Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Despite the raging civil war to Israel’s north and east in Syria, the Jewish state’s northern border has remained precariously quiet over the last decade. No stranger to looming threats, Israeli officials are planning and ready for several worst-case scenarios in the north as Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah continue to forge their stranglehold on the region. In a possible war scenario with Hezbollah, the Israeli military can launch a “massive and overwhelming” operation that would effectively “neutralize” a significant part of the Lebanes...
Galvanized by common threats by Iran and Islamic extremism, Israel and the its fellow Sunni Muslim Arab states have seen an unexpected warming in relations in recent years. However, despite public and closed-door cooperation, Israel still remains deeply unpopular among the so-called “Arab street.” Drawing on its high-tech prowess and unprecedented social media opportunities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has strongly embraced new media channels to reach millions of viewers directly, including in the Arab world. Ofir Gende...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel will send a search and rescue team to Mexico in the wake of a severe earthquake—the second to hit the North American nation in two weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the operation and said it would leave for Mexico as soon as possible, his office said Sept. 20 in a statement. More than 200 people have been killed in the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck central Mexico on Tuesday afternoon, rocking the capital of Mexico City and causing hundreds of buildings to collapse. In addition, a delegation of 50 Isr...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel's rabbinical courts in recent years have ramped up their practice of blacklisting citizens they deem not Jewish, internal data released Sunday show. With increasing frequency, the courts have placed Israelis, almost all of them immigrants with Jewish heritage, on lists that prevent them from marrying Jews. The courts argue that they are acting to preserve the coherence of the Jewish people. But critics say the rabbinical courts have stepped outside their legal...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Stressing the chance to show off Israel to the world, Israeli officials joined with their Italian counterparts in announcing Monday that three stages of the prestigious Giro d'Italia cycling race will be held in the country, starting in Jerusalem. It will mark the first time that any leg of cycling's Grand Tour races-the Giro, the Tour de France and the Spanish Vuelta-will take place outside of Europe, and just the 12th time the Giro had gone outside of Italy in its 101-year...
An outdoor concert has just wrapped up for the evening, and Haifa's downtown Turkish Market area is packed with people looking to unwind with a cold beer and a good meal. This would not have been the case just two short years ago, when the area was practically abandoned, rundown, and filled with less than desirable characters. Israel's third-largest city has taken a moment to recalculate and reboot. It is clear that the effort has been successful as locals and visitors flock to the city's...
Leader of far-right German party says Jews have nothing to fear (JTA)—Jews should not fear the strong election showing by the Alternative for Germany, a leader of the populist far-right party said. “There is nothing in our party, in our program, that could disturb the Jewish people who live here in Germany,” co-party head Alexander Gauland told reporters Monday, a day after AfD garnered more than 13 percent of the vote to finish third in German national elections. Gauland also said that he was ready to meet with German Jewish leaders “at a...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Jerusalem therapist Miriam Ballin is the kind of person who takes the initiative. Despite resistance from her haredi Orthodox community, she became a medic. Then she launched a pacesetting psychological first aid unit. Clearly she was not just going to stand idly by while Tropical Storm Harvey flooded her native Houston. So on Wednesday evening, Ballin left her husband to watch their five young children and headed to southeast Texas, where she and six other Israeli mental health...
The United Nations has crowned her a "human rights defender," while Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster, hails her as a "Palestinian supermom." But Manal Tamimi's links to violence and tweets accusing Jews of "drinking Palestinian blood" are prompting some of her backers to reconsider their support. Tamimi, a 45-year-old mother of four, is a leader of the Popular Resistance Organizing Committee in the town of Nabi Saleh, near the Palestinian Authority (PA)-controlled city of Ramallah....
(JTA)-Forty-five years after the murderous PLO attack on Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 games, a memorial dedicated to the victims opened today in Munich. The memorial-largely realized through the persistent efforts of family members-features the biographies of the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a German police officer killed in the attack on panels with texts in German, Hebrew and English. "We wanted to give the victims their identity back in the eyes of the public," Bavarian Minister of Culture Ludwig Spaenle told the media on...
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA)—A team of forensic analysts has determined that Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who claimed that the president of Argentina covered up Iran’s role in the deadly bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center, was murdered and did not commit suicide, the South American nation’s media are reporting. A new toxicology report on Nisman’s body found traces of the drug ketamine, an anesthetic used on animals, and posited that at least one other person forcefully held him down around the time of his death, the Infobae...
