Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1805 - 1829 of 2213
(JTA) — A mayor from Brussels banned an event that Jewish groups have called a “summit meeting for anti-Semites.” Eric Tomas, the mayor of Anderlecht— one of 19 municipalities that make up the Brussels autonomous region of the federal Belgian state—on Sunday said he would ban the “European Congress of resistance,” saying it was a serious risk to public safety due to planned protests, the BBC reported. The event, which was scheduled for Sunday, was organized by Laurent Louis, a Belgian lawmaker with a record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel s...
Israeli prime minister, president to have private plane JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Cabinet approved a plan to purchase a private plane for the country’s prime minister and president. At its weekly meeting Sunday, the Cabinet backed the recommendations of a public committee on the plane and the construction of a combined office and official residence for the prime minister in Jerusalem. The plane is expected to cost up to $20 million and the building about $188 million, according to Ynet. The prime minister currently must charter a plane for trips...
(JNS.org) American global coffee giant Starbucks is reportedly in talks with the Israel-based SodaStream beverage-carbonation company to buy a 10-percent stake in the company, Globes reported. Sources indicate that both sides are close to announcing the deal, which would value SodaStream at $1.1 billion, 30 percent above its current market price of $850 million. According to the report, SodaStream is looking for a partnership similar to the one between coffee machine maker Green Mountain Coffee and Coca-Cola, where the two companies are...
(JNS.org) President Barack Obama, whose administration already said it would deny a visa to newly appointed Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Hamid Aboutalebi, signed a law that bars Aboutalebi from entering the U.S. The U.N. headquarters is located in New York City. Aboutalebi was part of an extremist student group that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, taking 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. The law signed by Obama bars entry into the U.S. by any proposed U.N. representative who has engaged in espionage or terrorism...
PUERTO IGUAZU, Argentina (JTA)-The youthful group of 60 drew their chairs around tables strewn with jars of markers and the occasional Rubik's Cube, nearby chalkboards at the ready for jotting down big ideas. The conference hall was suffused with a can-do vibe that wouldn't have seemed out of place in Silicon Valley. But high-tech was not on the agenda. Instead, the crowd of social entrepreneurs and activists had come to a resort near the famous Iguazu Falls on the Argentina-Brazil border to...
‘Armed presence’ part of Kansas City JCC security upgrade in wake of attack (JTA)—An “armed presence” during most of the center’s operating hours is among the security upgrades at the JCC of Greater Kansas City in the wake of deadly shootings there. Some of the security upgrades are already in place, and others will be phased in over the coming weeks, the Kansas City Star reported Saturday, citing an email from Jacob Schreiber, president and CEO of the Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kan. A security director will be hired “as soon as...
(JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent condolences to the families of the three people killed by a gunman at two Jewish facilities in suburban Kansas City, Kan. "We condemn the murder that by all the signs was done out of hatred of Jews," Netanyahu said in a statement issued Monday morning, the day after the shootings. "The state of Israel, as one with all civilized people, is obligated to struggle against this blight." The victims were killed in shootings at the JCC of Greater...
(The Algemeiner)-A 40-year-old Israeli man was killed and his pregnant wife was wounded on Monday in a shooting attack near Hebron, Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported. The couple were driving near the Kafr Idhna junction on Route 35 with three young children when a Palestinian Arab terrorist opened fire on vehicles on the road. The father was critically wounded and attempts were made to resuscitate him before he succumbed to his injuries. A child travelling in a different car was lightly...
(JNS.org)—The Israeli government is expected to approve an additional annual budget of $289 million in aid for the 200,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel. The finance and social services ministries are expected to present within a month the alterations to the law needed to increase the budget so that the National Plan for Aid to Holocaust Survivors can be implemented as soon as possible, Israel Hayom reported. The plan will make the aid available to concentration camp and ghetto survivors who immigrated to Israel after October 1953 e...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-To millions worldwide, she is a symbol of heroism and a haunting reminder of the dangers of discrimination. But for one Dutch entertainment firm, Anne Frank is a brand name powerful enough to merit millions of dollars of investment. Last week, the Amsterdam-based production company Imagine Nation announced plans to open a huge theater in Amsterdam that will feature only one show: a new play, "ANNE," about the life of the young Jewish diarist. The first production based on the...
Fifteen seconds. That's how long a resident of Sderot has from the time a Code Red alert is announced until a Palestinian rocket strikes the town or is intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. In other southern Israeli communities, one might have 30 seconds, maybe even a minute. But it's never very long. Israelis fell asleep to sirens March 12 and awoke to sirens March 13 while enduring a barrage of at least 60 rockets launched by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, the largest...
Report: Abbas threatens to dismantle Palestinian Authority JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly threatened to dismantle the P.A. Citing unnamed Palestinian sources, the Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot wrote Sunday that Abbas was considering the unilateral action, which would leave Israel with full responsibility for the Palestinians living in the West Bank. The action would annul the 1993 Oslo Accords. “A new generation arrives and asks us: ‘What have you done?’ I am now 79 years old, I cannot escape from pa...
