Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — While Israelis are getting vaccinated against COVID-19, the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City are receiving their own injections, with syringes surprisingly similar to those used in the medical world. Every six months, before Passover and the High Holidays, engineers from Western Wall Heritage Foundation and conservators from the Israel Antiquities Authority inspect each stone at the prayer plaza to ensure visitor safety and the preservation of the stones themselves, which are continually subjected to natural weathering...
(ISRAEL21c via JNS) - A catastrophic tar spill washing up along Israel's entire Mediterranean coast may be the worst environmental disaster in Israeli history. While government authorities investigate the source of the offshore leak of at least 1,000 tons of sticky, toxic tar, many Israeli civilians and soldiers are helping with cleanup efforts that will likely take months. "Over the weekend I, together with thousands of volunteers, was at the beaches cleaning sticky, black tar oil off of dead...
(JNS) — Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center said on Thursday that it was “deeply disturbed” by the implications of a Polish court’s recent ruling in a libel case involving the alleged wartime actions of Edward Malinowski, the former mayor of Malinowo, Poland. On Tuesday, the court ordered professors Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, the editors of “Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland,” to issue a retraction of their work and apologize to Malinowski’s niece, who initiated the libel suit. The...
Earlier this week, the Israeli Air Force carried out a three-day exercise simulating a large-scale war against Hezbollah, the terrorist group that controls much of Lebanon, and which reportedly has as many as 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Included in the exercise were simulated strikes on some 3,000 Hezbollah targets in a single day. This number of targets in one day is unprecedented, particularly compared to the fact that during the entire 2006 Lebanon War, it’s been reported that Israel reportedly attacked some 5000 targets. The I...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Monday at his office in Jerusalem with the head of the research project at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), where an anti-coronavirus drug is being developed and has shown promising results. "If this succeeds, it will be huge, simply huge," Netanyahu said to professor Nadir Arber about the new drug, called EXO-CD24, according to the Prime Minister's Office. "This is of global significance. This is amazing. I wish...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded not guilty in his ongoing trial for corruption charges, then left the courtroom while the hearing was still underway. Later on Monday he dismissed the charges, as he has in the past, as “fabricated.” Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust — the first time a sitting prime minister has stood trial in Israeli history. The investigations of allegedly illicit payments and favors stretch back years. Netanyahu was officially indicted about a year ago, and his trial b...
Thanks to the astute eye of Burt Chasnov for bringing to Heritage's attention that the photo of the U.S. Embassy in Israel in last week's issue was the embassy in Tel Aviv, not the one in Jerusalem, which is shown here....
(ISRAEL21c) - Even with Israel's world-leading rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations, drugs to treat Covid patients are in desperate need across the world. Two such drugs developed in Israel show great promise in clinical trials: EXO-CD24 and Allocetra. EXO-CD24 EXO-CD24, an experimental inhaled medication developed at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, cured all 30 moderate-to-severe cases in a Phase I clinical trial. Developed over the past six months at the hospital, EXOCD24 stops the "cytokine...
(JNS) - The Psagot Winery sits on the peaks of the Binyamin region mountains in Judea and Samaria, north of Jerusalem and just east of Ramallah. Though Psagot and many Israeli-owned businesses operating over the 1967 armistice lines have historically experienced boycotts in Europe and throughout the Arab world, many say that in the context of the Abraham Accords, this may be changing. When Yaakov Berg and his wife, Naama, established the Psagot Winery in 2002, they made fewer than 3,000...
(JNS) - A rare coin bearing the head of the Roman Emperor Antonius Pius and dating from 158–159 C.E. was found during a training exercise by an Israel Defense Forces soldier on the southern end of Mount Carmel, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported on Tuesday. The well-preserved coin, found by Ido Gardi, is one of very few such objects that have been discovered in Israel, according to the IAA. "This coin joins only 11 such coins from known locations in the National Treasures Department...
(JNS) - Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder was awarded Israel's prestigious Wolf Prize on Tuesday along with a group of laureates in the arts and sciences. The "Superstition" singer received the award for "his tremendous contribution to music and society enriching the lives of entire generations of music lovers," according to a statement from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin's office. Wonder, 70, is only the second black recipient to receive the Wolf Prize in the music field, following...
By Charles Lipson (JNS) — No country has been more successful in getting the coronavirus vaccine to its citizens than Israel. Why? Three reasons stand out, and the third one is likely to help people around the world. Israel can vaccinate the population quickly because it has a very competent, comprehensive national health system, based on several Health Maintenance Organizations, all supervised by the Ministry of Health. The system includes digitized medical records for everyone in the country. Israel bought enough vaccine. Earlier in the p...
(JNS) - The latest edition of the "West Bank Jewish Population Stats Report," commissioned annually by former Member of Knesset and National Union Party head Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz, shows a 2.62 percent growth in 2020, and a 17 percent in growth in the past five years, in the number of Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, more commonly known as the West Bank. According to the report, some 475,481 Jews currently call these regions home. The statistics do not take into account the more than 325,000...
