Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)-Political turmoil, terror attacks and natural disasters around the world: 2017 had plenty of people feeling down, for good reason. But there were also notable moments of light. As this year draws to a close, here is a chronology of some of the more heartwarming stories JTA published this year. An Orthodox Jew builds bridges with his Yemeni Muslim neighbors After President Donald Trump issued his first executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Alexander R...
(JNS) The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a resolution denouncing President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The 193-member General Assembly voted 128-9, with 35 abstentions, to express “deep regret” over Trump’s Jerusalem policy changes, which also include plans to move the U.S. embassy to that city. The nine countries voting against the resolution were the U.S., Israel, Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Honduras. The 35 abstentions included...
(JNS) The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation (MFF) on Monday announced the winners of its second competition for the creation of pro-Israel social media memes. The competition brought together hundreds of participants from around the world, including the U.S., Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Germany, Romania, Kenya and Denmark. Second prize winner Eric Fihman created a meme featuring Israeli actress Gal Gadot's "Wonder Woman" movie character along with the "wonder women" of the IDF and text...
Hamas's latest effort to join a Palestinian unity government is little more than a facade, and the terror group's top immediate objective is to seize control of Judea and Samaria and turn it into a second Gaza, according to the assessments of defense experts. After years of failed attempts at reconciliation, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Hamas in October announced that they would implement a unity deal, which included the restoration of PA control in...
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-When President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, many foreign policy experts called it a blunder. It could spark a conflagration of violence in the city, they said. It would alienate Palestinians who revere the city and ice any remaining hopes of a peace process. It could be the death knell for an increasingly elusive two-state solution. "Raising this the way he has done doesn't advance the cause of peace, it doesn't advance the cause of...
(JNS) The U.S. on Monday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to be withdrawn. Following the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called the Security Council measure “an insult” and said it will not be forgotten. “The United States will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy,” she said, referring to Trump’s plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. “The fact that this veto is being done in defense of America’s role...
(JNS) As President Donald Trump was poised to publicize his administration’s national security doctrine Monday, reports indicate that the document will emphasize that Israel is not the cause of chaos in the Middle East. According to The Associated Press, the 70-page doctrine is based upon a significantly different national security approach than that of Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as th...
(JTA)—More than 130 Jewish studies scholars from U.S. colleges and universities signed a statement expressing “dismay” at President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The statement criticizes Trump’s “decision to reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy by declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and authorizing the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, outside of a negotiated political framework that ends the legal state of occupation and ensures respect for the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians...
(JTA)-This hasn't been a good year for Israel and American Jews. The two poles of world Jewry, each boasting about half of the globe's total Jews, have never quite seen eye to eye on everything from religion to politics. But this year-particularly the last six months-has seen those disagreements balloon into public spats over the future of the Jewish people and Jewish values. Compromises have been scratched, meetings canceled, donations redirected. A leading American rabbi demanded that an...
Nikki Haley throws a party for nations that didn’t oppose US Jerusalem stance at UN (JTA)—To thank the 65 countries that did not support a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s position on Jerusalem, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, invited her counterparts from those states to a reception. Haley extended the invitation Thursday hours after the General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Trump’s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the nrg news site reported. Nine countries voted against t...
(JNS)—The Trump administration said Sunday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is “walking away” from peace talks after PA President Mahmoud Abbas declined to meet with Vice President Mike Pence during his upcoming Middle East visit this month. “It’s unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away again from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region,” stated Jarrod Agen, Pence’s deputy chief of staff. The Trump administration “remains undeterred in its efforts to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians an...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-Two weeks ago, a 29-year-old man waving a Palestinian flag smashed the windows of a kosher restaurant with a wooden club, stealing an Israeli flag there. Police arrested the suspect on the spot The Dec. 7 incident, which occurred the day after President Donald Trump declared that the United States officially recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, triggered an outpouring of condemnations by Dutch leaders. Prime Minister Mark Rutte called it "terrible," and 15 lawmakers ate...
BOSTON-Rabbi Rick Jacobs used his pulpit to compare the difficulties between Israel and Reform Jews to those of Joseph and his brothers in last week's Torah portion of Vayeshev. It was a huge congregation Jacobs was addressing: the record-breaking 6,000 Reform Jews gathered in Boston for the Union for Reform Judaism's 74th North American Biennial General Assembly. But it was President Donald Trump's announcement that the U.S. has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and will be moving its...
