Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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‘Oslo,’ Bette Midler and Ben Platt take Tony Awards (JTA)—“Oslo,” a play about the 1993 Oslo Accords, won the Tony Award for best new play and its Jewish lead actor, Michael Aronov, was recognized as best featured actor in a play. Bette Midler, the veteran Jewish actress and singer, won for best actress in a musical for “Hello Dolly” as Broadway handed out its highest honors on Sunday night in New York. The play also won for best musical revival. “Oslo,” a J.T. Rogers play in which Israeli and Palestinian negotiators struggle to hammer out a p...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The year was 1981 and the director of AIPAC was calling for a "showdown" with the Reagan administration, saying "This country is being held hostage to the whims of the Saudis." At issue was the sale to Saudi Arabia of AWACS, aircraft with radar-enabled surveillance capabilities that at the time were state of the art. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, then helmed by Tom Dine, famously lost the battle but won the war: President Ronald Reagan got the necessary...
(JTA)-One of Israel's strongest condemnations of Donald Trump wasn't about the peace process. It didn't concern Trump's broken promise to relocate the U.S. embassy, or his reported leak of Israeli intelligence. It was about climate change. After President Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris accords, the landmark 2015 agreement to fight global warming, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz joined the chorus of international leaders criticizing his decision. "Even if...
(JTA)-On a recent Sunday, eight far-right activists filmed themselves on what they called a "raid" on the Aurora Jewish community center in Budapest. Sporting crewcuts and black clothes, the men affixed posters with a crossed-out picture of the Hungary-born Jewish American billionaire George Soros to the entrance of the building, which along with having a Masorti, or Conservative, synagogue, also serves as the headquarters for a gay rights group, a Roma advocacy lobby, a hotline for immigrants...
(JNS.org)—The Israeli start-up BiomX, which last week completed a $24 million round of financing, is aiming to replace the need for conventional antibiotics by developing treatments that selectively eliminate bacteria. BiomX’s treatments are developed using phages—special viruses intended to fight certain bacteria, as opposed to traditional antibiotics that kill all bacteria, including beneficial bacteria. “BiomX has developed a platform with two elements. One is the ability to detect with precision what bacteria are missing, and which existin...
Argentine website’s analysis of Nisman recordings wins Google journalism prize (JTA)—An Argentine news outlet’s analysis of secret recordings concerning the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires won a national prize from Google Argentina and the National Forum of Professional Journalists. The Digital Journalism Innovation Award was announced on Saturday during the 6th National Congress of Digital Journalism, organized by the journalism forum, known as FOPEA, and Google. La Nacion Data Argentina analyzed 40,000 audio recor...
JERUSALEM-Just prior to US President Donald Trump's whirlwind tour of Israel and the breathtaking and emotional 50th anniversary Jerusalem Day celebrations across the country, the staff of United with Israel, the world's largest grassroots pro-Israel movement, met with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to present him with the 'Jerusalem Declaration,' a historic book containing the names of over 500,000 individuals from around the world who recognize Jerusalem as both the eternal capital of the Jewish...
(JTA)-Britain's bloodiest terrorist attack in over a decade occurred Monday just two miles from Rabbi Yisroel Cohen's synagogue. Yet one day after the deadly bombing in Manchester, Cohen told JTA he has no intention of changing security arrangements at his congregation. In fact Cohen, a Chabad emissary who works in a Jewish enclave in the northern part of the city surrounded by a heavily Muslim area, said there is little room for improving security across his tight-knit community. After all, the...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-President Donald Trump spent just 30 minutes at Yad Vashem on the second and last day of his visit to Israel, but the leadership of the Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem planned to use the brief time to deliver a powerful message. Rather than bombarding Trump with facts or analysis, they told him the story of one German Jewish girl, Ester Goldstein, who was murdered by the Nazis. "The story of a child touches everyone, not only the president," Yona Kobo, researcher of...
The President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, participated in a memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem on 23 May 2017. Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev accompanied President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump while at Yad Vashem. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau also joined the president during his visit. During the ceremony, conducted by Yad Vashem’s Michael Fisher, the presi...
(JNS.org) During the second day of President Donald Trump’s visit to Israel, a rocket was fired at the Jewish state Tuesday from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The IDF confirmed the rocket landed in Israeli territory, but in an open area, causing no casualties or damage. During 2016 and the beginning of 2017, several rockets were launched at Israel from the Egyptian Sinai by Salafi jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State terror group. In April, a Grad rocket struck a greenhouse in Israel’s southern community of Yuval, adjacent to the Egypt...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-Shortly after the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Ronny Naftaniel was soliciting donations on the street and putting a lot of money into a box emblazoned with the words "for Israel." An Amsterdam Jew who was 19 that year, Naftaniel was one of many pro-Israel activists across Western Europe who collected the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars from individuals supportive of Israel in its fight against Arab neighbors who were widely perceived as the more powerful...
