Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1010 - 1034 of 1886
(MEMRI)—At a pro-Gaza rally in Times Square in New York on Nov. 15, speakers called for “an intifada in every classroom” and denied Israel’s right to exist. Nerdeen Kiswani, of an organization called Within Our Lifetime, led a chant that went: “There is only one solution: intifada, revolution!” Husam Kaid of the City College, N.Y. branch of Students for Justice in Palestine called for an intifada in every classroom and in every college campus, saying: “We are going to shut down all the Zionist events [and] start an intifada everywhere!...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Last month, Bernie Sanders wrote about his support for Israel, calling the nation an “enormous achievement” and “a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.” A few weeks later Linda Sarsour, a prominent Arab-American activist and an official Sanders campaign surrogate, said that support for Israel as a state is unacceptable in the progressive movement. The contrast is sharp and, one would think, irreconcilable. Neither Sarsour nor the Sanders campaign has answered the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment. Le...
NEW YORK (JTA)-First Bernie Sanders. Now Michael Bloomberg. This cycle's Democratic primary is shaping up to be the all-time greatest troll of white nationalist Twitter-a battle royale featuring both a Jewish socialist from Brooklyn and a Jewish billionaire who made his fortune catering to Wall Street. Talk about trope bait! It's not necessarily just the anti-Semites who will be triggered. The fight between Uncle Bernie and Mayor Mike has the potential to tap into a century's worth of Jewish...
ATLANTA (JTA)-For Jewish voters, Bernie Sanders mentioning the Palestinians seemingly out of nowhere during last week's presidential debate here was a striking moment. But for some Jews in this state, what resonated most was the applause from a majority black audience. The setting for the most recent Democratic debate was a gleaming symbol of African-American success: film mogul Tyler Perry's new studio complex in the southwest part of this city. Much of the crowd in the soundstage named for Opr...
(JNS)—Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) have introduced a bipartisan resolution in the House of Representatives condemning the recent rocket attacks on Israel and supporting the country’s right to defend itself. “When heinous terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad fire hundreds of rockets at innocent civilians in Israel, there should be no question who the United States stands with. We must stand with our historic ally, Israel—the key democracy in the region. That’s why members on both sides of the aisle have come...
(JNS)-Proclaiming Justice to The Nations, a Tennessee-based nonprofit evangelical Christian organization committed to standing with Israel and fighting anti-Semitism, has been removed from the AmazonSmile program, which enables Amazon customers to donate a percentage of their purchase to their favorite charity. PJTN president Laurie Cardoza-Moore told JNS that "all of a sudden, we began being inundated with e-mails from supporters whose AmazonSmile donations to Proclaiming Justice to the...
This is a developing story. (JTA)—Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Jewish National Security Council staffer whose firsthand account of the July phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, testified in the impeachment hearings on Tuesday. Here are the biggest takeaways from his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Vindman was thrice offered the position of Ukrainian defense minister. He rejected the offers. This minor bombshell has not yet been reported. Steve C...
This is a developing story. NEW YORK (JTA)—An Orthodox man was stabbed multiple times on his walk to synagogue for morning prayers. The man was approaching the synagogue Toshnad Heichel Torah Utfila in Spring Valley, New York, when a man got out of a car, began beating him and stabbed him. The assailant fled the scene before police and first responders arrived, according to Aaron Hershkowitz, an assistant to the synagogue’s rabbi. The incident occurred at approximately 5:45 a.m. “Upon arrival it was quickly determined that the individual had b...
NEW YORK (JTA)-One of the most active times of day at the West Side Jewish Center begins precisely at 1:40 p.m., when 60 or so middle-aged men trudge in, mutter through the afternoon prayer service with their coats on, maybe throw a couple dollars of charity into a metal cup and walk back to their jobs. The whole thing is over in about 15 minutes. Other than that and two shifts of morning prayers, the building is mostly empty during the day. On a recent weekday afternoon, two men studied Jewish...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Days after a series of attacks against Jews across Brooklyn, the Anti-Defamation League announced that it would double funding for a school program combating hate. But city officials say more than education is needed to stop the rash of attacks, which have spiked across this city in 2019. That's because the problem is hard to diagnose. Is it the local effect of a national rise in anti-Semitism? The resurfacing of old resentments? Are Jews being scapegoated for the impact of...
AMHERST, Mass. (JTA)-For the second time in six months, several high-profile proponents of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel are sharing a stage at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst-and prompting concern and counteractions from pro-Israel students. Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, Harvard professor Cornell West and other BDS supporters were due to appear at a Nov. 12 event at the university's main campus titled "Criminalizing Dissent: The attack...
(JTA)—President Donald Trump will be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Israeli-American Council. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a Trump supporter and mega donor to Republican candidates, is one of the council’s major supporters. The council said in a statement that it will be Trump’s first appearance to a non-political Jewish organization. Since Trump took office, the only Jewish group he has spoken to is the Republican Jewish Coalition. The summit will take place on Dec. 5-8 in Florida and is expecting nearly 4,000 atten...
