Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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RA’ANANA, ISRAEL—More than 2.5 million tons of edible food, with a market value of NIS8 billion (roughly US$2 billion) is wasted in Israel annually, according to an inaugural report, Food Waste and Rescue in Israel: The Economic, Social and Environmental Impact, released today, Jan. 6, 2016, by global consulting group BDO Ziv Haft and Leket Israel, the national food bank. The report, the first of its kind in Israel, highlights the economic, social and environmental benefits of rescuing unused food for the more than two million Israeli cit...
Chelsea Clinton, Ivanka Trump declare election 2016 truce (JTA)—Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump reportedly have decided not to let the 2016 presidential election ruin their friendship. However, they have agreed not to see each other until after the November vote, the New York Daily News’ Confidenti@l column reported Saturday. Confidenti@l had reported Jan. 1 that the relationship between the two high-profile women, who exchanged baby gifts and had a frequent text messaging relationship, was strained over the attacks by their par...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-At first blush, it appears like a bombshell: The United States listened in on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's phone calls. But on closer examination, the revelations reported Dec. 29 by The Wall Street Journal might not be so far reaching. Spying on allies is both routine and legal in the United States, though perhaps not very politic. Here's what the controversy is all about and what may happen next. What exactly did the Obama administration do? According to the...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The United States monitored phone conversations between top Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers as well as U.S. Jewish groups in the U.S., current and former U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. The National Security Agency’s foreign eavesdropping included conversations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides, and private conversations held between Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers, according to the report published late Tuesday afternoon, citing more than two dozen unnamed U.S. officials. The Whi...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Its backers call it a victory for transparency. Opponents say it smacks of dictatorship. Either way, a new bill requiring certain Israeli nongovernmental organizations to publicly declare their foreign government funding is moving toward passage after it was approved by a Cabinet committee on Sunday. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who proposed the bill, said it uncovers foreign meddling in Israeli affairs. "The transparency law, which passed the ministerial committee for...
(Jewniverse via JTA)-A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar... Actually, this isn't a joke or a bar. It's an extraordinary new building called the House of One, which will combine a mosque, a synagogue and a church in Petriplatz, also known as "the medieval birthplace of Berlin." Yes, Berlin-as Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin says in House of One's promotional video, "For me as a Jew, this city is 'The City of Wounds' and 'The City of Miracles.'" The House of One will welcome people of multiple...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It has the highest poverty rate among affluent democracies, the fourth-worst income inequality and the seventh-lowest government spending on social services. Those are among the dismal conclusions of the State of the Nation report, an annual set of papers on Israel's economy and society released last week by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, a socioeconomic think tank. There is some good news sprinkled in, but the prognosis is mostly grim. Here are six figures that...
Two Jewish-Israelis indicted in deadly Duma firebombing JERUSALEM (JTA)—Two Jewish-Israelis have been indicted in the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma. Israeli prosecutors filed the indictments in Lod District Court on Sunday, when a gag order was lifted on some details of the July 31 arson attack case. The main suspect is Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, of Jerusalem, who was charged with three counts of murder, according to Israel Police. Three members of the Dawabshe family—an 18-month-old boy and his p...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The issue of torture in Israel has received unusual attention in recent weeks because of the identity of the alleged victims. Human rights groups say nothing is new in the allegations that Jewish youths, arrested in connection with an arson attack over the summer that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in the West bank village of Duma, were tortured by Israel's Shin Bet internal security service. For years, Palestinians have charged Israeli authorities with doing much...
For the first time since World War II, two of Europe's great synagogues were forced to shutter their doors to Jews on the Sabbath. The weekend following the horrific attacks in Paris, the streets of Belgium and other major European cities were covered in military vehicles, armored military personnel and silence. The Great Synagogue of Brussels was closed because of an "immediate very serious threat." The Malmo Synagogue in Sweden was on lockdown because it was believed people with the "intent...
Russia has announced that it will build two nuclear power plants in Iran starting this week, Iranian Mehr news agency quoted a senior Iranian atomic energy official as saying on Tuesday. Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran seems to be referring to extending the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran. This move comes a year after Iran signed a contract with Moscow to build up to eight reactors at the Bushehr power plant, where one nuclear reactor is already running. The International...
Steinreich Communications, an international public relations firm based in New Jersey, recently appointed Daniel Seaman as its managing director of its Israel office. Seaman brings more than 30 years of communications experience to the firm. He will spearhead a team working with clients in travel and tourism, healthcare, education, technology, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Prior to joining Steinreich Communications, Seaman served as the director of the Israel Government Press Office for a decade under six prime ministers...