Researchers at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital have discovered that a new cancer drug has been successfully used to treat patients seriously ill with the coronavirus, Kan News reported Friday. The drug EXO-CD24 is based on a biological protein normally associated with cancer research that is known to calm the body’s immune system, which in the second stage of coronavirus attacks itself and causes severe breathing problems. The treatment developed by Professor Nadir Arber of the Integrated Cancer Prevention Center at the hospital was tested on 30...
(JNS) — Israel on Monday transferred 2,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to the Palestinian Authority, according to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. The Moderna vaccines are to be used by medical personnel caring for coronavirus patients, said the P.A. Ministry of Health, wrote Reuters. Any surplus will be administered to those over the age of 60 or who have chronic diseases, said the ministry. Another 3,000 doses have also been earmarked for the Palestinians, said a COGAT official, according to Reuters. The...
(JNS) - When assessing the comments made earlier this week by Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who warned against the return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, it is useful to envisage two red countdown clocks. The first is counting down the time left until Iran is able to break through to nuclear-weapons production capability. Iran does not have to build an atomic bomb to reach the status of a breakout state. It merely needs to come within "striking distance" -...
(JNS) — Defense officials in Israel believe Iran is behind Friday’s bombing near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. The working assumption is that the attack was carried out by contractors as revenge for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Iranian military nuclear program, near Tehran on Nov. 27. Israeli and Indian officials are treating the incident as a terrorist attack despite its exceedingly amateurish nature. The explosive device was placed relatively far from the embassy and exploded on Friday at 5 p.m. — after Shabb...
(JNS) — The Israeli Health Ministry on Wednesday announced that beginning on Thursday, COVID-19 vaccines would be available to all Israelis over the age of 16. As of Wednesday morning, 3,237,163 people in Israel had received the first dose of Pfizer’s BioNTech vaccine and 1,855,785 had received two doses, according to Health Ministry data. However, despite the country’s aggressive vaccination campaign, which has been conducted during its third full lockdown since the crisis began in March, morbidity has dropped troublingly slowly, with 9.3 perc...
The Marcus Foundation announced Dec. 4, 2020, a $10 million matching grant to ensure the completion of Israel’s new national blood services center, a first-of-its-kind shielded blood facility that will protect Israel’s strategic blood reserves against missile, chemical, and biological attack. The building, under construction in Ramla, Israel, is set for completion this spring. The facility was designated as the Marcus National Blood Services Center based on a $25 million gift from the Marcus Foundation in 2016, prior to the project bre...
(JNS) — In a groundbreaking discovery, Israeli archaeologists have recovered scraps of fabric dyed in royal purple, also known as true purple, dating back to the era of the biblical King David. The remnants of woven fabric, a tassel and fibers of wool, were uncovered in a heap of industrial waste at “Slave’s Hill,” an ancient copper-smelting site in the Timna Valley. “The color immediately attracted our attention, but we found it hard to believe we had found true purple from such an ancient e...
(JNS) - Israel surpassed the 1 million mark in the number of people who have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Monday morning, 1,106, 506 people had received the two doses, representing 12.45 percent of the population, according to the Ministry of Health. "Over a million people received the second vaccine!' Heath Minister Yuli Edelstein tweeted on Monday. "Israel continues to lead the world with 3.7 million vaccines ... and we start the week with about 200,000 vaccinations a...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - One winter morning in 2017, a young man arrived at the Kesher Israel synagogue in the heart of Washington. He prayed fervently, as if his heart was filled with a special request. His tallit bag bore the name "Friedman," and it was the only time he had come to the famous synagogue. That same day, his father, David M. Friedman, was undergoing Senate confirmation for his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Israel. In the best tradition of Jewish divisiveness, powerful forces...
(JNS) - An 18-month trial began in 2017 at the Nuclear Research Center Negev in Dimona, Israel, when 294 workers in their 50s with abdominal obesity were randomly divided into three groups: healthy dietary regimen, Mediterranean diet and green Mediterranean diet. (JNS) A green Mediterranean (MED) diet reduces intrahepatic fat more than other healthy diets and cuts non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in half, according to a long-term clinical intervention trial led by Ben-Gurion University...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, whose contribution to Israel and Jewish life throughout the world, was laid to rest on Friday in a private ceremony in Jerusalem with close family members present. He passed away on Jan. 11 at the age of 87. Dr. Miriam Adelson, his wife and partner in so many of his projects, eulogized him as someone who could not be replaced due to his sheer impact on so many levels. "It may seem strange, here in Jerusalem, the heart of...
(ISRAEL21c via JNS) - A new species of bee unique to the sand dunes of Israel's coastal plains has been identified and described by Alain Pauly, a taxonomist from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The species was named Lasioglossum dorchini in tribute to the Israeli bee researcher Achik Dorchin of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. This new type of bee is especially exciting because a decline in the world bee population is putting crop...
