Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1070 - 1094 of 1886
(CJN via JNS)—A New Middletown Village man was arrested on Aug. 17 after police said he made a threat toward the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown, Ohio. James Reardon, Jr., 20, is being held in Mahoning County Jail in Youngstown on telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing charges, according to two Youngstown television stations. New Middletown Police Chief Vincent D’Egidio said Reardon posted a video July 11 on Instagram of a man shooting a semi-automatic rifle with sirens and screams in the background with the caption: “Po...
(JNS)-A total of 41 Democrats and 31 Republicans are in Israel on overlapping party tours to get a firsthand view of the complex security challenges Israel faces and to express their unconditional, bipartisan support for the Jewish state. The delegations are touring Israel's borders and gaining insight into Israeli advances in areas of defense, agriculture, commercial technology, and water desalination and conservation. In addition, the groups met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,...
Israel has decided to bar two Muslim pro-BDS members of Congress from entering Israel over fears of provocation that they would cause and their unwillingness to coordinate with Israeli authorities, according to multiple reports. Officials had reportedly been examining the official wording of the decision with legal authorities. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced the decision late Thursday afternoon. According to a press statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan...
(JTA)—Israel’s decision on Aug. 15 to ban Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the country has quickly prompted a wave of impassioned responses from across the Jewish community. Pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, and prominent Democratic lawmakers are already objecting to the move. AIPAC’s statement, along with others from establishment Jewish groups, criticized Omar and Tlaib’s support for the movement to boycott Israel. But like others who have their differences with the two House reps, AIPAC said that Israel should nonethe...
(JNS)—The California Board of Education has announced it will scrap its current draft ethnic-studies curriculum and develop a new model curriculum following outrage by California lawmakers, activists and Jewish and pro-Israel groups for its “blatant bias against Israel.” The California State Board of Education stated that “the current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.” “Following the Instructional Quality Commission’s review and response to all public comments, a new draft will be developed for...
(JTA)-One of the most befuddling questions surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein saga is why Leslie Wexner, a billionaire entrepreneur, entrusted all of his money to Epstein, a secretive financier with no college degree. For those immersed in the Jewish world, there's an added question: How did Wexner-a prominent philanthropist seen as a champion of Jewish learning and ethical teaching, whose foundation has trained waves of rabbis, Jewish professionals and volunteer board leaders-end up so enmeshed...
(JNS)-Fifty-eight Jewish organizations gathered in New York City on Wednesday for a "National Consultation on Responses to Antisemitism" to address ever increasing anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, Europe and around the world. Organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations and hosted at the offices of UJA-Federation of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the consultation was attended by Jewish leaders and included two members of the U.S. Administration,...
(JTA)-After three and a half years as editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Andrew Silow-Carroll will be the next editor of the New York Jewish Week. The veteran journalist will succeed Gary Rosenblatt, who announced last month he will step down at the end of September after 26 years as editor and publisher of the Jewish Week. Silow-Carroll, 58, has spent over 30 years in Jewish media. He was previously the CEO and editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News and managing editor of...
(JTA)—President Donald Trump said “hate has no place in America” in an address to the nation following the mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Trump pledged additional resources to the FBI to investigate domestic terrorism. He called for strengthening detection of early warning signs of shooters and for better background checks on gun owners. The president also condemned video games and social media for encouraging violent tendencies. He said “those who commit hate crimes and mass murders should face the death p...
(JNS)—A bipartisan group of 88 U.S. senators signed a letter on Monday to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asking him to “act boldly and with urgency to help Poland resolve this issue comprehensively” of compensating Holocaust victims whose property was stolen by German Nazis. Crediting Pompeo with raising the issue in a statement in February about the matter, the senators said they were “deeply troubled” with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responding that the issue has been “resolved.” “Now is the time, while the last Holocaust s...
LANSING, Michigan (JTA)-Tom Dalton could be the poster boy for Elissa Slotkin's path to a second term and, she would argue, to Democrats keeping the U.S. House of Representatives. The 67-year-old Vietnam navy vet routinely votes Republican-but says he would not hesitate to vote for Slotkin, a Democrat, if he had the opportunity. "Seeing what's happening today in the news, all you hear is negative this and negative that, I would love to know if there's a lot more of what I saw today," he said,...
(JTA)—Not long after news that a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, left at least 22 people dead, reports started swirling that the suspect had posted a manifesto on 8chan, an online forum. Law enforcement officials are investigating a document posted there that is believed to be authored by the suspect, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius. The text contains racist rhetoric, blaming immigrants and Latinos for taking away jobs from Americans. It was uploaded fewer than 20 minutes before the shooting, according to CNN. This isn’t the first tim...
