Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — House and Senate Republicans slammed U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pause an arms shipment to Israel and demanded that the administration explain why it failed to notify Congress. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) wrote to the Biden administration asking for answers about the frozen arms deal. “We are shocked that your administration has reportedly decided to withhold critical ammunition to Israel,” the senators wrote. “You promised your commitment to Israel was ironclad,” they added. “Pausing much-needed m...
The Jewish National Fund-USA’s Hub and Resource Guide gives a list of organizations fighting anti-Jewish hate on college campuses. The link is https://www.jnf.org/our-work/education-and-advocacy/college-campus-resources. JNF Reporting Tool Kit The site also offers an antisemitism reporting tool kit where you can report any incident of antisemitism straight to your college campus administrator. Local College Chapters JNF also suggests joining your local college chapters to help make a difference: AEPI Students Supporting Israel Israel on C...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In his first address about the pro-Palestinian protests rocking campuses nationwide, President Joe Biden said “order must prevail” but rejected proposals to bring in federal troops. “Dissent must never lead to disorder, or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education,” Biden said Thursday in the four-minute speech. “It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.” Biden did not announce conc...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — A group of fraternity brothers at the University of North Carolina are being celebrated for safeguarding a giant American flag from an anti-Israel mob intent on raising the PLO colors. A GoFundMe page launched for the Pi Kappa Phi students has raised over $485,000 from more than 14,800 donations as of 8:30 p.m. on May 2. The fund aims to “throw this frat the party they deserve” for their stand at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus this week, according to the fundraising site. “Extremists across the country have invaded college...
(JNS) — The University of California, Los Angeles is allowing anti-Israel protesters to block Jewish students from entering the library of the state school in the city’s Westwood neighborhood, according to audio of a phone conversation between a parent and the UCLA police. “Are the protestors allowed to not allow a student who pays tuition access to their class in the library?” the concerned mother is heard asking. Parent @UCLA gave permission to release this audio of her phone call with @UCLAPD as they describe the school›s directive to allow...
(JNS) — A chaotic scene unfolded at the main campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in the Westwood neighborhood late Tuesday night as pro-Israel protesters confronted the pro-Hamas encampment there. There were reports of fights breaking out, resulting in injuries. An unverified video circulating online shows a pro-Hamas mob allegedly beating a Jewish student. According to social media accounts and local reporting, the university and city police were absent from the increasingly violent scene at UCLA. The school on Tuesday d...
(JNS) — As tensions escalate at a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the University of Pennsylvania, administrators are taking a dialogue and de-escalation approach, possibly because they have no choice. Penn asked the Philadelphia Police Department to dismantle the encampment, but the police refused, the student-run Daily Pennsylvanian claimed on May 2. Police asked that the university first provide proof that the encampment “presents an imminent danger,” reported the paper, citing a source familiar with the matter. If accurate (and the Phila...
(New York Jewish Week) – Columbia University announced Monday that it would be canceling its commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protest, campus turmoil and hundreds of student arrests. Beginning nearly three weeks ago, the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia sparked a protest movement at dozens of campuses across the country. The Ivy League school, like other colleges, has struggled to contain the demonstrators. “These past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for our community,” Columbia said in a statement Monda...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Columbia University is facing a class action lawsuit accusing it of failing to keep Jewish students safe amid the wave of anti-Israel protests that have disrupted the Ivy League campus. The anonymous student plaintiff filed the lawsuit on Apr. 29. It acknowledges the right to peaceful protest and open debate at colleges. However, the lawsuit alleges that a number of demonstrations have gone beyond acceptable bounds, “intimidating and harassing Jewish students and faculty members” as well as “inciting demonstrators to en...
(New York Jewish Week) – On Tuesday night, as police cleared protesters out of a Columbia University building and arrested more than 100 people, lawyer Gerard Filitti said fault lay with the students who had erected an unauthorized pro-Palestinian encampment at the school. But they’re not the only ones he blamed. Although Columbia’s administration had called in the NYPD, Fillitti said Tuesday’s clashes were the result of inaction by Columbia’s leadership — not just during the two weeks of the encampment, but in the more than six months sinc...
(JTA) — Brandeis University, the historically Jewish school outside Boston, has extended its transfer application deadline in a bid to appeal to students who are unhappy with their own schools’ responses to campus anti-Israel protests. The university announced the decision on Monday, as encampment protests spread from Columbia University to campuses across the United States. The protests, which take aim at the schools’ ties to Israel, are spurred by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and have in some places included rhetoric that veers into antis...
(JNS) — Yale University police arrested 47 anti-Israel protesters for trespassing on Monday morning, as “Gaza solidarity encampments” continue to disrupt college campuses across the country. After the arrests in New Haven, hundreds of students continued to rally while university maintenance workers cleared Yale’s central Beinecke Plaza of tents, the Yale Daily News student newspaper reported. Anti-Israel students formed the first of the encampments at Columbia University on Wednesday ahead of congressional testimony by Columbia preside...
