Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — More than 1,200 people gathered on July 17 in Arlington, Va., for the annual Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. It was the event’s 18th—or chai—iteration, gathering some of the more than 10 million members of the nation’s largest, pro-Israel organization. Throughout the day, political, scholarly, advocacy and religious speakers addressed various topics, many centered on the themes of courage and fighting antisemitism. “God’s love for the Jewish people will be here forever,” Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of CUF...
(JNS) - In a statement, U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to add 10 people to four executive organizations, some centered on culture and others on international issues. Biden has named Susie Gelman as a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Gelman brings extensive experience on the subject, as she has led and contributed to numerous Jewish and Zionist organizations. From 2016 to 2023, Gelman served as board chair of the Israel Policy Forum. She...
(JNS) — The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution affirming that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state,” in a rebuke to remarks Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) made last weekend. The resolution introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) was approved by a vote of 412-9, with 195 Democrats joining all Republicans in voting yes. It also states that Congress rejects antisemitism and that the United States “will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.” Israel is our strongest partner in the Mi...
(JNS) — Seven Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent, opted not to attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress on July 19. The House members were Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.) and Raul Grijalva (Ariz.). “Boycotting Herzog, a former Labor Party standard-bearer who represents the State of Israel—not a political party, faction or policy...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Jurors in the trial of the gunman who killed 11 Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue took less than two hours to find him eligible for the death penalty, setting up a final phase of the historic proceedings in which the gunman may be sentenced to death. On Thursday morning, the seven women and five men on the jury unanimously found that Robert Bowers, who attacked the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018, met all four thresholds of intent necessary for capital punishment. The jurors also agreed with the g...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Harvard’s 20th-century antisemitic Jewish quotas were a key part of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action on Thursday, as the winning litigant and two conservative justices cited them in the landmark case. The 6-3 decision Thursday, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, bars universities from using race as an explicit factor in considering admissions, but allows race to be cited by applicants in essays describing their life experiences. Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative advocacy group that...
(JNS) — A group of U.S. Republican senators sent a letter on Tuesday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on the Biden administration to rescind its “discriminatory” guidance halting bilateral scientific and technological cooperation with Israeli entities operating in Judea and Samaria. The administration late last month issued the directive applying to areas Israel captured in its defensive 1967 Six-Day War. “The guidance does something America has never done before: unilaterally impose territorial restrictions on U.S. scienti...
(JNS) — Florida Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on Tuesday denounced U.S. President Joe Biden over his failure to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. “Biden meets with dictators of countries such as Venezuela but snubs the democratically elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not how you should treat an ally,” the presidential hopeful noted on Twitter. Biden has been widely criticized for neglecting to invite Netanyahu to Washington. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israe...
(JTA) – Jeff Nitz, a social worker and lay leader at his church, sees himself as a trained listener. But beginning in 2020, his congregation — Mosaic Church in the evangelical Christian hub of Lynchburg, Virginia — started becoming riven by fierce COVID-era fights over masking, distancing and vaccinations. Used to bridging divides among his fellow parishioners, Nitz was at a loss. “I’m used to doing active listening, but there were times where it felt like I would much rather just avoid this person than having the deeper conversat...
WASHINGTON (JTA) —A congressional committee approved an increase in funding for the office of Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s antisemitism monitor, from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved the bill, which pays for State Department and foreign operations, late Wednesday. It now goes to the full House and must be reconciled with parallel Senate legislation. Senators who focus on antisemitism hope to get similar language into the corresponding Senate bill. This week, a bip...
(JNS) — Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York hit Gal Luft, an Israeli professor who has been described as a key “missing” witness in the House Republicans’ investigation of Biden family corruption, with a litany of charges on Monday. Luft, 57, who was arrested in Cyprus on Feb. 17, 2023, and is on the lam after being released on bail to avoid extradition to the United States, is accused of helping recruit a former high-ranking U.S. government official “to publicly support certain policies” favoring China. While the official is...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a case that drew support from a broad array of Jewish groups, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers had to show a “substantial” burden to deny workers religious accommodation. In a decision released Thursday, the court sided with Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian mail carrier who asked not to work on Sundays, his Sabbath. Jewish groups that do not often line up on the same side of church-state issues before the court were of a single voice in this case. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion, sought to...
(JTA) – The Sackler family, the Jewish billionaires whose marketing of the painkiller drug OxyContin fueled the United States’ ongoing opioid epidemic, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims in exchange for spending up to $6 billion on addiction treatment and prevention programs. The decision to grant immunity by a federal appeals court panel Tuesday effectively ends the thousands of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers’ company, over opioid deaths. But it clears the way for the company to de...