Israel’s defense minister: Israel tweaked intel sharing after Trump revelations to Russians WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israel’s defense minister said Israel made changes to how it shares intelligence with the United States in the wake of President Donald Trump’s revelation of highly classified information to Russian officials. Avigdor Liberman told Army Radio on Wednesday that the change would not affect the close intelligence-sharing relationship between Israel and the United States. “I can confirm that we did a spot repair and that there’s unprecedent...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-President Donald Trump visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to go to the holy site. Trump arrived there under heavy security Monday afternoon with his wife, Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. No Israeli politicians or officials accompanied the family. U.S. officials reportedly had rejected a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the site with Trump. Trump was presented with a Book of Psalms with his...
JTA—The White House used the term “Jerusalem, Israel” in a live video feed of President Donald Trump’s visit to the city, a departure from the policies of past administrations. The caption appeared on the video feed of Monday’s news conference at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence. It came as Trump administration officials continue to differ over whether to describe the contested city as being part of Israel, and as Israeli officials urge the White House to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Obama and G...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, presented his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem. During the ceremony Tuesday morning, Rivlin identified himself as a seventh-generation Jerusalemite and noted."Next week, we will celebrate 50 years since Jerusalem was united, and the Jewish people were able to once again pray at the Western Wall. But Jewish Jerusalem is not 50 years old. Since the days of King David, this city has been our capital. It is time...
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has welcomed a clarification from President Donald Trump's Administration that it does not regard the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a "part of the West Bank," contrary to earlier media reports. "We were dismayed by press accounts earlier today reporting that, in response to a request that Prime Minister Netanyahu accompany President Trump when he visits the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, unidentified U.S. officials...
JNS.org—Ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to Israel, the head of a leading Christian Zionist organization called on the president to fulfill his election campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Pastor John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel,noted in a letter published in the Washington Times that Trump will soon need to decide whether to postpone the embassy’s transfer to Jerusalem by at least half a year. In 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which calls on the U.S. to move the embas...
Trump tells Netanyahu he ‘never mentioned Israel’ in meeting with Russians WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “never mentioned Israel” in a meeting with Russian government officials in which he was alleged to have revealed highly classified information. “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel,” Trump said Monday at a photo op with Netanyahu at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on the second leg of his first overseas trip as president. “Never mentioned it duri...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Ten days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked visited the Jewish settlement in Hebron. A community of several hundred ensconced in a city of 150,000 Palestinians, Hebron's Jewish residents are considered to be among the most extremist and controversial Israeli settlers. Shaked, 41, wearing black jeans and a loose fleece, had come to support them. "No more excuses-in 10 days we need to keep building in Hebron!" she wrote on Facebook,...
An Israeli veterans organization has released a hard-hitting new video attacking Breaking the Silence—an Israeli NGO that publishes what it says are the anonymous testimonies of Israeli soldiers who participated in abuses against Palestinians—for “lying” about an incident in which a Palestinian prisoner was allegedly beaten unconscious. The group, Reservists on Duty, said that the original Hebrew version of the video had garnered one million views, triggering their decision to release it in English as well. “Organizations promoting BDS such as...
By Adam Abrams JNS.org As French citizens voted Sunday, their eventual president-elect reiterated previous statements ruling out unilateral French recognition of Palestinian statehood and committing to support for a two-state solution. On the eve of the election, pro-Europe centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party—who went on to win the presidential race with 64 percent of the vote, defeating far-right populist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party—said unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would create instability and dam...
PARIS (JTA)-French Jews may have voted en masse for Emmanuel Macron in the final round of France's presidential elections, but that doesn't make him their dream president. Like many other supporters of the 39-year-old former investment banker, who on Sunday became the youngest French president in recent history, Jews voted for Macron mainly to block his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen. The centrist won with 65 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Le Pen. Leaders of French Jewry said they...
(JNS.org)-In his Independence Day message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the "moment of triumph" in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and praised the Jewish state's resilience. "It was a moment of triumph for our people. We had been scattered around the world for millennia. And then we returned to our ancient homeland, to build a safe haven, where we could live, and thrive," Netanyahu said in a video message. Netanyahu went on to praise the Israeli people for their ab...
(JNS.org) As millions of Israeli and Diaspora Jews marked Israel’s 69th Independence Day, the United Nations cultural body UNESCO voted Tuesday, May 2, to adopt its latest resolution denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem. The resolution—which passed in a 22-10 vote, with 23 abstentions—states that “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the ‘basic law’ on Jerusalem, are null and vo...
