Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 1886
(JTA) - One day after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, leading Democrats have coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris - and begun speculating about her running mate. At least two Jewish governors are thought to be top contenders. Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro and Illinois' J.B. Pritzker were both floated as potential presidential candidates when pressure began mounting for Biden to drop out. Now, one of them could join Harris on the ticket if she wins the nomination. Another...
(JNS) - Anti-Israel protesters violently confronted Capitol Hill police and burned the American flag in front of Union Station on Wednesday afternoon during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hour-long address to Congress. In what the event organizers described as a protest to "Arrest Netanyahu: Surround the Capitol," thousands of attendees rallied at the intersection of Third Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. In their permit for the event submitted to the U.S. Park Police and...
WASHINGTON — In her first statement on Israel as a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris struck a markedly different tone than President Joe Biden, saying after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she “will not be silent” in the face of what she called the “devastation” in Gaza. The vice president met on July 25 for 40 minutes with Netanyahu, who had met with Biden earlier in the day for more than an hour. The differences between the public statements made before and after the meetings illustrate where the president...
(JNS) — A report issued by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) reveals how a Biden administration law aimed at reducing inflation plans to provide millions in taxpayer dollars to radical nonprofit entities. “Investment in Radical Activists: A Case Study on the NDN Collective Supported by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act,” which was released on Tuesday, shows that the far-left group NDN Collective would receive $100 million through the Environmental Protection Agency as part of Democrats’ $1.6 trillion Inflation Reduction Act. The resea...
MILWAUKEE - Shabbos Kestenbaum remembers the first time he felt lonely because he held an unpopular political opinion. The year was 2008, and Kestenbaum was 9 and a student at a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he lived. In a school journal, he decried the Iraq War and extolled a young senator running for president on a platform of opposing it. "I remember with my dad, we bought a yard sign saying 'Barack Obama' in Hebrew," Kestenbaum recalled in an...
Since 2007, Dan Pollak has been directing operations for the Zionist Organization of America at their Washington, D.C. office where his role is to help educate members of Congress, their staff, and other government officials on the relationship between the United States and Israel as well as on policy issues relating to the Middle East. Pollak is coming to Orlando on Sunday, Aug. 11, to present two topics at two different synagogues. At 1:30 p.m. he will be at the Southwest Orlando Jewish Congre...
(JNS) - The attempt on his life is an opportunity to unify the United States of America, former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday, a day after he was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. "This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together," Trump told the Washington Examiner. Trump also talked to The New York Post about the harrowing experience, saying that he was "supposed to dead" and calling it "surreal." "The doctor at the hospital said he...
(JNS) - The man killed in the assassination attempt on former U.S. president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was Corey Comperatore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced on Sunday. Comperatore, 50, was a former volunteer fire chief from the Buffalo Township who loved his family, the governor stated. "Corey died a hero. Corey dove on his family to protect them last night," Shapiro said. "Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing," the Jewish Democrat told...
(New York Jewish Week) — The Democratic Socialists of America dropped its endorsement of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she hosted a panel discussion on antisemitism. The DSA said in a Tuesday statement that it was rescinding its conditional endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign after she “conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism and condemned boycotting Zionist institutions” during the discussion she sponsored last month. “This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israe...
(JNS) — Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for unity while paying tribute to the rallygoer who was killed in the attempt on his life. “Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote on his Truth social media platform. “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,” he continued. “Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Vandals tore down Israeli hostage posters hanging outside the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat, a week after pro-Palestinian activists used megaphones and drums to protest outside his home in the middle of the night. “My Capitol office was vandalized yesterday in a vile act of hate in which the posters of the more than 100 people still held hostage in Gaza (including 8 Americans) were ripped from the wall, shredded and tossed across the hallway,” Schneider, who is Jewish, posted Friday...
(JTA) — MILWAUKEE — “Beautiful prayer!” the woman shouted out from the floor of the massive Fiserv Forum. The delegate to Donald Trump’s coronation was responding to a benediction led by Leora Levy, a Jewish Republican from Connecticut, to close out the first day of this year’s Republican Party convention. Levy’s comments included one of the rare mentions of Israel on the convention’s first day, as she led a hushed and somber crowd in praying for the release of hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7. “O Lord our God, we pray for the peace of...