In a region full of challenges and short on solutions, reported cooperation between Hamas and the Islamic State branch in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula-considered by many experts to be the terror group's most potent offshoot-adds a new layer of threats to Middle East stability and especially to Israel. According to reports, the Gaza-ruling Palestinian terrorist organization and the Islamic State branch are collaborating on funding, smuggling, training, and even medical support. "It's a worrying...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The chain of events is familiar: Israel's security forces detain a terrorism suspect, deny him access to his lawyer and interrogate him. The detainee alleges that he was tortured during the interrogation. His lawyers decry the abuses and are backed up by Israeli human rights groups. Supporters of the detainee riot in the street, injuring Israeli forces. The Israeli government denies the charges and condemns the rioters. It's a progression that has occurred time and again with...
Israel and Turkey are close to signing a deal to normalize diplomatic ties following a secret meeting in Switzerland between senior officials. Reports indicate that incoming Israeli Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Joseph Ciechanover, who is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top envoy with Turkey, met with Turkish Foreign Ministry Director-General Feridun Sinirlioglu in Geneva to hash out an agreement. According to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, the two sides agreed that Israel would...
Amid increasing discrimination-and even violence-against Christian minorities across the Middle East, a small program in Israel is dramatically increasing the number of Christian-Arab Israelis who join the Israeli military, with the aim of integrating this minority population into mainstream Israeli society. With support from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship), the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum, led by Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth, is multiplying...
(JTA)—Out of baseball after four years playing in the minor leagues, Brent Powers, a Christian from Texas, took a tour of Israel last year with his wife. He was smitten with the country and considered how to return. The Masa Israel Journey will provide his path. Powers and about a dozen American college players will be part of the group’s five-month, baseball-themed program launching in January. Israel’s baseball czar figures their expertise will do wonders for a sport that is growing in popularity, but remains a niche sport in a country where...
US Orthodox rabbis slam wedding video calling for revenge against Palestinians (JTA)—The main modern Orthodox rabbinical group in the United States expressed its “outrage” over a video that shows Jewish revelers at a wedding celebrating the murder of three Palestinians in a West Bank firebombing. “The vigilante and lawless calls for revenge and dancing with machine guns and knives are anathema to Jewish morality and religious standards,” Rabbi Shalom Baum, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, said in a statement issued Dec. 24....
Honk. Honk. Hoooonk. It’s the sound of the Israeli street. Israelis have a reputation for aggressive driving, no doubt. But according to the 2014 Road Safety Annual Report, 263 people lost their lives on Israel’s roads in 2012, a 40-percent decrease from the number of accidents causing death in 2000. “There has been a real increase in the awareness of the need for road safety,” says Dr. Victoria Gitelman, a researcher at the Transportation Research Institute of Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. So what has changed? First: publ...
The following is a statement from Stephen Greenberg, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman/CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations: We are deeply dismayed at the vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 35-nation Board of Governors to close the file on the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program despite Iran’s continuing lack of transparency and hindrance of the inspection work. Moreover, Iran was found by the IAEA to have lied about its nuclear program and...
Part 3 of a 3-part series The Republican Party’s candidates for the 2016 presidential race have, since the Paris terror attacks on Nov. 13, 2015, and the San Bernardino terror attack on Dec. 2, 2015, placed an increasing emphasis on their proposed measures aimed at increasing America’s national security. These proposals range from the intense to the laughable and, to some, the intensely laughable. Regarding the Islamic State (ISIS) group, an increasing threat to the West, multiple candidates support a ground operation in the Middle East aga...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at an annual U.S.-Israel confab, said Israel’s government must consider the consequences of evolving toward a single state incorporating the Palestinian areas. “How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish democratic state?” Kerry said Saturday at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C. Would Palestinians “be relegated to a permanent underclass? Would they be segregated?” he asked. Kerry’s forceful questioning of Israeli policy as well Israeli Defense Minister Mosh...
(JNS.org) The Vatican issued an unprecedented declaration that the Jewish people are part of God’s salvation without explicitly confessing Christ as their savior, in a document that includes other changes in Catholic Church teachings related to Christian-Jewish relations. On Thursday, the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews presented the “A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations” document during a press conference at the Vatican to mark the 50th anniversary of the “Nostra Aetate...
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Middle East has gone through monumental changes over thousands of years, but one thing has never changed: an affinity for hummus. This conclusion was reached after fava seeds were discovered during an excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in the Galilee, showing that prehistoric man living in the southern Near East some 10,000 years ago preferred a diet consisting of legumes. The joint IAA-Weizmann Institute research project, which examined fava seeds unearthed in recent years at...
While Christians in Iraq and Syria face the threat of extinction at the hands of the Islamic State terror group, the U.S. State Department remains silent on the prospect of publicly designating the atrocities against Christians and other Mideast religious minorities as “genocide.” According to a recent investigative piece by journalist Michael Isikoff for Yahoo! News, the State Department is in the midst of internal discussions to officially recognize the Yazidi people as genocide victims. But a lingering question remains: Will other rel...
