Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1310 - 1334 of 1923
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Chelsea Clinton called Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism “dangerous” and said laughter in response to it “made my skin crawl.” Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, was reacting on Twitter to a Farrakhan tweet in which the leader of the Nation of Islam said “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-termite.” “Comparing Jews to termites is anti-Semitic, wrong and dangerous,” Clinton tweeted Wednesday, quoting Farrakhan. Twitter, meantime, said it would not suspend...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-There are 56 candidates for Congress who identify as Jewish. Among them are 41 Democrats: five are running for the Senate-three incumbents and two challengers. Among the 36 in the U.S. House of Representatives, 18 are incumbents and 18 are challengers. (Three incumbent Jewish House Democrats are retiring.) The 15 Republican candidates are running for the House. There are two incumbents and 13 challengers. Additionally, two House candidates, both Democrats, have Jewish fathers...
(JNS)—The University of Michigan is again under fire for anti-Israel sentiment as a pro-BDS instructor rejected a Jewish student’s request for a letter of recommendation to study in Israel for a semester, just a few months after an associate professor refused to do the same for student Abigail Ingber. In August, associate professor in the American Culture Department John Cheney-Lippold wrote to Ingber via email: “As you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Pa...
(JNS)-A University of Michigan professor, citing his support for the BDS movement in denying a student's request in August for a letter of recommendation for a semester-long study-abroad program at Tel Aviv University, was sanctioned on Tuesday by the university. "As you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Palestine," John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor in the American Culture department, wrote to...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-The organizers of a rally to support pro-Israel students at Columbia University didn't want the Jewish Defense League to show up. And yet there they were, a few demonstrators wearing the extremist right-wing group's insignia, a clenched fist punching into a yellow Jewish star. The leader of the group's New York chapter, Karen Lichtbraun, marched up and down the small police barricade chatting up the other protesters. She said six of her members had come to...
(JNS)-A Jewish Community Center in Fairfax, Va., was vandalized with 19 spray-painted swastikas early Saturday morning. Building staff noticed the building had been vandalized when they arrived to open the facility at 7 a.m. Security camera footage showed a suspect defacing the center at around 4:30 a.m, and local authorities released photos to the public. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine tweeted that an "insidious rise in hateful actions and anti-Semitism" must be met with "fierce condemnation and an...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Going to high school for the first time last month, Linda Shamah felt like many other incoming freshmen: really nervous and really excited. The large lecture-style classes seemed daunting. She'd be getting less personal attention from teachers. At the same time, she was looking forward to trying out for volleyball and participating in a program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. But for Shamah, the shift from middle school to high school came along with an added transition:...
(JNS)-Tens of thousands of students returned to the Westwood campus of University of California, Los Angeles, on Sept. 27 for the first day of classes. However, third-year student Justin Feldman, 20, a political science and Middle Eastern studies double major, wasn't there. Instead, he spent the morning addressing the University of California Board of Regents during its board meeting's public comments section regarding the upcoming eighth annual National Students for Justice in Palestine...
(JNS)—Pro-Israel students at George Washington University have faced a number of challenges from both the BDS movement and anti-Israel groups in recent years. In 2017, the school successfully defeated a BDS resolution; however, last April a new resolution passed. A recently released report by a watchdog group highlights the rampant anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tactics that were used by members of the Students for Justice in Palestine amid the vote. According a recent report by Canary Mission, watchdog website that documents the activities of a...
HOLLYWOOD, FL.—The Israeli-American Council announced the opening of four new regional offices throughout the country: Orlando, Florida; Austin, Texas; Orange County, California, and IAC Midwest (based in Columbus, Ohio). Through its 20 chapters across the country, the organization is expecting to be operating in more than 60 communities in 2019. The rapid expansion of the IAC—which has emerged in recent years as one of America’s fastest growing Jewish organizations—comes ahead of the IAC’s Fifth Annual National Conference, to take place fro...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Two-thirds of Democrats in the Senate and a third of the entire body signed a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to reinstate assistance to the Palestinians, saying the cuts risk exacerbating tensions in the region. “Eliminating funds for programs that provide clean water, food, education, and medical services for Palestinians will exacerbate poverty, fuel extremism, further reduce the chance of a future peace agreement and threaten Israel’s security,” said the letter sent Friday and signed by 34 senators who caucus...
(JNS)—The Trump administration has come under pressure to deny Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas entry into the United States for next week’s annual U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a group that tracks anti-Semitism and terrorism in Palestinian media, petitioned the White House, as well as the State and Treasury departments, to reject Abbas from stepping foot on American soil in accordance with new federal statutes prohibiting international terrorist leaders from traveling to the United Sta...
(JNS)-A University of Michigan professor who denied a student a letter of recommendation for a semester-long study-abroad program in Israel is standing by his decision, citing his support for the BDS movement. John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor in the American Culture department, told JNS that this was the first time he rejected a student's request for a letter of recommendation to study abroad anywhere, as he labeled Israel an "apartheid" nation. "I declined to write the letter because...