(JTA)—Before he killed at least 22 people at a Walmart on the southern border, the gunman in El Paso posted a white supremacist manifesto on the fringe social network 8chan denouncing a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The U.S. Justice Department announced that it would treat the shooting as a “domestic terrorist case.” “It appears to be designed to intimidate a civilian population,” U.S. Attorney John Bash said at a news conference Sunday, referring to the shooter’s motives. “And we’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which i...
(JTA)—The gunman who killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, showed an ex-girlfriend a video of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on their first date. A woman who briefly dated Connor Betts, 24, earlier this year wrote about his troubling behavior in an essay posted Tuesday on Medium. Betts opened fire outside a bar early Sunday, killing his sister and eight others before being shot dead by police. Adelia Johnson wrote that the pair had bonded over mental health problems after meeting in a college course in January. Betts said that he suffered f...
(JNS)—Media watchdog organization CAMERA is raising questions about an upcoming HBO series, “Our Boys,” about the brutal murder of a Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir by a Jewish gang in 2014. “When HBO released the trailer for the series, several news publications promoted the show as a story about the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas operatives just prior to the 2014 Gaza war,” said Andrea Levin, CAMERA’s executive director. “However, the trailer spends less than a minute on the killing of the Israeli boys....
DETROIT (JTA)-For any reporter, careening in a year from reviewing restaurants to covering the presidential debates would be a pretty fast rise. But then again, Jefferson Henry Kraft is only 10 years old. Kraft is the KidScoop Media correspondent covering the Democratic presidential debates, taking place here last Tuesday and Wednesday night. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was fortunate enough to be assigned the "spin room" seat right next to his, and in one of those conversations typical of the...
There will not be a new Hanukkah stamp for this year. This means that individual post offices will have to order them. Previous history has shown that many local post offices do not order Hanukkah stamps on “off” years. If you want to purchase Hanukkah stamps, you will have to go to your local post office and tell them to order Hanukkah stamps now so they will have them in stock in time for this year’s holiday....
(JNS)-Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian, was the only member of the Republican Party to vote against last week's resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives condemning the anti-Israel BDS movement. Massie, 48, explained his decision in a statement: I voted against H. Res. 246 because it calls for the full implementation of a bill I voted against back in 2014. That 2014 bill spends taxpayer dollars on "green" energy subsidies for another country, despite the fact that we face a debt...
(JNS)—A bipartisan group organized a private, after-hours tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for members of Congress on July 16. Jewish Insider first reported the upcoming tour. An invitation was released on Thursday by the organizers: Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.). “Now, more than ever, it is important to rededicate ourselves to the work of remembering the Holocaust and learning the lessons of the att...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s editor in chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll, and its opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, shared their thoughts on a recent New York Times article answering “some of the most difficult questions” about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Andrew Silow-Carroll: Hey Laura, I wonder what you thought about The New York Times explainer on BDS. The Times usually hears it from both sides when they set out to provide what they consider a balanced view of a controversial aspect of the Isr...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives this week approved a nonbinding resolution that condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. Much was made of the 398-17 vote, one that earns the hoary journalist adjective “overwhelming.” Democrats and Republicans at long last could bond on an issue, rejecting attempts to boycott Israel. “It’s that bipartisan support for Israel that means the world understands that the United States is strongly in support of Israel,” Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill, the resolution...
(JTA)—Jewish leaders in Baltimore have come to the defense of Rep. Elijah Cummings, the African-American Democrat who has come under withering attack from President Donald Trump. Trump used Twitter over the weekend to attack Cummings, whose 7th District includes over half of the city of Baltimore. On Saturday, the president called Cummings “a brutal bully” for criticizing conditions at border detention camps for migrants. “Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” the president wrote on Twitter, following a “Fox &...
(JNS)—A non-kosher Israeli burger franchise has indefinitely delayed its opening in Dearborn, Mich., after taking heat from the Arab-American community, one of the largest in the United States. The opening of Burgerim (the Hebrew plural for “burgers”) has apparently “stirred up controversy for months, striking at the heart of the charged debate over Israeli-Palestinian relations. The announced restaurant opening has elicited back-and-forth comments on Facebook posts from those spreading the message to boycott and others just hoping for a good...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly condemned the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. The House vote Tuesday, July 23, on the non-binding resolution was 398-17. Opposing were 16 Democrats, including two who back BDS, Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The resolution, backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also enshrines the two-state outcome to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at a time that the Trump a...
(JNS)-Among the some two-dozen 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has sought to position himself as a consensus moderate backing long-held positions within the party. But even with a long track record of executive experience, campaigning this way in such a crowded field that seems to be shifting leftward makes it increasingly difficult to stand out. His candidacy also comes at a time when the Democratic Party is facing questions over its bipartisan...
