Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 680 - 704 of 1890
(JNS) — The Anti-Defamation League is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of men who assaulted patrons at a Los Angeles restaurant on Tuesday night in what is being looked at as a hate crime. “We are outraged over reports of this anti-Semitic assault and thank the Los Angeles Police Department for investigating the incident as a potential hate crime,” said ADL Los Angeles regional director Jeffrey I. Abrams. “These acts of hate have no place in our community, and we hope this reward will bring about information that w...
(JTA) — Dozens of American rabbinical students have issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” The letter comes as Israel is engaged in an intense exchange of fire with Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, in which nine Israelis and more than 100 Palestinians have died. Israel is facing fierce criticism from progressive politicians and activists for its airstrikes on Gaza in response to Hamas rocke...
(JTA) — As the world’s attention has turned to the crisis engulfing Israel and the Palestinian territories, a leading media outlet posted a brand-new job opening. The New York Times announced Wednesday that it is looking to hire a reporter who will focus on covering Palestinian affairs. The posting went online just as countless people around the world are wanting to know more about places like the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah, the site of protests and violence over the weekend, and the Gaza Strip, the home of the militant group Hamas, whi...
(JNS) - Across the country from the big cities to suburban towns, thousands of Jews gathered on Sunday to show their support for Israel and to take a stand against the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents. At a rally in New York, Sarri Singer, who survived a 2003 suicide bombing of an Israeli bus, said "whether it is in Paris, London, Brussels, Israel, New York City or anywhere else in the world, terrorism does not discriminate. It can happen anywhere and at any time. All of us have an obliga...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Thousands gathered on Sunday for a pro-Israel rally in New York in response to a series of antisemitic attacks on Israeli and Jewish American communities in the United States in the wake of Israel's "Operation Guardian of the Walls" in the Gaza Strip. The demonstration, "United Against Antisemitism. United Against Terror. United for Us," took place at Ground Zero and in 14 other cities across the United States, among them Miami, Los Angeles, Orlando, Austin, Denver,...
NEW YORK (JTA) — One person was burned when two fireworks were thrown from a car amid an altercation with anti-Zionist protesters in a heavily Jewish New York City business district, according to police. The fight on Thursday evening came on what appeared to be the final day of the conflict between Hamas and Israel prior to a ceasefire that took effect overnight. Additional videos circulating on social media appeared to show other physical altercations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators in New York City earlier in the day. A...
(JNS) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) rebuked U.S. President Joe Biden over his statement supporting Israel’s right to defend itself amid escalating violence with Hamas, accusing the president of “siding with occupation.” Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, letting him know that Israel has the “unwavering support” of the United States to defend itself. “I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu not too long ago,” said the president. “My expectation and hope is that this will be closing down soon...
(JTA) — On Tuesday, Israel found itself fighting what may be another war in Gaza. And American Jews are watching. Israel and Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, have already traded hundreds of airstrikes and missiles since Monday. Dozens of Palestinians and two Israelis have lost their lives — a number that is likely to rise. As the eyes of the world turn again to violence in Israel, Jews in the United States will be paying attention and speaking out. During past conflicts, American Jewish groups from across the pol...
(JNS) Young American Jews are moving in two very distinct directions—towards Orthodox or little Jewish engagement. That was one of the major findings from “Jewish Americans in 2020,” a new study by the Pew Research Center. This is the second Pew study of Jewish Americans. The first, released in 2013, sent shockwaves through the Jewish community as it found a community that was increasingly less connected and more assimilated than previous generations. The current survey of some 4,700 Jews nationwide shows a community that is increasingly multi...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last year, when AIPAC wanted a Democrat to sponsor the pro-Israel lobby’s signature legislative effort, it turned to one of its most reliable partners in the Senate, Chris Coons of Delaware. Coons contributed to a result the group wanted: having the $3.8 billion in U.S. defense assistance Israel gets each year codified into law. Yet on Monday, as fighting between Israel and terrorist groups in Gaza escalated, Coons took to Twitter to commit what at an AIPAC conference would certainly elicit boos: He said in specific and har...
(JNS) — The Biden administration has come under withering criticism in the United States and Israel for its poor handling of the current situation in the Middle East. On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price failed to mention Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations targeting Israeli civilians in his statement to the press. “Israel has the right to defend itself and to respond to rocket attacks,” Price said in his daily briefing. “The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security just as Israeli...
(JTA) — Tensions among Jewish groups allied with the Biden administration blew into the open this week when a Democratic pro-Israel group briefly called a longtime Jewish leader an enabler of antisemitism — a sign of how potent a debate over a definition of antisemitism has become. Nancy Kaufman led Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council for 20 years, from 1990 to 2010. She has also led the National Council for Jewish Women. Many progressive Jewish leaders have said she would be a good choice for President Joe Biden’s antisemitism monitor...