(JTA) — MILWAUKEE — Three Jewish organizations dealing with immigration and community relations said they were alarmed by the Republican Party’s plans to launch mass deportations, saying they are steeped in a racist conspiracy theory that at times has veered into antisemitism. The Republican platform, published this week, pledges to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” “President Trump and Republicans will reverse the Democrats’ destructive Open Borders Policies that have allowed criminal gangs and Illegal Alien...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden answered nearly an hour of questions at a potentially make-or-break press conference on Thursday, amid increasing pressure from Democrats for him to withdraw from the 2024 election over concerns about his age and fitness for office. Biden, who began the press conference 57 minutes after its scheduled start time, opened with eight minutes of prepared remarks, which he read from teleprompters, about Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the economy, border security and a potential Israel-Hamas c...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — The 2024 Republican Party platform pledges to fight antisemitism and to keep Israel safe. It promises to fight anti-Christian bias as well as “gender insanity.” And it vows, in all-caps, to “DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN.” Parties traditionally publish platforms in election years ahead of their national conventions, as a statement of the party’s values and a wish list of policies should their candidate win the White House. The Republican platform, posted Monday and su...
(New York Jewish Week) — The NYPD reported 45 anti-Jewish hate crimes across the city in June as the increase in antisemitism continues more than eight months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. The total for June was more than double the tally during the same month last year, when there were 19 antisemitic incidents reported to police. Jews were targeted in 57 percent of all hate crimes reported to the NYPD last month. Hate incidents against Jews spiked after the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, with 69 in October and 62 in November. The number...
(New York Jewish Week) — Three Columbia University administrators have “been permanently removed from their positions” after sending a series of derisive text messages during a panel on campus Jewish life, the university’s provost announced Monday. In an accompanying letter, Columbia President Minouche Shafik wrote that the texts echoed antisemitism and vowed to start a “vigorous program of antisemitism and antidiscrimination training” in the fall, when classes reconvene. “This incident revealed behavior and sentiments that were not only unpr...
(JNS) — The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted on Monday at its biennial meeting, which is ongoing in Salt Lake City, Utah, to divest from financial bonds in Israel and to denounce Christian Zionism, Religion News Service reported. The denomination, which had 8,704 churches and 1.14 million members as of May 2023, voted to “reject Christian Zionism in all its forms” and to issue a report about the “dangers of Christian Zionism” and how “mainline Christians and those of other faiths are complicit, though unaware of connections with Christian Z...
(JNS) — Only one in three Americans under the age of 35 believe that antisemitism is a “very serious problem” in the United States, a significantly lower figure than among the broader public, according to a Gallup poll. Gallup polled a sample of 1,024 American adults from all U.S. states and Washington, D.C., between May 1-23. (The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level, Gallup noted.) Just under half of all respondents believed that Jew-hatred is a very serious problem, while 32 percent said...
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Calls for President Joe Biden to relinquish his presidential nomination have proliferated since his disastrous debate performance last week. On Tuesday, for the first time, a Democratic elected official, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, echoed the demand; Aside from Doggett, most of the appeals have come from a range of liberal-leaning publications and pundits. Biden insists he’s going nowhere and has sent out campaign surrogates to make the case that the 81-year-old president is up to the job. Nonetheless, chatter about poten...
Robert Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots and founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, has generously donated $1 million to Yeshiva University in New York City. This donation will establish the Blue Square Scholars program, aimed at promoting inclusivity and supporting Jewish students who feel unsafe at other colleges due to rising antisemitism. The Blue Square Scholars program is designed to provide the necessary infrastructure to accommodate and support top-tier Jewish students rooted in Yeshiva University’s v...
(JNS) — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland urging a federal response to the violence that occurred on Sunday at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. “I write urging immediate action against a pro-Hamas mob’s recent assault on a Jewish community,” Cotton wrote on Tuesday. “The mob attacked Jews with bear spray, beat a man until his face and shirt were covered in blood, and chanted ‘intifada revolution.’” Noting that the anti-Israel activists had announced their plans in...
(JTA) — Wikipedia’s editors have voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources. An overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debate about the ADL also voted to deem the organization unreliable on the topic of antisemitism, its core focus. A formal declaration on that count is expected next. The decision about Israel-related citations, made last week, means that one of the most prominent and longstanding Jewish advocac...
(JTA) — Months after Jewish students and Hillel and Chabad staff lambasted the Anti-Defamation League’s “report cards” for campus antisemitism, the group has released an updated version. The new report cards — published this week, after nearly all schools had finished their academic year — incorporate seismic events on campus, such as the widespread and contentious pro-Palestinian encampment movement, but don’t contain major changes. Some schools went up a letter grade in how the ADL viewed their response to antisemitic incidents; ot...
(JNS) — Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., recently announced plans to eliminate 60 employees due to financial difficulties. “These decisions have not been made lightly,” the academic institution’s senior leaders wrote in an email to staff. “We have examined spending across the university to find savings. Unfortunately, it was not possible to identify sufficient savings without needing to reduce positions.” The cuts may hit non-tenured faculty the hardest. “The need for contract faculty will be reviewed as contracts come up for renewal,...
