Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee reached a deal on Sunday with anti-Israel protesters two weeks after the latter set up tents on campus “in defiance of a state rule banning camping on campus property,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Mark Mone, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, stated on Sunday that the “voluntary dismantling of the encampment is the safest conclusion for everyone.” In response to the protesters’ demands, the public university called for a ceasefire in Gaza and “for the release of the...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Twenty-six Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have asked the White House for a briefing on why President Joe Biden suspended the delivery of large bombs to Israel, the latest sign of fractures in the party over Israel policy. “We are deeply concerned about the message the Administration is sending to Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist proxies by withholding weapons shipments to Israel, during a critical moment in the negotiations,” said the letter sent Friday to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national securit...
Hundreds of curious Jews will be streaming into Miami, Florida, for the 18th National Jewish Retreat, which will run at Miami's Doral Hotel from Aug. 14 to Aug. 18. Seventy speakers will deliver 150 talks on intriguing Jewish topics over five days. "Every year we bring a group from Orlando to this meaningful vacation and they always love it," says Rabbi Yanky Majesky of Chabad North Orlando "While they decompress and network, they're soaking up gobs of knowledge and inspiration." Coordinated by...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders, the two-time presidential candidate and leading progressive senator, has announced he will run for a fourth term. Sanders, 82, an independent from Vermont, made history in 2016 as the first Jewish candidate to win a major party’s presidential primary, and ran again in 2020. In both primaries, he finished in second to the Democratic nominee. He is considered the de-facto leader of progressives in the Senate. In an eight-minute campaign launch speech posted online Monday, Sanders called to suspend U.S. mil...
(JNS) — As Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld received an honorary degree during Duke University’s commencement celebration in Durham, N.C. on Sunday, anti-Israel protesters marched out, chanting “Free, free Palestine.” Many students booed the protesters. Outside the stadium where the ceremony took place, graduates walked around campus, chanting “Disclose. Divest. We will not stop. We will not rest,” The New York Times reported. “We understand the depth of feeling in our community, and as we have all year, we respect the right of everyone at D...
(JNS) — Some 24 hours after U.S. President Joe Biden told CNN that he would withhold military aid from the Jewish state if Israel attacked Rafah, the Jewish Federations of North America stated that “in threatening to withhold military aid from Israel, President Biden is wrong.” “Daylight between the United States and Israel on military matters emboldens Hamas and other Iran-backed forces in the region, encourages their delay tactics and endangers the hostages by weakening Israel’s negotiating hand at a critical juncture,” it said. JFNA added...
A Republican senator has called on the House of Representatives to launch impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden over the president's decision to halt military sales to Israel in a bid to prevent the IDF from destroying Hamas battalions in Rafah. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton took to Twitter Thursday to urge the Republican-held House of Representatives to impeach Biden, comparing the president's decision to withhold arms from Israel with then-President Donald Trump's impeachment for...
(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...