(New York Jewish Week) — An outspoken Israeli professor was blocked from entering a portion of the Columbia University campus and Jewish members of Congress demanded action from the administration on Monday as pro-Palestinian protests continued to roil the Manhattan university. Shai Davidai, an Israeli assistant professor at Columbia University’s business school, had announced on social media that he planned to enter the university’s main campus on Monday morning to hold a “peaceful sit in” in the area of pro-Palestinian demonstra...
(JTA) — Columbia University has rejected a demand to divest from Israel and has failed to reach an agreement with pro-Palestinian student protesters who are occupying a portion of the school’s New York City campus, according to a letter sent Monday morning, April 28, to the community by President Minouche Shafik. “All year, we have sought to facilitate opportunities for our students and faculty to engage in constructive dialogue, and we have provided ample space for protests and vigils to take place peacefully and without disruptions to acade...
(JTA) – A pro-Palestinian protest at Yale University allegedly turned violent with dozens of arrests. The University of Southern California canceled all its planned commencement speakers. Encampments have sprung up at campuses from Boston to Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill. It’s not just Columbia. The unrest that has overtaken the Ivy League university in New York City, and upended life for Jewish students and everyone else, is spilling over into the rest of the country. The spread of the demonstrations is being promoted and celebrated by pro...
(JNS) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reportedly considering blacklisting the IDF’s Netzach Yehuda Battalion under the “Leahy Laws,” two statutory provisions that, according to the State Department, prohibit the U.S. government “from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” Extreme political NGOs and rights organizations often falsely accuse Israel of committing human rights abuses. In October 202...
(JNS) — The Zionist Organization of America announced the filing on April 18 of a Title VI complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against the Montgomery County Public Schools. In 28 pages, it detailed multiple incidents of ethnic slurs, swastika vandalism, pro-Hamas teachers and retaliation against educators, ringing the alarm bell about the threat to Jewish students. Noting a previous Title VI filing against the district, the complaint states that it “relied solely on an opinion piece written by a Jewis...
(JNS) — In part due to the unleashing of Jew-hatred in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, antisemitism in the United States spiked by a record 140%, according to figures released by the Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday. Nearly 9,000 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism—including more than 5,000 in the post-Oct. 7 period—were reported across America last year. The figure not only blew away the totals from 2022—itself a record year—but outpaced the marks from the previous three years combined. The ADL began tracking relevant da...
(JTA) - Yakira Galler, a first-year student at Barnard College, has had trouble sleeping. Galler has an apartment that looks out onto Broadway, which divides Columbia University's campus from Barnard, its women's college. Each night this week, she has heard crowds of protesters banging pots and pans, chanting "Intifada, revolution" and calling for the Ivy League university to divest from Israel. The street protests accompanied a much larger on-campus demonstration that devolved into unrest on...
(JNS) — A Jewish student at Yale University was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag during an anti-Israel demonstration on Saturday night at the school’s campus in New Haven, Conn. “Tonight at Yale, I was assaulted by a student today at an anti-Israel protest. He stabbed me in the eye with a Palestinian flag. Now I’m in the hospital. This is what happens when visibly Jewish students try to attend and document these rallies,” Sahar Tartak, a sophomore, tweeted after the incident. Tartak, who is studying history and is the editor-in...
(JTA) – A Holocaust research center founded by Steven Spielberg has gotten embroiled in a drama over campus Israel speech that is dividing the University of Southern California, where it is housed. The USC Shoah Foundation is downplaying its role in the school’s academics after the university’s valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian student who earned a minor in “resistance to genocide,” touted her ties to the center. After USC announced last week that Asna Tabassum would be the valedictorian, pro-Israel groups mounted a campaign against her, citi...
NEW YORK — As costs continue to soar due to inflation, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty has launched an emergency fundraising appeal to ensure the Jewish organization can provide free food to the more than 300,000 Jews who rely on the organization’s free food distributions for Passover across the tri-state area. More than 230 distribution events have been strategically organized across all five boroughs of New York City, as well as in Westchester, Albany, Connecticut, and northern New Jersey. These events serve as crucial access poi...
(JTA) — Rep. Gregory Meeks, the leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has said he would not approve a U.S. sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel without “assurances” on what the jets would be used for. “I’m waiting for assurances,” Meeks, who represents a district in New York City, told CNN on Tuesday. “It is enough of the indiscriminate bombing. I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized to have more death.” Meeks is one of four lawmakers on Capitol Hill with the power to hold up weapons sales. He has pre...
(JNS) - Orthodox Union leaders delivered 100,000 letters to the White House on Wednesday, urging U.S. President Joe Biden to continue supporting Israel, demanding the release of hostages whom Hamas holds in Gaza and combating antisemitism domestically. The letters were the first batch of more than 180,000 that the OU has collected from synagogues across the country since Thursday, marking 180 days that the hostages have been in captivity. Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the OU,...
(JNS) — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday accused President Joe Biden of turning against Israel to appease the far-left flank of the Democratic Party. “Democrats are weak on Israel as well, and it’s their support for Israel. It’s rather stunning to us that there’s this dramatic shift. Hamas is holding more than 130 hostages, as you know, including Americans,” the 52-year-old Republican said at a press conference in Washington. “These people are languishing at the hands of barbaric terrorists, and Joe Biden is meanwhile giv...