NEW YORK (JTA)—When a 2009 Holocaust-era assets conference concluded with a landmark statement of principles on Holocaust restitution, many restitution advocates had high hopes that a corner had been turned in the struggle for survivor justice. The Terezin Declaration, which had the support of 46 countries participating in the conference in the Czech Republic, outlined a set of goals for property restitution. It recognized the advancing age of Holocaust survivors and the imperative of delivering them aid and justice in their final years. ...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Alan Gross did not warn his family he was launching a hunger strike, but hearing the news, they understood why: The U.S. government subcontractor languishing in a Cuban prison feels forgotten. Gross, a 64-year-old Jewish father of two from Potomac, Md., is currently serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for “crimes against the state.” He was arrested in December 2009 while on a mission to hook up Cuba’s small Jewish community with the Internet. The company he was working for had a contract with the U.S. Agency for Interna...
In August 2012, a Christian and a Jew bumped into each other in Brighton, the languid seaside resort on Britain's south coast that has become the hub of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) protests at the local Ecostream store. The Israeli-owned shop has attracted weekly demonstrations from the BDS crowd, angry that products made over the Green Line should be sold in the United Kingdom. Simon Cobbs, a passionate Zionist who had lived in Israel for three years by the time he was 17, was...
(JTA) – The Jewish community in Milan is confronting an apparent case of embezzlement in which millions of dollars were removed from the community bank accounts. “Over the course of the past few months, all the accounts of the community have undergone a general audit, which is still going on,” Milan Jewish community president Walter Meghnagi told hundreds of community members at a special meeting this week. The audit, he said, had shown that “taking advantage of everyone’s good faith, over the course of the years millions of Euros have been...
Rather than feeling a sense of loss, leaving the second Passover seder behind in the U.S., or France, or Turkey, or any other country of origin is touted as a perk of living in Israel that new immigrants to the Jewish state (olim) mention in the same breath as the universal availability of fresh pita and falafel. But why do Diaspora Jews mutter to themselves while they're dragging out the matzo balls for their return engagement at seder No. 2? Why, since the Torah is crystal clear that Passover...
Taglit-Birthright Israel announces the establishment of a unique training program for an elite cadre of American trip leaders through a partnership with the iCenter, a North American organization dedicated to Israel education. Taglit-Birthright Israel will dub the participants “Taglit Fellows” and expects to provide up to 200 trip leaders each year with intensive theoretical and practical training skills. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s three-pronged approach to trip leaders’ education will include a four-day seminar with Jewish and Israel studies...
(Haaretz) A group of 30 Palestinian students arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in what is believed to be the first organized visit by Palestinian students to a Nazi death camp. The students spent several days in Kraków and Oswiecim guided by two Jewish Holocaust survivors. A news blackout on the trip was requested by the organizers. In fact, the presence of the Palestinian group at Auschwitz-Birkenau was reported in Haaretz for the first time on March 31. The students from Al-Quds University and...
(MediaScan)—A visit by Palestinian students to Nazi death camps has stirred controversy among Palestinians, with some condemning it as a form of “normalization” with Israel. The visit to the Nazi camps has angered some Palestinians, prompting Al-Quds University to distance itself from the tour. The university and its outgoing president, Sari Nusseibeh, had often been criticized for promoting “normalization” with Israel. In a statement, Al-Quds University announced that it had nothing to do with the Auschwitz-Birkenau visit. The universit...
Letter by families of terror victims calls for Pollard release JERUSALEM (JTA)—Family members of terror victims killed by Palestinian prisoners released in connection with the current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations called on President Obama to free Jonathan Pollard. The letter, signed by 22 terror victim relatives, was delivered Sunday to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro to be passed on to the U.S. president, according to the Times of Israel. The letter was circulated by the Almagor Terror Victims Association. “Mr. President, wit...
(The Algemeiner) Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter confused Israel's demand for the Palestinian Authority to recognize it as a 'Jewish state' for meaning that all Arabs living there would need to convert. In an interview with the Associated Press, Carter said, "Israel can claim `We are a Jewish state.' I don't think the Arab countries will contradict that Jewish statement. But to force the Arab people to say that all the Arab people that they have in Israel have to be Jews, I think that's...
LOD, Israel (JTA)-Sitting in his sister's living room in this town outside Tel Aviv, Yuriy Yukhatskov says he's glad to be far from his home city of Kiev. Yukhatskov, 44, says that what he sees as the pervasive anti-Semitism in Ukraine's capital would grow only worse with the country's recent unrest. He fears that last month's revolution could lead to a government unfriendly to Jews. Israel feels foreign to Yukhatskov, but he's grateful to be able to walk to synagogue wearing his kippah without...
HAIFA—Suffering from acute kidney failure, 7-year-old “Y” needed a new kidney to survive. When the Jordanian boy’s parents learned that Rambam Health Care Campus had begun performing pediatric transplants—a procedure not available in Jordan—they contacted the hospital: “Please help us by doing a kidney transplantation on our son,” they asked the Haifa-based hospital. That surgery took place just days ago. Rambam officials were surprised to receive the request. The first pediatric procedure at Rambam, which had pioneered adult kidney transpla...
N.J.’s Christie apologizes to Adelson over ‘occupied territories’ reference (JTA)—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson for referring to the “occupied territories” in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Christie met with Adelson, a major GOP donor, privately on Saturday afternoon in Adelson’s Las Vegas office in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, which hosted the RJC meeting, Politico reported, citing an unnamed source. During his speech on Saturday, Christie spoke of his family’s trip to Israel...
