Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1591 - 1615 of 2213
(JTA)-Citing failures by the organization traditionally responsible for bringing Jews to Israel, the founder of a Jerusalem-based interfaith charity said his organization would begin bringing more Jews to Israel from Europe-starting with Ukraine. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, accused the Jewish Agency for Israel of not responding quickly enough to demand for aliyah sparked by violence in Ukraine, prompting the fellowship to launch...
(JNS.org) Hamas has reportedly renewed work on its terror tunnels, using building materials transferred from Israel for the reconstruction of civilian structures in Gaza following this summer’s war. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Palestinian sources inside of Gaza said that after Israel allowed a limited flow of goods and materials into Gaza, a black market for mortar paste emerged that allowed Hamas to renew construction of concrete slabs used to line the inside of tunnels. Hamas has also started to rebuild its rocket arsenal from ...
Jewish National Fund (JNF) is hosting its Queen of Sheba Mission, the only trip available that brings American and Israeli women together, will depart for Israel for seven days on March 15, 2015. JNF missions are known to inspire and connect participants with the land and her people. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is a unique and unforgettable trip to Israel for women only—no husbands, no boyfriends—just women, experiencing life as their Israeli sisters do. Mission co-chairwoman Vivian Grossman of Weston, Florida, remarked, “The bonds...
(JNS.org)—Germany’s government said Monday that it plans to fund the Israeli navy’s purchase of four corvette warships from the German firm Thyssen Krupp. The funding agreement was reached between the two countries in November, and the German government has pledged as much as $143 million for the warships, according to a report by the German newspaper Bild. The deal must be approved by the German parliament’s budget committee, which will lead to the finalization of a contract by the end of the year, said German government spokesman Steffen...
Two teens arrested in firebombing that severely injured Israeli girl JERUSALEM (JTA)—Two Palestinian teens were arrested in connection with a firebombing that left an 11-year-old Israeli girl fighting for her life. The Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service said in a statement Saturday that the two were arrested Dec. 25 night in the village of Azzoun. The arrests occurred just hours after the attack that severely injured Ayala Shapira and lightly injured her father, Avner, who live in the nearby outpost of El Matan. One of t...
By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA)-In the sun-parched fields near where the largest oil spill in Israeli history poured millions of liters of crude oil into the desert on Dec. 4, an ambitious effort is underway to help reduce global dependency on petroleum for energy. Known as the Eilot Belt, the area is the site of Israel's largest solar energy field. It's the locus of an effort to provide by next year the daytime energy needs for the area's 55,000 residents and all their energy needs by 2020. The...
Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, has launched a crusade against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), tasked with providing “assistance and protection” for five million Palestinian refugees around the world. In Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, UNRWA gives food, aid, and runs schools. Eid said a recent study by well-known Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki shows that 70 percent of Palestinian refugees are seeking financial compensation rather than the “right of re...
ADL: Killing of N.Y. police officers ‘heinous, senseless, shocking’ (JTA)—The Anti-Defamation League called the killing of two New York Police Department officers a “heinous, senseless and shocking assault.” The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were shot in the head through the window of their patrol car in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. Shortly before the killings, the gunman, identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, threatened to shoot two “pigs” in retaliation for death of Eric Garner at the hands of police officers in July. “I’m pu...
LUGANSK, Ukraine (JTA)-In an unheated synagogue with no running water, a dozen Jews are trying to keep warm as temperatures here veer toward the single digits. Not moving too much helps keep the warmth under their thick coats, they say, a technique developed as the group gathered at least once a week to maintain a sense of community in a city torn by ongoing conflict between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army. "We usually stay for about two hours," says Igor Leonidovich, the synagogue's...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-This government was supposed to be different. During the last election campaign in 2012, Israelis seemed to tire of the existential issues that have plagued the country for decades. Barely anyone talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Long-simmering social tensions over the rising cost of living and the economic burdens of the underemployed haredi Orthodox community were going to finally get their due. The Knesset's arrivistes-former television personality Yair Lapid and...
The following is a speech by Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor delivered to the UN General Assembly on Nov. 24. Ambassador Prosor is Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations. Mr. President, I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside. The fact of...
Settlements or Jewish communities? West Bank or Judea and Samaria? East Jerusalem or eastern Jerusalem? Those are some of the language choices that journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are faced with each day-and those choices should not be taken lightly, experts say. "It's the terminology that actually defines the conflict and defines what you think about the conflict," says Ari Briggs, director of Regavim, an Israeli NGO that works on legal land use issues. "Whereas...
(JNS.org) The national unity government signed by Hamas and Fatah last spring has ended, according to a Hamas spokesman. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the six-month unity government has expired and that negotiations between the two Palestinian factions should resume, Ma’an News reported. However, Faisal Abu Shala, a senior Fatah official, disputed Hamas’ claim that the interim government would expire after six months, saying, “If the Hamas movement has retracted the reconciliation agreement and the termination of rivalry that is a...
