Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS)-At New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday night, Birthright Fellow and student leader Ariel Tidhar reported that the American Jewish activist group IfNotNow waylaid their group, as well as four other Taglit Birthright groups trying to check into their flights to Israel. IfNotNow attempts "to end American Jewish support for the occupation," referring to lands administered by Israel after wars, including eastern Jerusalem. Tidhar told JNS, "They set up a table with a sign and snacks, a...
(JNS)—Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, announced on Sunday that it had broken up a major Hamas terrorist cell that was forming in the West Bank Palestinian city of Nablus. The Shin Bet described the cell as unusual in its scope and activities. It was plotting major terrorist atrocities, including suicide bombings, planting bombs and gun attacks targeting Israeli cities and smaller communities. The cell comprised of more than 20 suspected operatives, most of them Hamas members. During counter-terrorist raids to break it up, l...
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser said in an interview published Sunday that the administration will soon present its Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, with or without input from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview published in the Arabic language Al-Qudsnewspaper, Jared Kushner appealed directly to Palestinians and criticized Abbas, who has shunned Washington over its alleged pro-Israel bias, particularly on the fate of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. The interview came out after a weeklong trip around the reg...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Vanessa, a Venezuelan-American olah, or immigrant, had experienced a hard landing in Israel. Faced with persistent financial problems, she had trouble holding on to an apartment. Turning to the Internet, she found Keep Olim in Israel, an online group dedicated to crowdsourcing solutions for newcomers to the Jewish state. There she found people who were able to help her solve her personal housing crisis. Later, after she underwent surgery, the same group, which boasts 40,000...
(Israel Hayom via JNS)—A Hamas plan to carry out terrorist attacks in Israeli cities has been thwarted, the Shin Bet security agency revealed on Sunday. According to available details, Shin Bet agents, in collaboration with the military and police, uncovered terrorist infrastructure they described as “extraordinary in its size and level of activity” operating in the Nablus area in the West Bank. According to the Shin Bet, the leader of the 20-member cell was paid $100,000 by a Syrian operative to target major Israeli cities. The inves...
(Israel Hayom via JNS)—The collaboration between the European Union and left-wing groups seeking to undermine Israel and the Israel Defense Forces now includes the funding of legal proceedings against IDF soldiers, a watchdog group revealed last week. NGO Monitor, which promotes greater transparency among foreign-funded Israeli nongovernmental organization, claims that the program, to which the European Union has allocated €250,000 ($290,000), was set up at the request of three left-wing groups and is slated to be in place at least until 202...
(JNS)—Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly facing substantial pressure to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump’s top Middle East advisers this week, despite the rift between Washington and Ramallah. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, will visit Israel, Egypt and Jordan to discuss the upcoming U.S. peace plan for the region. Abbas has rejected the United States as a peace broker in the wake of Trump’s Dec. 6 recogni...
Jared Kushner: Abbas might not have the ability to make a peace deal JERUSALEM (JTA)—In a rare interview with a Palestinian newspaper, Jared Kushner called out Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for not having “the ability” to make peace with Israel. “I do question how much President Abbas has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal,” Kushner told Al-Quds on Sunday, according to a transcript released by the U.S. National Security Council. “He has his talking points, which have not changed in the last 25 years. T...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Amos Yadlin likes talking about the Begin doctrine, which calls for removing existential threats to Israel before they are manifest-maybe because he lived it twice. As an Israeli Air Force pilot, Yadlin flew one of the planes that took out Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, when Menachem Begin was prime minister. As director of military intelligence in 2007, Yadlin oversaw the operation that eliminated another nuclear reactor, this one in Syria. Watching President Donald Trump sign...
(JNS)-Israeli security forces began destroying the homes of 15 Jewish families in the Netiv Ha'avot neighborhood of Elazar in the Gush Etzion region of Judea on Tuesday, expelling residents who were joined by as many as 3,500 supporters from around Israel who arrived to protest the action. Some 2,500 Israeli police officers were stationed in the suburban residential community just 11 miles southwest of Jerusalem to carry out the court-ordered eviction and demolition of homes the Supreme Court...
NAHAL OZ, Israel (JTA)-Dani Ben David fiddles with his radio, switching between it and his cell phone as he drives through the Beeri Forest, a nature reserve located on the border of Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. As his Jeep jolts over the dirt road, he quickly and calmly jumps between multiple conversations, coordinating efforts to extinguish the multiple fires that have sprung up across his territory. As regional director for the Western Negev for Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish...
(JNS)-Following a video message to the Iranian people by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thousands of Iranians took to Israel to express their support and love for the Jewish state. According to Israel's Foreign Ministry, the hashtag #WeStandWithIsrael was featured in tens of thousands of tweets written by Iranians who took part in a campaign to separate their opinions of Israel from that of the strongly anti-Israel Iranian regime. Sharona Avginsaz, the Foreign Ministry Persian-langua...
What caused the collapse of Palestinian society? In addition to serious cleavages dating to Ottoman times that existed in local Arab society, it was the absence of an alternative Arab infrastructure after the British pulled out of Mandate Palestine. Because Palestinian Arab society had been so dependent on British civil administration and social services, Britain’s departure left Arab civil servants jobless. As a result, most social services and civil administration ceased to function in the Arab sector, disrupting the flow of essential c...
