Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1403 - 1427 of 2213
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In assigning blame for the recent wave of violence in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned to the usual suspects-Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But he has also accused a lesser-known group that operates within Israel's borders: the Islamic Movement, a religious political group and social service organization. Netanyahu has seized on the inflammatory rhetoric of the movement's northern branch, which claims the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is "in danger" and... Full story
‘Subway Guy’ Jared Fogle pays $1 million to victims (JTA)—Jared Fogle, the former Subway pitchman, has paid $1 million in restitution to his victims. Fogle, 38, who became known as “the Subway Guy,” pleaded guilty in August to charges of distributing and receiving pornography, and having sex with minors. Also as part of his plea deal, Fogle, who is Jewish, will serve five to 12 1/2 years in federal prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven DeBrota announced on Oct. 22 in Indianapolis that Fogle had paid restitution of $100,000 each to 10 of his... Full story
NEW YORK—Jewish National Fund (JNF) has announced that while world news may ignore the latest events in Israel over the past month, JNF is responding by encouraging Americans and its donors to stand in support of Israel. Since recent terror incidents began in and around Israel on September 13 (Erev Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year), JNF is leading the way in solidarity and has seen registration pick up in recent days on its missions and tours to Israel. Aliyah, the term used for those people who emigrate to Israel, has also picked up and con... Full story
The Hamas terrorist group is open about its mission of destroying Israel. But the current wave of Palestinian terror consuming the Jewish state has led Israeli leaders to instead blame the unrest on Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas over his failure to condemn terrorism and his incitement of violence, casting doubt on the common assessment of Abbas as a moderate by Western governments and media. Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-"No pepper spray, no tear gas, no nightsticks," sighed Itzhak Mizrahi to three disappointed men, as if it were a mantra he'd recited dozens of times. The glass-topped display case in Magnum, the central Jerusalem gun shop Mizrahi has owned for three decades, featured a wide variety of pistols last Thursday. The pepper spray compartment, however, was empty, stormed earlier in the week by nervous Israelis hoping to defend themselves from stabbing attacks. The country is suffering... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Paris that he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to stem the wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank. “Later this week I will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu because he will be in Germany... we will meet there,” Kerry said Sunday at UNESCO headquarters, the French news agency AFP reported. “And then I will go the the region and I will meet with President Abbas, I will meet with King Abdullah [of... Full story
Their pictures and their names are burned on our hearts-victims of terrorism whose final moments we can't even imagine. It's in precisely these times that the job of spiritual leaders is both most challenging and most needed. All across Israel, rabbis are being asked to make whatever sense can be made of the ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli Jews doing the kinds of regular things people do daily: going to work, dropping off the kids, visiting friends, going shopping,... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israelis have become accustomed to dismal news in the past few weeks-mornings and evenings punctuated by stabbings, car attacks and rock throwing. The cycle of random violence has left dozens of Israelis and Palestinians dead, and many fearing the worst: The start of a third intifada, or armed Palestinian uprising, that could claim hundreds more lives. But since the second intifada started in 2000, fears of a repeat have proved unfounded. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian... Full story
Jerusalem peace rally brings out Jews and Arabs JERUSALEM (JTA)—Some 1,500 Jews and Arabs rallied in Jerusalem for an end to the current violence and a resumption of the peace process. The peace protest on Saturday night came after a day in which four Palestinians were killed during what are believed to be attempted stabbing attacks. The alleged assailants were killed in separate attacks, including two in Jerusalem. Three Israeli police officers and another alleged Palestinian assailant were wounded in the incidents. In addition to the Jerusale... Full story
(JTA)-As a defiant Russia again flexes military muscles in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Cold War analogies are, perhaps, unavoidable. The deployment last month of Russian warplanes in Syria laid bare Moscow's readiness to use force to punish leaders who would challenge its authority-as in Ukraine, from which it annexed Crimea in March 2014-and to defend its strategic allies, like Syria's embattled president, Bashar Assad. During the Cold War, Kremlin intervention generally meant bad news... Full story
The heartbreaking murder of Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama, gunned down by Palestinian terrorists in front of their children, will generate tear-filled eulogies and anguished recitations of tehillim (Psalms) throughout the Jewish world. As they should. But then what? The depressingly familiar post-terrorist attack ritual is already unfolding before our eyes. The Obama administration has issued a formalistic condemnation, adding its standard, amoral appeal: "We urge all sides to maintain... Full story
BERLIN (JTA)—Israel’s government is in cahoots with Syrian President Bashar Assad. America wants to keep the Syrian civil war going for as long as possible. Russia is outmaneuvering the United States on the global stage. Those are some of the viewpoints you’re likely to hear if you talk politics with Syrians pouring out of their war-torn country and into Europe. When I went to Berlin recently to write about the wave of migrants arriving in Germany, one of the questions I was most curious about was something that had nagged at me since the r... Full story
In the fourth shooting at a U.S. college campus since August, 10 people were killed Oct. 1 when a 26-year-old gunman opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon. Many would be surprised to learn that part of the solution to the American school shooting epidemic might be found in Israel. School shooters present a challenge to both forensic psychiatry and law enforcement agencies. But new research by Prof. Yair Neuman, a member of the Homeland Security Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), is... Full story