Syria says Israeli planes hit military sites near Damascus JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Syrian military claimed that Israeli planes attacked military sites near Damascus. The attacks, also reported on Syrian television, took place on Sunday night, the military said, according to a report by the Syrian state news agency, SANA. Israeli planes are reported to have hit several military facilities near Damascus International Airport and in Dimas, located north of Damascus near the border with Lebanon. Syrian state television reports said that there were no c...
As international negotiators departed Vienna with a final deal on Iran's nuclear program still elusive, the commander of the widely-feared Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) threatened to eliminate the State of Israel by "conquering Palestine." Fars news agency, an official mouthpiece of the Iranian regime, reported that Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Commander of the IRGC, declared in Tehran that "Americans have very clearly surrendered to Iran's might and this is obvious in their...
JERUSALEM-U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro visited the Har Nof Synagogue in Jerusalem, the scene of the Nov. 18 terror attack. The ambassador prayed in memory of all of the victims of the attack, including saying the Kaddish prayer for the departed and for peace. At the conclusion of the prayer service, the ambassador received a first-hand account of the terror attack from United Hatzalah emergency responders who were first on scene. After witnessing first-hand the scene of the terror...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Two factors make congressional intervention on Iran almost inevitable: The inability of nuclear negotiators to reach a deal by the deadline and the Republican sweep of midterm elections on Nov. 4. The talks, centered on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, were extended from Monday’s deadline to June 30. Meanwhile, the pro-Israel community, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is seeking support for proposed legislation that would insert Congress into the process. “It is now essential that Congress take up...
WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Mahmoud Abbas whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused of incitement has said the Jewish state practices genocide and called the temporary closure of the Temple Mount after a terrorist attack a "declaration of war." Yet virtually no one in Washington wants Abbas to do anything but what he's done for nine years: be president of the Palestinian Authority. For that matter, neither does Netanyahu. That means the $500 million annually that the Palestinian A...
Canadian-Israeli woman fighting with Kurds reportedly captured by ISIS JERUSALEM (JTA)—A Canadian-Israeli Jewish woman who joined Kurdish forces in their fight against the Islamic State reportedly was taken captive by the jihadist group. The capture of Gillian Rosenberg, 31, and several other female fighters was reported on blogs and Islamist websites, the Israeli media reported. Rosenberg reportedly was captured by jihadists near the Syrian city of Kobani in recent days. Israeli intelligence and security services did not verify the reports t...
By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA)-They all lived on the same street. They had all moved there from abroad. They were all rabbis. They all prayed at the same synagogue. And it was at that Jerusalem synagogue that they were all murdered on Tuesday morning. Mosheh Twersky, 59; Kalman Levine, 55; Aryeh Kupinsky, 43; and Avraham Goldberg, 68, were killed when two Palestinian cousins from eastern Jerusalem entered Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov, in the haredi Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, wielding a gun...
In the wake of a terrorist attack on the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood on Tuesday morning-which killed five people, including three American citizens, and wounded at least seven other Jewish worshippers-Western media organizations rushed to downplay the culpability of the Palestinian terrorists in the attack. The U.K.-based newspaper The Guardian published a Reuters story about the attack that was originally headlined "Palestinians kill four in Jerusalem...
(JTA)-Even amid the unceasing horrors of Sierra Leone's Ebola epidemic, it was a case that stood out. A 5-year-old boy had been found in his home in a remote village, the lone survivor in a house riddled with the corpses of family members. He needed to be extracted; the bodies needed to be buried. The operator who took the call at the Freetown hotline that coordinates the dispatch of ambulances, police and burial teams was shaken. Enter IsraAid. The lone Israeli or Jewish disaster relief organiz...
VIENNA (JTA)-An Austrian official's letter is threatening to undermine the central pillar of a controversial court decision that found a Jewish journalist guilty of defrauding the government. On Sept. 9, senior state attorney Martin Windisch wrote that the government "makes no claims" against Stephan Templ, who was sentenced in April to three years in jail for cheating Austria out of half the value of a sanatorium confiscated by the Nazis from one of Templ's relatives. In May, the Austrian...
Iranian Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is known for his anti-Zionist rhetoric, has issued perhaps his most detailed tirade to date in a Twitter post titled "9 key questions about the elimination of Israel." "Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei's answer to 9 key questions. #HandsOffAlAqsa," read the introduction to Khamenei's tweet, posted Saturday, Nov. 8. The hashtag #HandsOffAlAqsa referred to the recent tensions between Arabs and Jews at the Temple...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—After a gruesome attack by two Palestinian cousins left four dead at a Jerusalem synagogue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled out one person for blame: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In a statement issued by his office, Abbas denounced the Tuesday morning attack, saying he “condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it.” But over the past few weeks, as a string of violent attacks have unsettled Jerusalemites, Abbas has issued statements some see as encouraging violence against Israe...