By Emily Alhadeff (The Cholent via JTA) - Nearly 100 years after Seattle's first Jewish school opened, an effort is underway to restore its crumbling building - as a multi-faith center that can unite Jews and Muslims in the city. So far, the effort has netted more than $40,000 toward a new roof for the building that once housed Seattle Talmud Torah. But that's a drop in the bucket for what a growing collective of Seattleites are hoping to generate to turn the Cherry Street Collective into a...
(JNS) — The American Jewish Committee released on Tuesday an updated and expanded edition of Translate Hate, the group’s widely used glossary of common antisemitic terms and tropes. According to AJC, the date of the 2021 edition’s release commemorates the second anniversary of the fatal attack on Chabad of Poway, Calif., and includes more than 40 terms and expressions that are examples of antisemitism, explaining their nature when used in certain contexts and their origins. The illustrated glossary has been widely downloaded and disse...
(JTA) — Despite COVID-related restrictions that kept Americans inside for significant portions of last year, the number of reported antisemitic incidents barely decreased in the United States in 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The number of antisemitic assaults fell sharply, however, and for the first time in three years, no one was killed in an antisemitic attack. The ADL’s annual audit, published Tuesday, tallied 2,024 incidents of antisemitism in the U.S. in 2020, a decline of only 4 Percent from the 2,107 recorded in 2019. Th...
(JNS) — Saying that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees has outlived its mandate, a group of Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter last week to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressing concern over the United States providing funding to the organization. The authors wrote that the original intent of UNRWA was to address the needs of Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of the 1948 Israeli-Arab conflict, but in the past 60 years, it has changed its definition of refugee away f...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — One Wednesday in October 2007, seven Jewish lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee did something extraordinary: They ignored the pleas of the Jewish establishment. Jewish politicos were often happy to advance the agenda of the Jewish groups because it lined up with their ideals. On this occasion, several powerhouse lobbying groups in the Jewish community were pressing the committee not to advance a bill that would recognize as a genocide the 1915 Ottoman massacres of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during W...
(JTA) — Criticism is mounting over the firing of a Jewish professor who accused his Oregon university’s leadership of making antisemitic comments, with the local branch of the Anti-Defamation League joining calls for the president of the school to resign. Students as well as fellow academics are also protesting the decision by Linfield University, a Baptist-affiliated school with some 2,000 students, to fire Daniel Pollack-Pelzner. According to The Oregonian, the university has hosed down sidewalk-chalk messages supporting Pelzner, thr...
(JNS) — An official in California’s Department of Education accused of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 terror attacks has recently been reinstated, reported The Sacramento Bee. California state superintendent of public instruction Tony Thurmond said during an April 23 call with reporters that a third-party investigation into Craig Heimbichner, who works as an administrator in the Department of Education’s charter-school oversight division, determined that there was no basis for disciplinary actio...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Washington's National Cathedral, known for its role during presidential inaugurations and other days of national import, is honoring Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust memoirist with a bust, making him the first Jew to be so honored. Or maybe not the first, depending on where you sit. "I would say he is the first 20th-century Jewish person," the cathedral's dean, Rev. Randy Hollerith, said when asked how Wiesel came to be the first Jew to earn a sculpted depiction at the cathedral. Asked if he was referring...
(JTA) — Linfield University, a small school in Oregon, has fired a Jewish professor who accused the university president of making antisemitic remarks. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured professor who taught English literature, has accused Linfield President Miles K. Davis of making multiple antisemitic remarks in recent years. The antisemitism, he said, was partly a backlash to Pollack-Pelzner demanding that the school do more to address allegations of sexual assault against multiple university trustees, including Davis. Pollack-Pelzner and a...
(JNS) — Jewish groups reacted to the verdict on Tuesday of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, touched off massive worldwide protests, violence and an examination of U.S. race relations and police conduct in the last year. The Jewish community—active in civil rights and with a long history of black-Jewish ties—reacted with outrage over Floyd’s death, one of a number of high-profile cases nationwide. Some groups, however,...
(JTA) — In Tucker Carlson’s response to accusations that he endorsed one white supremacist talking point, the Fox News anchor appeared to echo another — this time about Israel. Last week, the popular right-wing talk show host said there was a coordinated Democratic plan to “replace” the existing population of the United States with immigrants from the “Third World.” White supremacists refer to the idea as a “Great Replacement” orchestrated by Jews, and that claim has fueled attacks like the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. After the segment,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations are by their nature calls for accountability for atrocities past and present. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, used the occasion to take his own department to task for its neglect of Jews during the Nazi era, and to call for action on behalf of the persecuted today. Blinken, delivering the keynote address Thursday at the event organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, savaged the World War II-era assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, for blocking the entry...
(JTA) - New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens has taken on a side gig as the editor of a new limited-run journal of essays about Jewish issues. The journal, titled Sapir, is an initiative of the Maimonides Fund, an increasingly influential force in Jewish philanthropy that supports Jewish identity-building through media, education and Israel engagement. Over the past year, the fund has also become known for its leadership on COVID relief efforts. The first of four print issues...
