Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1177 - 1201 of 1886
(JNS)-Undergraduate students at Brown University are expected to vote on a referendum from March 19-21, calling on the school to divest from Israel. "The #BrownDivest campaign is organized by a coalition of undergraduate students to identify and divest from companies that profit from Israeli violations of human rights," states the referendum. It accuses the university of doing business that "engage in human-rights violations," such as "Boeing, Caterpillar, G4S, Hewlett Packard Enterprise CO,...
(JTA)—Add Beto O’Rourke to the already crowded field of Democratic candidates hoping to unseat President Donald Trump. The El Paso native and former congressman hopes to build on the buzz that accompanied his unsuccessful but oh-so-close campaign against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in last year’s Texas Senate race. O’Rourke, a Roman Catholic, has clashed at times with the local Jewish community, particularly his vote in 2014 against funding for Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system. H...
(JNS)—The Democratic Party has long been viewed by most Jewish Americans as its political home. Influenced by the Jewish people’s long history of persecution, urban lifestyle and generally liberal political outlook, American Jews are some of the most reliable Democratic voters with nearly three of out four Jews supporting Democratic presidential candidates in recent elections. Recently, however, the Democratic Party has begun a demographic and political transformation as increasing numbers of minorities and progressive voters—many spurred on by...
ST. LOUIS (St. Louis Jewish Light via JTA)-A Jewish cemetery in a suburb here has opened a section for the burial of cremated remains and will allow for the burial of non-Jewish, immediate family members of Jews who are buried at the cemetery. The decision by the board governing Beth Shalom Cemetery in Chesterfield is an acknowledgement of two non-traditional trends in Jewish life: More Jews are ignoring the religious taboo against cremation and interfaith marriages have become more prevalent....
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump promoted on his Twitter feed a group founded by Republicans that hopes to draw young Jews away from the Democratic Party. “‘Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party,’” Trump said Tuesday morning on his feed, quoting Elizabeth Pipko, a spokeswoman for “Jexodus,” who appeared the same morning on “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News network. “Jexodus” was launched last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference by Jeff Ballabon, a Republican strategist who advised the Trump presidential ca...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Trump administration ended the policy of referring to the West Bank and the Golan Heights as “occupied” by Israel. The State Department’s annual report on global human rights issues, issued Wednesday, drops the “occupied” language from passages on the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza. It refers to the Golan Heights as “Israeli-controlled.” A State Department official argued that the change did not signal a shift in department policy on the territories. Why it matters: The Trump team has broken from precedent established by...
(JNS)—The student government at Columbia University rejected a referendum on Sunday night calling on the school to support the movement to boycott Israel. After a four-hour intense meeting consisting of more than 150 onlookers, the Columbia College Student Council failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass the BDS proposal, similar to one in 2017 that also proved unsuccessful. “Students worked very hard to defeat this BDS campaign and should be commended for their work. Columbia/Barnard Hillel will continue to invest in con...
(JNS)—John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 on Monday. Despite having led a state with a relatively small Jewish community, Hickenlooper has a wide-ranging relationship with the Jewish state, including two trips to Israel as the leader of the Centennial State between 2011 and 2019. During his first 100 days in office, Hickenlooper, 67, organized a meeting between 65 Israeli and Colorado water officials to share ideas surrounding water problems and m...
(JNS)—Twelve pro-Israel groups delivered a letter on Monday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), urging for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the committee amid the Minnesota congresswoman’s latest anti-Semitic remarks. “Speaker Pelosi, you demonstrated wisdom and leadership in rebuking Rep. Omar on February 11 following her use of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Chairman Engel, your reaction to the classic anti-Semitic trope of the charge of ‘dual loyalty’ about Ame...
(JTA)-John Hickenlooper is the latest Democrat who thinks he can win back the White House in 2020. The former Colorado governor and self-described "extreme moderate" announced his candidacy on Monday and is holding his first campaign rally this week. "Ultimately I'm running for president because I believe that not only can I beat Donald Trump, but that I am the person that can bring people together on the other side and actually get stuff done," he said on "Good Morning America." During his...
(JNS)—Amid this week being “Palestinian Rights Awareness Week” at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., pro-Israel campus students and Hillel professionals disagree on the appropriate approach toward countering the latest installation of anti-Israel bias. While some campus activists want to fight the initiative head on, Hillel professionals have been counseling the students to “lay low.” The week-long initiative, promoted by Kristina Gupta—an assistant professor at the school’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studi...
NEW YORK (JTA)-At the end of March, the National Council of Young Israel, an Orthodox synagogue association, will hold a gala dinner hosted by Pete Hegseth, the co-host of "Fox & Friends." The invitation advertises that Rep. Kevin McCarthy and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, both Republicans, will speak. Tommy Hicks, the co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, will receive the Guardian of Israel award. The chairman of the dinner, Rabbi Yechezkel Moskowitz, has tweeted that "#Democr...
