Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1065 - 1089 of 1886
(JNS)—The California Democratic Party’s executive board passed three pro-Israel resolutions on Aug. 25, condemning hatred towards Jews and the State of Israel. One resolution, which Progressive Zionists of California (PZC) co-founder Susan George said “sailed through,” expresses “how anti-Semitic hate speech harms Jews and other Zionists in the California Democratic Party.” It states that Zionism is “the human right to self-determination of the Jewish people in their homeland of Israel,” and mentions that anti-Semitic rhetoric has been “regular...
(JNS)-The decision by Israel to bar Reps. Rashid Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) due to their support for the anti-Israel BDS movement has generated international headlines while at the same time sparking further partisan divide and debate. The controversy over the congresswomen, however, comes shortly after a visit to Israel by 72 fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives that seemed to highlight rare public goodwill between Democrats and Republicans, as well as the broad...
(JNS)-Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Saturday called for boycotting Bill Maher's HBO show after the liberal comedian denounced the anti-Israel BDS movement as "a bulls**t purity test." "Maybe folks should boycott his show," tweeted Tlaib, who compared boycotts of Israel to that of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. "I am tired of folks discrediting a form of speech that is centered on equality and freedom," the congresswoman continued. "This is exactly how they tried to discredit &...
(JTA)—Students at a Southern California high school made a Nazi salute and sang a Nazi marching song at the start of an awards ceremony. The school district will not say publicly if or how it disciplined the students. The incident, which took place last year, involved 10 members of the boys water polo team at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, California, the Daily Beast reported. The video was posted to Instagram by one of the athletes, according to the Daily Beast, and widely circulated among students at the high school. A spokesperson f...
(JNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump clarified remarks made about how Jewish voters could support the Democratic Party knowing the anti-Israel bias among certain congressional members, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. In remarks in the Oval Office on Tuesday following his meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Trump said, “Any Jewish people that...
(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...
