputes in the Land of Israel dating back thousands of years. The roughly 40-kilometer-long (24.9 miles) coastal enclave lies at the core of the current war between Israel and Hamas. The roots of the conflict can be traced back to the foundation of the State of Israel; now at a boiling point, it is causing myriad deaths. The population of Gaza has risen from around 185,000 in 1948 to more than 2 million today - a...
(JNS, KIBBUTZ BE'ERI) - Israel and a significant portion of the international community have been deeply affected by the events of Saturday, Oct. 7, when Hamas carried out a coordinated land, air and sea attack on multiple communities on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. This heinous act resulted in the loss of more than 1,400 lives, with thousands sustaining injuries and at least 222 persons, including women, children, the elderly and soldiers, being taken captive. Disturbing footage of the...
(JTA) -After the deadly attack by Hamas, the Jewish world has joined to share in the grief of the mourners and lament the lives cut brutally short. Below are just a fraction of the men and women who were killed on and since Oct. 7 - some are soldiers, most are civilians, and all helped make up the rich tapestry of the Jewish state. Omer Balva, 22, graduate of a Jewish day school in Maryland Omer Balva was on vacation in Maryland, where he was born and lived until graduating from high school, on...
(JNS) — Israel is preparing the world for the moment it needs to enter Hamas’s main headquarters, located inside and underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and is focusing media efforts on exposing the terror group’s activities there. According to Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Daniel Hagari, Israel has “concrete evidence” that “hundreds” of terrorists flooded into the hospital to hide from Israeli retaliation following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. Israel released video footage on Friday in which a captured Hamas terrorist, a member of the ...
(JNS) — After showing foreign journalists footage of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, the IDF on Monday published two segments from the interrogation of Hamas terrorists who participated in the massacre. “The plan was to go from house to house, throw grenades and kill everyone there, including women and children,” the terrorist said. He also told interrogators that Hamas had instructed them to behead their victims. “The purpose of entering Israeli territory… was to kidnap civilians...
DEAD SEA, Israel (JTA) — Nearly three weeks after Kibbutz Be’eri was massacred, its surviving members still gather for their community’s traditional evening meeting. The kibbutz, ransacked and empty, is now a closed military zone. To those familiar with the litany of atrocities committed on Oct. 7, its name has become synonymous with some of the day’s worst horrors. Many of Be’eri’s residents refer to that day as a “Shoah,” or Holocaust. Now, the nightly meetings instead take place at the David Dead Sea Resort, where most of Be’eri’s member...
(JNS) — A tent city is being built in Ramat Gan to house some of the more than 200,000 Israelis internally displaced by the war with terrorists from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The Tel Aviv suburb’s Kfar Maccabiah resort complex will provide temporary shelter for 1,000 people evacuated from northern communities under fire from the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon, Amir Gissin, the CEO of Maccabi World Union, told Israel’s Channel 12. Families that evacuated southern Israeli communities close to the Gaza border are already stayi...