Imagine Lawrence Dressler's surprise when fellow inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y., told him that he was mentioned on the Bill Maher show the night before. "At the time the show aired I was eating gefilte fish and lokshen kugel with fellow Sabbath observant felons," Dressler posted on his blog (larrynoodles.com), which is about the lives of wealthy, powerful men he lived in close quarters with at Otisville. "I was honored to be mentioned on a show that is hosted...
(JNS)—For the sixth time since November, anti-Semitic fliers appeared around the University of Montana campus in Missoula, including four times in February. Discovered on Monday, the latest fliers included an image of a disfigured military member with a quotation from the late former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovida Yosef that said, “Goyim were born only to serve us.” “There is a line that can be crossed, but as for putting out literature that is hateful or untrue, people get to do that because of the free speech amendment,” David Cox...
(JTA)—Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan blamed “the wicked Jews” for the crisis over anti-Semitism and the Women’s March. “The most beautiful sight that I could lay eyes on [was] when I saw, the day after Trump was elected, women from all over the world were standing in solidarity, and a black woman is the initiator of it,” said Farrakhan, referring to Tamika Mallory, a leader of the Women’s March who has lionized Farrakhan and refused to condemn his pervasive anti-Semitism. “The wicked Jews want to use me to break up the women’s movement,...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-An increase in anti-Semitism, an intensification of anti-Israel activity and decades of neglect have created a crisis in the Jewish community relations field, according to the umbrella group for Jewish public policy organizations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. In reports published this week at its annual Washington meeting, the group urged a radical shift among its constituent Jewish community relations councils, which advocate for Jewish issues on behalf of the Jewish...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump called on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to resign from Congress for what he said was her anti-Semitism. “It’s terrible what she said and I think she should either resign from Congress, or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What she said is so deep-seated in her heart that her lame apology, and that’s what it was, it was lame and she didn’t mean a word of it, was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress.” Om...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—AIPAC sounded relieved by the substantive Democratic backing in the Senate this week for a controversial pro-Israel bill initiated by Republicans. The Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act (S.1), which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said “contains critical pro-Israel provisions,” passed 77-23, earning yeas from every Republican but one, Rand Paul of Kentucky. It codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movemen...
(JNS)—In response to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest anti-Semitic tweets, some groups have already called for official action against her by the U.S. House of Representatives, similar to that against Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) over his remarks on white nationalism. On Sunday, Omar accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, of paying members of Congress to back Israel. “Anti-Semitism in any form is unacceptable, and it’s shocking to hear a Member of Congress invoke the anti-Semitic trope o...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. Senate approved in a 77-23 vote a bill that codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and which provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movement. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., had stirred controversy because a number of Democratic senators said that while they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, they were also concerned that state laws aimed at BDS impinged on speech freedoms. Among the Democratic d...
(JNS)-After a 21-month-long vacancy awaiting the appointment of the U.S. State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, the Trump administration has picked Iraq War veteran and attorney Elan Carr to fill the position. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the announcement, and with it said that "promoting human rights and religious freedom, including by combating anti-Semitism everywhere it exists, is a U.S. foreign policy priority that furthers our national interests...
(JNS)—Over the past decade, the Boston suburb of Newton has been beset by controversy over how the conflict in the Middle East is being taught in its public schools. The concern over anti-Israel bias in the school system began in 2011, when a Newton resident complained to school officials regarding the use of a supplemental text called The Arab World Studies Notebook, which contained “false and defamatory” anti-Israel sentiment. While the school board eventually removed the textbook, accusations and further evidence of anti-Israel bias withi...
(JNS)-The decision last week by the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council to pass a resolution declaring that any member organization supporting the BDS movement could be expelled from the council has generated a wider discussion among Jewish leaders as to where to draw red lines when it comes to Israel. The resolution-adopted overwhelmingly by a vote of 62-13 with eight abstentions-resolves that no member of the JCRC "shall partner with-in particular by co-sponsoring events primarily led...
(JNS)—The University of Vermont chapters of J Street U and Students for Justice in Palestine launched a simultaneous attack on the pro-Israel community at the school last week. On Friday, the two groups released corresponding letters blasting the Hillel on campus for accepting funding from the pro-Israel group Maccabee Task Force, which will use some of the monies to organize a trip to Israel for students. In their letters, which closely followed the same message, SJP slammed the UVM pro-Israel community for “a refusal to listen to Pal...
NEW YORK (JTA)—When New York State liberalized its abortion law last week, the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention unsurprisingly released statements slamming the action. And they were joined by two large Orthodox Jewish religious organizations: the Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel of America. The RCA is the umbrella group for centrist Orthodox rabbis. Agudah represents haredi Orthodox Jews. “Jewish law opposes abortion, except in cases of danger to the mother,” read the RCA statement issued Tuesday. “Most authori...