It could be argued that Israel might not exist today were it not for Eliahu "Eli" Cohen, who was executed as a spy in Syria in 1965-but not before passing on information that likely saved his country. Over 50 years later, Avraham Cohen, is still trying to get his brother's remains returned. Avraham Cohen, Eli Cohen's last surviving sibling, will be speaking at Nate's Shul as part of a larger presentation on the historical and ongoing issue. It's something he's been doing in Israel for many...
Foreign ministers from India, Russia and China notably refrained from recognizing 'East Jerusalem' as the capital of Palestine at their annual meeting in New Delhi this week-seven days after the US recognized the holy city as the capital of Israel. The decision not to restate the position on Jerusalem long-held by all three countries was in marked contrast to their joint call at last year's meeting in Moscow for a "sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East...
(JNS) An Israeli security guard is in serious condition after a Palestinian terrorist stabbed him in the heart on Sunday at the entrance to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. Graphic security footage of the incident shows the 24-year-old terrorist, Yassin Abu al-Qur'a, removing his coat at the station's entrance and then suddenly drawing a large knife and plunging it directly into 46-year-old security guard Asher Elmaliach's heart. After attempting to flee the scene, the terrorist was quickly...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Ilan Mengistu knows his pitch to rescue his brother, Avera, should be a no-brainer to Jews-"pidyon shvuyim," the redemption of the hostage, is among the greatest of commandments. But Mengistu also knows that the story he has to tell is not the straightforward narrative longed for by those who would do good: Avera was not a soldier, nor was he captured exactly. He crossed into the Gaza Strip of his own volition. Mengistu came to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., last week with...
PARIS (JTA)-When Jerry Levy's family opened one of the first gourmet kosher meat shops in France, they had some of the country's best-laid business plans. Hailing from a long line of Jewish butchers in their native Algeria, they had the expertise and diligence in 1977 to cater to the changing needs of their growing community, where tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from North Africa like them were developing both the appetite for quality-and the means to pay for it. Four decades on, the...
Mother, 3 children killed in Hanukkah house fire flown to Israel for burial NEW YORK (JTA)—The bodies of a woman and her three children killed in a house fire were flown to Israel after a crowd of mourners proved too large and distraught for a memorial ceremony to be held in Brooklyn. The New York Post reported Tuesday that hundreds of bereaved members of the Orthodox community gathered outside Congregation Sheves Achim in East Flatbush on Monday evening to mourn Aliza Azan, 39, and her children. “Unable to enter the synagogue,” the Post repor...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-Henny Goudeketting, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is ailing and preparing to leave the world. Goudeketting, who was sterilized in Nazi medical experiments at Auschwitz, has neither children nor other relatives to care for her. Now, after multiple infections and recurrent falls, she's readying to say goodbye. "It's kind of strange," Goudeketting told JTA. "I know I have no future and I'm ready to die, but I'm still afraid of actually dying." The Amsterdam native returned to...
Israel's leadership and Jews from around the world celebrated President Donald Trump's statement that the US officially recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are in motion. The US "finally acknowledge[s] the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done," Trump stated at the White House on...
(JTA)-President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his announcement that he will move the embassy there from Tel Aviv will have a number of consequences for Israelis, Palestinians and the wider region. For Israel, it has finally received from an American president what it has long craved, which is righting the historic wrong of it being the only state whose self-declared capital is not recognized by the rest of the world. Israel's government institutions are...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Hours after ordering preparations for a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, President Donald Trump delayed moving the diplomatic mission to the city by another six months. Trump signed a proclamation at the White House Wednesday saying the United States sees Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and directing the State Department to start planning an embassy in the city. Soon thereafter, he signed another presidential waiver of a 1995 law requiring the embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Under U.S. President Bill Clinton, Con...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—President Donald Trump’s official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital may have sent shock waves across the Middle East. But here, in the epicenter of a city where fewer than a million people work, eat, pray and shop, the first day’s reaction was muted. The municipality projected images of the Israeli and American flags side by side on the Old City walls. But in Mahane Yehuda, the bustling produce and everything-else market a few miles into the city’s western side, it was another working day. Jews generally welcomed...
The Hamas terror organization said President Donald Trump's historic recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "opens the gates of hell" and has called for another violent uprising against the Jewish state. "Trump's decision on Jerusalem will not succeed in changing the fact that Jerusalem is Arab Muslim land," a Hamas spokesman said Wednesday following Trump's announcement at the White House. Hamas called for Palestinians to take to the streets in a "Day of Rage" on Friday and "respond with...