(JNS)-The tensions between Russia and Iran over Syria have intensified of late, and it appears that the interests of Russia, the United States and Israel are coalescing around limiting both Iran's and Hezbollah's role in Syria. But the question is: How far is Russian President Vladimir Putin willing to go? Israel, which has become increasingly alarmed at Iran's presence north of its border and its Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah's military buildup in Syria, has urged Russia to force Iran out of...
Orthodox Union joins Jewish communal letter opposing family separations (JTA)—The Orthodox Union joined an open letter signed by 26 other Jewish organizations opposing separation of migrants’ families at the border. The decision to sign the letter on Friday came two days after the O.U., an umbrella Orthodox group, hosted Attorney General Jeff Sessions at its annual conference in Washington D.C.,where he spoke to a friendly crowd about protecting religious liberty for houses of worship, and other matters. In May, Sessions’ department insti...
(JNS)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commended U.S. President Donald Trump on his "historic" summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on Tuesday. "I commend U.S. President Donald Trump on the historic summit in Singapore. This is an important step in the effort to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons," he said in a statement. Netanyahu, who has been outspoken in his warnings regarding Iran's nuclear program, also praised the American leader for his "strong stand" against...
Palestinians from the Gaza Strip once again launched burning kites at civilian communities on the Israeli side of the border Tuesday, setting hundreds of dunams of farmland alight adjacent to Kibbutz Nir Am, Sapir College and Netiv Ha'Asara. In response, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) announced Tuesday that it will sue Hamas in international legal court for the massive environmental damages inflicted on JNF land surrounding the Gaza border. The area has been hit hard in the last two months with...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Of the more than 60 deaths that occurred during the recent clashes between Israel and Palestinians at the Gaza border, none was as divisive as that of Layla Ghandour. Ghandour, an 8-month-old girl, died after an uncle, himself only 12, brought her to the edge of the protest zone, where she was reported to have inhaled Israeli tear gas. Palestinians immediately raised Ghandour as a symbol of Israeli oppression, elevating the infant to the status of martyr and blaming the Israeli a...
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Monday that the media should either figure out a better way to deal with the border protests or stop its negative coverage of the Jewish state. Addressing a media conference in Jerusalem, Friedman said that news outlets have been unfair in their coverage of the deadly protests on the Gaza border over the past few months. He advised reporters to “keep your mouths shut” unless they know better than Israel how to deal with the demonstrations. Some criticism of Israel may be legitimate, Friedman all...
JERUSALEM-It's easy to spot Iris Yifrach as she walks through the crowds in a packed shopping mall in central Israel. And it's not just because she's wearing a bright yellow blouse and matching headscarf. Yifrach has been a public figure since June 2014, when her 19-year-old son, Eyal, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists in the West Bank. For 18 days that month, Israel and Jewish communities worldwide were gripped by his June 12 disappearance along with two Jewish 16-year-olds,...
(JTA)—Israelis want nothing more than for their country to be considered normal. That may have to wait. A much-anticipated soccer game between the Argentine and Israeli national teams was cancelled Wednesday because, Israeli and Argentine officials say, of physical threats made to the Argentine players—including megastar forward Lionel Messi. The exhibition game was set for Saturday night in Jerusalem, less than a week before the beginning of the World Cup. Beyond the disappointment of tens of thousands of Israeli soccer fans, the can...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel should withdraw as host of the Eurovision song contest if it is not held in Jerusalem, an Israeli government minister said. “I will recommend to the government that if the Eurovision is not in Jerusalem, then it wouldn’t be right to host it,” Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on Thursday morning. Her statement came a day after Argentina’s national soccer team canceled a friendly match in Jerusalem over pressure and physical threats from pro-Palestinian groups. “It will cost Isr...
‘The Band’s Visit’ wins 10 Tony Awards, including for best musical (JTA)—“The Band’s Visit,” a jewel-box musical based on an Israeli film about an Egyptian band stranded in a hardscrabble Negev town, won the 2018 Tony Award for best musical. “The Band’s Visit” dominated its categories during the 72nd annual Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. Ari’el Stachel, the California-born son of an Israeli-Yemeni father and an Ashkenazi mother from New York, won the award for best featured actor in a musical for his performance a...
(JTA)-A Ugandan rabbi called on Israel to recognize his community after the government ruled against allowing members to move to the Jewish state. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu confirmed a report in Haaretz last week that the Israeli Interior Ministry had denied a community member's immigration application. The Interior Ministry, according to Sizomu, said the decision represented its stance on the Ugandan Jewish community, not just the applicant, Kibita Yosef. Sizomu, who leads the community of...
NEW YORK—Jewish National Fund revealed its new Plant Your Way website that easily allows individuals to raise money for a future trip to Israel while helping build the land of Israel. First introduced in 2000, Plant Your Way has allowed many hundreds of young people a personal fundraising platform to raise money for a trip to Israel while giving back at the same time. Over the last 18 years, more than $1.3 million has been generated for Jewish National Fund projects, typically by high school students. The new platform allows p...