(JNS.org) The Islamic State terror group is reportedly making gains in the Golan Heights region near the Israeli-Syrian border as rebel groups operating in the area face ammunition and weaponry shortages. According to a spokesman from the Free Syrian Army, the moderate group fighting both the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State, there are around 500-700 Islamic State fighters currently active in the Syrian Golan Heights towns of Jamlah and Ash-Shajarah, which are adjacent to the Israeli border, the Times of Israel... Full story
WARSAW, Poland—The City Council in the town of Bialystok recently rejected a zoning plan that would have prevented a meat production plant’s plans to build a high-rise apartment building on the grounds of a Jewish cemetery. The vote was 12-8 with one abstention. “In the center of Bialystok there were six cemeteries,” said council member Zbigniew Brozek at the meeting. Using this reasoning for rejecting the zoning plan, he explained, “If we want to protect them it would be impossible to build anything [in the city].” Another councilman... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas took plenty of shots at each other. But in their dueling speeches to the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian Authority president directed much of their fire at the same target: the assembled world leaders. Netanyahu blamed world powers and international bodies for enthusiastically supporting what he sees as a misguided Iran deal. He began and ended his speech by calling on the U.N. to correct its record... Full story
Anti-Zionists are targeting South Africa, but hold tight and wait to see what happens, South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein tells JNS.org regarding reports of an impending dual citizenship crisis that may affect his country’s Jewish community. Discussing an early-September call by a deputy cabinet minister and senior official in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) political party that the government should look at changing current laws to ban South Africa’s citizens from holding dual citizenship—which would prevent them from fight... Full story
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) While the fates of Israel’s Tamar, Leviathan, and Tanin offshore natural gas reserves have yet to be decided, oil has been discovered in the Jewish state’s Golan Heights region, Channel 2 reported Tuesday. According to the report, recent exploratory drilling on the Golan has located a reserve of enough oil to supply Israel’s needs for many years to come. The Ofek company, which conducted the drilling on the southern Golan Heights, claims that the reserve contains nearly 1 billion barrels of black gold. Ofek... Full story
Israel retaliatory strikes against Hamas kill pregnant Palestinian, 2-year-old daughter JERUSALEM (JTA)—A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 2-year-old daughter reportedly were killed in a retaliatory airstrike by Israel against Hamas. The early Sunday morning strike by the Israeli Air Force against what it called two “Hamas weapon manufacturing facilities” in the northern Gaza Strip came in response to two rocket attacks on Israel. The Palestinian Maan news agency reported on the two deaths. The Iron Dome missile defense system had inter... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-First it was clashes on the Temple Mount. Then a mother and father were shot before the eyes of their four children. Then two men were killed in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City. Now Israelis fear the wave of conflict will only rise. Here's why the violence began, how it's escalated and what might be next. Four Israelis have died in two terror attacks over three days. The slow-burning Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flamed up in the past week with a series of terrorist... Full story
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 70th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Debate in the late morning of Oct. 1, 2015. Twitter accounts from inside the Debate Hall reported that the hall was packed in anticipation of Netanyahu before his address began, and the crowds greeted Netanyahu with a round of applause upon his assumption of the role at the speakers' podium, one of the only Heads of State to be greeted as such. Netanyahu's address to UNGA was straightforward. As he said,... Full story
(JTA)-All anyone attending the United Nations General Assembly opening seemed to want to talk about was the threat posed to the world by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. That was much to the consternation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who argued in his speech before that body on Thursday that Iran, beyond the benefits accrued to it because of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal, was benefiting from the intensified focus on ISIS. "When your enemies fight each... Full story
Not so much as a willingness to abide by past agreements with the Israelis or the rest of the world can now be said on the part of the Palestinian leadership. Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called president of Palestine, announced on Sept. 30, 2015, at the 70th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 70) that the Palestinians are no longer bound by any standing international law, treaty, or norm. He explicitly stated that he and the Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, meaning, as Abbas explicitly noted, that Palestinian... Full story
Governments from around the world had their say at the speaker’s podium of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) general debate held in New York from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3. The Jewish and Israeli communities have stakes in many of the issues addressed by the speakers, including the Iran nuclear deal, the question of the Palestinians, and overall stability in the Middle East region. Israel and the general Jewish community found barely an ally among the nations present at the UN. Many countries followed a script of s... Full story
As untouched mounds of trash piled up on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, in recent months, with no one coming to clean it up, a social movement began protesting under the motto “You Stink.” This “garbage crisis”—as it’s become known—has led to violent clashes between protesters and police and has showcased the broader inability of the Lebanese government to ward off its systemic dysfunction. Operating on a parallel track with Lebanon’s domestic unrest, the latest reports suggest that fighters from the Lebanese Shi’a Muslim terror group Hezb... Full story