(JNS)—Students for Justice in Palestine will host its annual national conference in November at the University of California, Los Angeles. Despite the notoriously anti-Semitic rhetoric used by this group, UCLA will be directly facilitating the spreading of SJP’s deplorable and racist ideologies by providing campus grounds for this national summit. There, students under the auspices of “social justice” will be trained how to promote false propaganda about the Arab-Israeli conflict via events and news articles; most importantly, they will be...
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA)-A Jewish inmate serving life in prison without parole took a step toward freedom Aug. 21 and credited the local Jewish newspaper for the turn of events. James A. White Jr., was sentenced in 1981 for the murder of his wife's ex-husband. Last week, California's Board of Parole Hearings unanimously voted to recommend commutation of his sentence after 37 years behind bars, in part because of the work he has done in establishing a comm...
(Chabad.org/News via JNS)-For the last 11 years, the Lieblich family of Wilmington, N.C., have always held Rosh Hashanah services on both days of the holiday. This year, for the first time ever, they did not have a minyan for the second day because of a looming catastrophic weather threat: Hurricane Florence, which made landfall along the South Carolina, bringing with it massive storm surges and between 30 and 40 inches of rain in some places. "There's a sense of urgency here that I haven't...
MEDFORD, Mass. (JTA)—Pro-Israel students at Tufts University say a new course on Palestine is one-sided and demonizes Israel, and violates the university’s own policies on taking political stances. The course, taught by Thomas Abowd, a faculty member in the American Studies program, was first reported by Jewish News Syndicate. The JNS story sparked a flurry of criticism and concern from the Anti-Defamation League and pro-Israel campus organizations. Titled “Colonizing Palestine,” the course is offered through the liberal arts school...
The Atlanta-based Center for Israel Education and the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel invite Jewish 10th- and 11th-graders to apply to attend the Teen Israel Leadership Institute during the weekend of Oct. 26 to 28. The institute will feature a series of learning activities to expand students' knowledge and understanding of Israel and Zionism while they experience Jewish life on a college campus (Emory University) and forge friendships with peers from across the country. The...
Salmonella in Empire Kosher chicken has led to one death and 17 illnesses, the Centers for Disease Control said. Eight people have been hospitalized. The outbreak of the food-borne infection in the leading kosher chicken seller has shown up in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to a CDC notice Wednesday afternoon. The death occurred in New York. JTA has reached out to Empire Kosher and to the CDC for comment. The CDC began investigating after the New York state Department of Health reported that several people who were...
(JNS)-With the indictment of U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar, a grandson of a Black September terrorist who killed 11 members of the Israeli athletic team at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, is likely to go from being a long-shot candidate to upsetting the California Republican this November in what is a heavy conservative congressional district. Campa-Najjar, 28, a practicing Christian born to a Palestinian father and a Mexican mother, has distanced himself from his...
NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS—On Aug. 9, 2018, the community group Education Without Indoctrination filed a lawsuit against the School Committee of Newton, Massachusetts, in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of three Newton taxpayers. The lawsuit claims multiple violations of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law stemming from the school committee’s handling of a burgeoning scandal over anti-Semitic lessons and the promotion of Islamic religious beliefs as objective facts in the public school district’s history classes. In teaching world histo...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic nominee in a surefire congressional district comprising parts of Detroit, believes in a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and says she would vote against military assistance for Israel. Does she represent a trend? Republicans would like you to think so. "This is the Democrat (sic) party," the Republican Jewish Coalition tweeted, attached to a story about Tlaib's view on military aid. Is Tlaib indeed the future of the Democratic...
(JTA)-Dafna Michaelson Jenet traces her political career back to conversations around the Shabbat table as a 14-year-old. She remembers hearing her parents and their friends discuss the challenges facing Cincinnati, where they were living. But the conversations would quickly be forgotten once the day of rest came to an end. "I was distressed by this because I truly believed that they had the answer to the problems that I cared strongly about, that were plaguing our community, and they didn't...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Are Jews too powerful to be considered “victims” of racism? Some progressives think so and have been downplaying accusations of anti-Semitism in light of a debate over prejudice and power. This week, The New York Times took heat for hiring Sarah Jeong, a technology writer, to its editorial board. Some have called her racist against white people, pointing to past tweets in which she proclaimed that “White men are bullshit” and “#CancelWhitePeople.” The debate over her tweets often centered around the very notion of anti-white ra...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congressional candidate and rising progressive star, was cheered at an event at a Jewish museum that did not touch on Israel or the Jewish community. Ocasio-Cortez appeared at a conference here hosted by the Immigrant Arts Coalition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, participating in a panel focused on women in the arts. While politics did frequently come up, none of the panelists-including Ocasio-Cortez, who has been critical of...
