Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday set the boundaries of three new communities in Judea, marking the first step in the legalization under Israeli law of nine outposts that received official government approval earlier this year. Two of the new towns, Avigayil and Asael, are located in the South Hebron Hills, while the third, Beit Hogla, is part of the Megilot Regional Council near the Dead Sea. IDF Ground Forces Commander Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai on Wednesday night signed the order...
(JTA) — For almost nine months, Israelis have been fighting over the future of their Supreme Court. Today, that battle has moved into the Supreme Court itself. In July, Israel’s hardline right-wing governing coalition passed a law to weaken the court. Opponents of the law then filed legal challenges against it. That put the court in the uncomfortable, and unprecedented, position of ruling on itself: It can decide to uphold the law, strike it down, or send it back to parliament to be amended. When Israelis on both sides of the debate warned tha...
(JNS) - A cache of weapons believed to have been hidden by Jews during their revolt against the Romans nearly two millennia ago has been uncovered in the Judean Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The cache, comprising four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords and a shafted weapon, were found in a crevice in a cave in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea about two months ago. They were apparently hidden by Judean rebels after being seized from the...
(JNS) — Israel’s National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz on Tuesday dismissed as “spin” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for compromise talks regarding the government’s judicial reform plan. The former defense minister and leading opposition figure made the statement minutes after Netanyahu published a video message urging Gantz to “put aside all the prerequisites, all the obstacles, enter the room and talk.” Saying that the Israeli government had been “captured by extremists,” Gantz called for Netanyahu to dissolve the Knesset and hea...
(JNS) - Scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have successfully created complete synthetic models of human embryos using laboratory-grown stem cells, according to an official release from the Institute. The synthetic embryos were nurtured outside the womb and survived up to 14 days of development with all the features characteristic of their stage, even though no sperm or eggs were used. The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, hold significant promise for dive...
(JNS) — The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday rejected Knesset member Simcha Rothman’s request to issue a restraining order against 430 opponents of judicial reform, members of a WhatsApp messaging group called “Looking for and harassing Rothman.” “After weighing all the considerations, I found that the respondents’ activity apparently falls within the scope of a permissible political protest, in accordance with the rules of the democratic game,” said Judge Naeel Mohana. Such an order would restrict “the basic fundamental rights of the...
(JTA) — What appears to have been the first-ever passenger flight between Saudi Arabia and Israel has taken place — even though the two countries have not yet established diplomatic relations. An Air Seychelles flight to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing on Monday in the the port city of Jeddah, where passengers spent the night. On Tuesday, they flew from there to Ben Gurion International Airport. “I really appreciate the warm way in which the Saudi authorities treated the Israeli passengers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in...
(JNS) — Israel last year had the highest cost of living among the 38 member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Prices in the Jewish state were 38 percent higher than the OECD average, according to the report released by the Paris-based group. Switzerland was a close second at 37 percent above average followed by Iceland at 32 percent, the United States at 25 percent and Australia at 23 percent. However, the monthly data for June of this year showed Israel falling to fourth in the cost of living rankings, w...
(JNS) - Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are lining up to take a driving course that teaches survival skills in the event of a terrorist attack on the road. Courses began a month ago and 10 have been taught so far, with 24 additional communities requesting the course. "In each community, we'll teach it two to three times. We teach 20-to-25 people at a time," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, head of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which sponsors the course. Darshan-Leitner admits it's a litt...
Critics are slamming a New York Times reporter for her religious insensitivity in complaining that she had to stay on the women's side of the Western Wall when covering New York City Mayor Eric Adams' visit to the holy site Tuesday. Emma Fitzsimmons, City Hall bureau chief for the paper, posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, a picture of herself looking over the partition that separates male and female worshipers at the Wall, as per Orthodox Jewish tradition at a prayer site. She...
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The sounds of protest echoed and the ticket scanner malfunctioned as Israel’s transportation minister, Miri Regev, led a dry run for journalists of Tel Aviv’s long-awaited light rail on Aug. 16. The landmark project, which cost nearly $5 billion, promises to reshape the experience of commuting to Tel Aviv, or moving within it, for countless Israelis. The Red Line, whose route runs through Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, through Tel Aviv to Petah Tikva, will officially open to the public on Aug. 18 — eight years after constru...
(JNS) — In the event of a constitutional crisis, the Israel Police will be on the side of “law and justice,” Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said on Wednesday. Speaking during an induction ceremony for the new Lod police chief, Shabtai said, “I would like to make it clear in a way that is not ambiguous—the police have only one compass and that is the law and justice; as long as I am in command of it the law will decide and we will act only according to it.” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who spoke immediately a...
(JNS) — Palestinian terrorists fired on the Shahak Industrial Park in northern Samaria on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said. The IDF reported no casualties but said that the attack had caused material damage. The vehicle used in the attack was located in Palestinian Authority territory and contained ammunition and spent cartridges. Israeli forces were searching the area for the suspected shooters. “The shooting joins the dozens of shooting incidents over the past year which occurred in the bloc of settlements in northern Samaria, and the...