(JNS) — The Southern Poverty Law Center is a Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit that according to its website was founded in 1971 “to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all.” Before reaching that first paragraph on the group’s site, however, comes the SPLC’s self-identification as “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.” SPLC is often quoted...
PITTSBURGH (JTA) - The gunman who committed the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history is guilty of all charges he faced, according to the verdict delivered by a federal jury on Friday morning. Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, was charged on 63 counts in total. Those include 22 capital charges - two for each of his victims: 11 charges of the federal crime of "obstruction of the free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death," and 11 ch...
(JNS) - First, she represented Iraq in the "Miss Universe" competition. Then she fled her country after posing for a selfie in 2017 with "Miss Israel." Now, Sarah Idan is running for California's 30th congressional district-the seat that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is vacating as he vies to replace the retiring Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. "I'm running because this is a critical time in U.S. history when our democracy is fundamentally at stake," the Baghdad native, 33, told JNS. "I've always...
(JNS) — Soon after the White House unveiled its 60-page, national strategy to counter antisemitism on May 25, the Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed “the Biden administration’s efforts to implement national strategies to confront various forms of bigotry, starting with the threat of antisemitism.” CAIR added that the strategy’s fact sheet noted “CAIR as one of the many contributing organizations.” “Some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas,” the Anti-Defamation...
(JNS) — Political heavyweights and prominent journalists discussed key issues affecting Israel and the Jewish people at the opening plenary of the American Jewish Committee’s second AJC Global Forum in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. Those issues included rising antisemitism, the Abraham Accords and Israeli-Diaspora relations. As many as 1,000 people from 60 nations were in attendance at the opening event, with a total of 1,500 expected throughout the four-day forum. Ted Deutch, in his inaugural AJC Global Forum address as CEO, celebrated the suc...
(JTA) – The financial future of American Jewish University is in flux again after a plan to raise a reported $65 million by selling its 22-acre campus in Los Angeles to a Swiss education company fell through. Nine months after the university announced a deal had been reached to sell the property, the prospective buyer, EF Education First, said it was pulling out and abandoning its plans to establish a language school for international students at the site because of the opposition of r...
(JNS) — Chris Christie, the former, two-term Republican governor of New Jersey who bid unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2016, announced on June 6 that he is running for president in 2024. (See “A Jewish guide to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign” article on page 9A.) Christie, 60, declared his candidacy in a town hall at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Joined by his wife, Mary Pat, four children and father, Christie spoke about the importance of choosing to go big rather than small and to unify the country. “We have cand...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Until the certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021, Mike Pence made sure to stay on the same page as Donald Trump - except, sometimes, when it came to the Jews. Both men delighted the pro-Israel establishment - Trump by fulfilling a long wish list of Israel's right-wing government, Pence by proving himself as a stalwart Christian Zionist through years in elected office. But just weeks after Trump assumed office, the difference in how each man approached Jewish...
(New York Jewish Week) — The New York Police Department has reported 100 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city since the start of the year, a decrease of some 20 percent when compared to the same period last year. Anti-Jewish incidents have comprised nearly 45 percent of the 223 total hate crimes the NYPD has reported this year. Jews are targeted for hate crimes more than any other group in the city and have been the victims of a plurality of hate crimes each month. These incidents include assaults, vandalism such as swastikas being drawn in f...
(JNS) — After a week of testimony from survivors in the Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting trial, a city police officer offered his perspective on the Shabbat-morning attack in October 2018 that left 11 Jewish worshippers dead. Officer Michael Saldutte testified that he drove faster than 100 miles per hour to reach the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood after he learned about the attack. Upon arrival, Saldutte said he smelled gunpowder and saw bodies in pools of blood, the officer testified. The judge ove...
(JTA) - As he has launched his long-shot campaign for the Republican nomination, Chris Christie has taken aim squarely at the man he once enthusiastically endorsed: Donald Trump. But alongside portraying the former president as a danger to democracy, Christie has singled out another person for criticism who is not running for president, and who may not even work on a campaign: Jared Kushner, Trump's Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser. The Christie-Kushner feud goes back two decades, dating bac...
PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) - When Judy Clarke delivered her opening statement to the jury that will determine the fate of the man charged with committing the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue building, she did not deny that her client was responsible. In fact, she sympathized with the victims and their families. Clarke, 71, began her address by acknowledging the horror of Oct. 27, 2018, and its aftermath. "The tragedy that brings us together today," she said in a...