(JTA)—A Palestinian student at Benedictine University called on a Holocaust survivor to condemn the establishment of Israel, and then walked out on his speech after he did not do so. Following a speech last week by Professor Harold Kasimow, who survived the Holocaust as a child, Benedictine senior Ayah Ali asked a question which drew a parallel between Kasimow’s experiences and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Ali, according to her Twitter feed, is affiliated with the Chicago-area school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palesti...
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA)—Why was a Nazi flag hanging on the wall inside a California parole office over the weekend? The state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has launched an investigation to find out. An anonymous video uploaded Saturday on Imgur, a video and photo sharing website similar to Instagram, shows a red Nazi flag with a black swastika in the center visible through the window of a CDCR office in downtown Sacramento. The video also shows what appears to be a second flag, black wi...
(JTA)-Eleven memorial candles stood on a table at the start of the public memorial service for the attack one year ago on the Tree of Life synagogue building. Family members of the 11 people killed in the attack walked around the table holding hands as a string ensemble played in the background. They then lit the candles, wiping their eyes and hugging each other. The Jewish community was joined at Sunday's ceremony by members of the Christian and Muslim faith communities, as well as city and...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire media mogul, appears to be preparing to run for president. Bloomberg, 77, flirted with presidential runs in past election cycles before declining to run. As recently as March, he ruled out a presidential campaign this year, writing that he was "clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field." But now he is registering to run in the Democratic primary in Alabama, whose...
The Zionist Organization of America achieved an important legal victory against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after the ZOA filed an anti-Semitism complaint against UNC with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. In an April 17, 2019, letter to OCR, the ZOA complained that UNC sponsored a one-sided anti-Israel conference on March 22-24, 2019, titled “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities.” The Conference included an offensive, anti-Semitic performance by a rapper. Days after the confe...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Nita Lowey, who is retiring after 32 years in Congress, fields a question about her legacy as a Jewish lawmaker. No trouble there-she talks about Israel and her Jewish pride all the time. Then there's one about her legacy as one of the pioneering women in Congress. That one goes down easy, too: Her office is plastered with photos signifying how far women have come in American politics. But when a reporter asks a question combining the two-about her legacy as a female Jewish lawm...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, is making conditioning U.S. aid to Israel on halting settlement expansion a plank ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. “Our aid is not intended to be a blank check,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group’s president, said Sunday evening, at the group’s annual conference, ahead of the first appearance at the conference of a Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Ben-Ami called on candidates to reverse Trump administration policies that have favored I...
Taking a turn on J Street J Street convened its eighth annual conference this week, its 11th year of existence. The gathering attracted 4,000 activists and marked a major turning point in how Democrats treat Israel: Withholding aid to pressure the Jewish state to comply with policy is now an idea that is very much on the table. More accurately, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group delivered its partial OK to action that’s already well underway because of pressure from groups sharply critical of Israel, including IfNotNow. Plenty of t...
Ask any parent of Jewish day school students about the biggest challenge they face in providing a solid Jewish education for their kids: Chances are they’ll talk about tuition. At some schools in the New York-New Jersey area, where most U.S. Jewish day school students are located, annual tuition fees of $30,000 in high school and $20,000 in elementary school are not unusual. Mindful of the challenge, schools and communities across the country are experimenting with various strategies to keep Jewish education affordable—even for families that do...
(JNS)-Up and down the state of California, synagogues, Hebrew schools and Jewish residents are dealing with effects of wildfires that have consumed tens of thousands of acres in recent days, from evacuations to school closures to days with no electricity as authorities try to limit the fire damage and danger. In Northern California, the Torah scrolls from Congregation Beth Ami in Santa Rosa were evacuated from the synagogue on Saturday as winds whipped flames from the Kincade Fire in nearby...
(JNS)—The watchdog group Stopantisemitism.org is calling on the U.S. Department of Education and Georgie State University to keep the “terror-affiliated” Council on American-Islamic Relations off U.S. college campuses. “The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an American front group for the terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Muslim Brotherhoods, is infiltrating the U.S. education system,” said the petition, which already has nearly 2,000 signatures. “Their anti-American agenda is infecting school curriculums, poisoning t...
(JTA)-Since announcing his presidential run in May, Michael Bennet has been polling between zero and 1 percent. He didn't qualify for the latest Democratic debate and he's a long shot to make the next one. The Colorado senator raised only $2.1 million in the third quarter of 2019, less than a tenth of the total brought in by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But Bennet isn't ready to give up yet, believing he's got what it takes to beat President Donald Trump in 2020. "I'm unconvinced that...
(JTA)-Most of the news surrounding Houston Astros slugger Alex Bregman on Tuesday night focused on his "bat carry"-how he ostentatiously carried his bat down to first base while watching his first inning home run sail over the left field fence before dropping it. He apologized for the move after the game. But the Jewish third baseman's blast was historic, too: It was his fifth in a World Series, setting the all-time record for most World Series home runs by a third baseman. It was his third...