(JNS) — Monday’s murderous terrorist attack on Route 60 in Hebron, in which an Israeli woman was shot dead and a man seriously injured, is just the latest indication of the sad fact that Israel is in the middle of a prolonged security escalation in Judea and Samaria — with no end in sight. The incident comes two days after an Israeli father and son were shot dead in Huwara, an attack that may have helped “inspire” Monday’s shooting. So far in 2023, 34 people (33 Israelis and an Italian tourist) were killed in Palestinian terrorism, and almost...
(JNS) - Monday's murderous terrorist attack on Route 60 in Hebron, in which an Israeli woman was shot dead and a man seriously injured, is just the latest indication of the sad fact that Israel is in the middle of a prolonged security escalation in Judea and Samaria - with no end in sight. The incident comes two days after an Israeli father and son were shot dead in Huwara, an attack that may have helped "inspire" Monday's shooting. So far in 2023, 34 people (33 Israelis and an Italian tourist)...
(JNS) - Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock are spearheading a 670 million shekel ($180 million) initiative with the stated goal of strengthening "civilian resilience" in Jewish communities across Judea and Samaria, local media reported on Wednesday. The "unprecedented" addition to the 2023-2024 budget, parts of which were already agreed upon in the coalition agreement with Smotrich's the Religious Zionism Party, will be formally discussed at the...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confident his government can achieve some form of normalization with Saudi Arabia in the coming months, Netanyahu said in an interview with Bloomberg Television broadcasted on Monday. “I think that we are about to witness a pivot of history,” he told Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua. “First, there is an economic corridor of energy, transport and communications that naturally goes through our geography from Asia through the Arabian Peninsula to Europe. “We are going to realize that,” vowed the pri...
(JNS) — Following a tour on Wednesday of Jewish-owned agricultural sites in Samaria’s Binyamin region, Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter applauded farmers’ role in protecting state lands in Judea and Samaria. “We came here to learn up close about the farms, which I view as the best guardians of Israeli state land in Area C,” the minister said, referring to one of the administrative zones established under the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. Dichter continued: “There are no better guardians than hundreds of sheep, tended by an Israeli she...
(JNS) — Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met on Wednesday with representatives of the nonprofit association Mateh Hama’avak Lema’an Hayeladim (“The Taskforce for Children”), whose goal is to eradicate violence against children in daycare centers and kindergartens. Three representatives of the organization shared personal stories of the abuse their children suffered and how their families have coped with the effects. “We are embarking on a long journey to prevent abuse in kindergartens from birth to ag...
(JNS) — The Palestinian issue will not be an obstacle to normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, according to Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. Jerusalem’s top diplomat made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with Arabic-language online newspaper Elaph, excerpts from which were seen by Ynet. “The current Israeli government will take steps to improve the Palestinian economy,” Cohen stated, amid reports that one of Riyadh’s demands for a U.S.-brokered deal to join the Abraham Accords involves concessions to the Palestinians. “A visit to...
(JNS) - Several leading Israeli newspapers ran entirely black front page advertisements on Tuesday morning, in response to the passing of key judicial reform legislation the day before. The ads, published by "Israel Hayom," "Haaretz," "Yediot Ahronot" and "Calcalist," were paid for by the Israeli Hi-Tech Protest movement, a group comprising hi-tech employees and business owners. "A black day for Israeli democracy," the organization's ad read, while the word "advertisement" was only printed in...
Over 200,000 supporters of the proposed judicial reform gathered on Sunday evening, before the vote on judicial reform, in Tel Aviv's Kaplan Street, until now the main location for the weekly anti-reform protests on Sunday evening. The demonstration coincided with the reasonableness standard bill's expected second and third readings in the Knesset as well as several anti-reform protests happening in Jerusalem. Several pro-reform protesters blocked Tel Aviv's Ayalon Highway briefly before police...
(JNS) - A 2,000-year-old silver half-shekel bearing the Hebrew inscription "Holy Jerusalem" has been discovered in the Judean desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed on Tuesday. The rare coin, dated to 66/67 C.E., the days of the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, was discovered at the entrance to a cave near Ein Gedi. The find was part of a cave survey operation, now in its sixth year, that the IAA is managing in cooperation with the Israeli Heritage Ministry and an archaeology...
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s government has passed a law restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws, the first piece of a proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary that has led to massive street protests and a growing movement of civil disobedience. The vote, which was boycotted by the opposition in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed 64-0 and is a landmark moment in a conflict that has consumed Israel since the beginning of the year and drawn the attention and criticism of world leaders and a range of Diaspora Jewish or...
(JNS) — All 15 justices of Israel’s Supreme Court will hear the petitions asking them to cancel the “reasonableness law” that the Knesset passed last week, Supreme Court President Esther Hayut announced on Monday. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, three days before the start of the High Holidays. The government will have to file its response to the petitions 10 days earlier. It will be the first time in the court’s 75-year history that a panel of 15 justices will preside over a case. On July 24, all 64 lawmakers in the gover...