By Gabe Friedman NEW YORK (JTA)—After weary and ravenous American Jews file out of Yom Kippur services, many return home to a similar meal each year to break the fast: typically bagels, lox and assorted accoutrements. For some, it’s an anticipated and tasty tradition. But for others, it can be an anticlimactic end to a day of repentance and hunger. They can look to Jews in many other countries who shun the same old appetizing platter to break their Day of Atonement fasts. Want to switch things up a little this year? Here are some recipes to...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—For many Jews, Nazis are public enemy No. 1, and using Nazi imagery to make a political point is strictly verboten. But some young, right-wing Israelis aren’t buying it. Inspired by the so-called alt-right abroad, their online community makes liberal use of anti-Semitic and Nazi imagery to mock and malign what it sees as the real threat: Israeli and Jewish leftists. “We’re fighting back in a new way,” said Guy Levy, 40, the manager of an advertising office in Beersheba and a member of the community. “Our messages aren’t poli...
Netanyahu praises Trump’s defense of Israel as UN General Assembly convenes WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump at the launch of this year’s U.N. General Assembly and praised his “unequivocal” defense of Israel. “I want to say that under President Trump, America’s position towards Israel at the U.N. has been unequivocal, it’s been strong, it’s got both clarity and conviction,” Netanyahu said Monday at a meeting with Trump in New York. “And I want to thank you on behalf of the people...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The United States will return to Iraq next year a trove of Iraqi Jewish artifacts that lawmakers and Jewish groups have lobbied to keep in this country, a State Department official said. A four-year extension to keep the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the U.S. is set to expire in September 2018, as is funding for maintaining and transporting the items. The materials will then be sent back to Iraq, spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement sent to JTA on Thursday. Rodriguez said the S...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel's defense minister reignited the emotional national debate over what price the country should be willing to pay for the return of kidnapped soldiers, particularly the bodies of those who have been killed. Avigdor Liberman said Sunday that Israel must not repeat the "mistake" of the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, in which it released more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the return of its soldier from Hamas. The argument, which never really ends here, was...
A leading Palestinian newspaper published an account on Monday of a tense encounter between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner in Ramallah last week. Al-Quds, a Jerusalem-based newspaper that is close to the PA, reported that Kushner had raised the issue of the so-called "martyr payments" made to convicted terrorists and their families-a policy dubbed "pay to slay" that costs the PA more than $300 million annu...
Despite 1,300 years of Muslim Arab rule, Jerusalem was never the capital of an Arab entity, nor was it ever mentioned in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s covenant until Israel regained control of East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967. Overall, the role of Jerusalem in Islam is best understood as the outcome of political exigencies impacting on religious belief. Mohammed, who founded Islam in 622 CE, was born and raised in present-day Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. His connection to the city came years after his d...
Hillary Clinton says Bernie Sanders attacks on her led to Trump victory (JTA)—Hillary Clinton blamed attacks against her by Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary for president on her eventual loss in the general election to Donald Trump. In excerpts from Clinton’s forthcoming book “What Happened,” the former secretary of state wrote that the attacks by Sanders, a Vermont senator, caused “lasting damage” and were instrumental in “paving the way for Trump’s Crooked Hillary campaign.” The book is scheduled to be released on Sept. 12, but Cl...
An upcoming “blacklist” of major international companies with business ties to Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem represents yet another attempt by anti-Israel actors in the United Nations to single out and demonize the world’s only Jewish state, experts say. The U.N. Human Rights Council had voted to approve the database of businesses last year, defying objections from the U.S. and Israel. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein submitted a draft of the blackli...
(JNS.org)-In the wake of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon's ousting, reports detailing his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have started to emerge. Bannon reportedly aggressively petitioned President Donald Trump to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but was blocked by Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Vanity Fair reported Sunday. Trump promised to relocate the embassy during his election campaign in 2016, but he signed a s...
The winner of a Lebanese beauty pageant has been stripped of her title after it was revealed she had visited Israel. Dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen Amanda Hanna, who won the Miss Lebanon Emigrant 2017 competition earlier this month, was told she would be stripped of her title after visiting Israel, using her Swedish passport on an academic trip in 2016. "After communicating our decision with Lebanon's Minister of Tourism, he decided that Hanna should be stripped of her title because her visit to...
Dozens of Houston Jewish community families displaced in ‘catastrophic’ flooding (JTA)—Dozens of Jewish families in Houston were either evacuated or moved to the second floors of their homes due to flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, the local Jewish Family Service said. Some 150 neighborhood blocks in the city that are home to members of the Jewish community have been damaged in floods as part of the hurricane, the JFS said in a conference call with community leaders, the Texas Jewish Herald-Voice reported. Many of the families affec...
During the last several years, Israel has witnessed the crumbling of its neighborhood as civil wars, internal strife and Islamic extremism have taken hold throughout the Middle East. As the Jewish state’s foes and allies alike face ongoing strife, the Kurdish people of northern Iraq have emerged as a striking source of stability, with the willingness to confront these threats. A century after being denied statehood by European powers after the Ottoman Empire fell, the Kurds are slated to hold a referendum on independence from Iraq Sept. 25. F...
(JNS.org)—Russian military forces have replaced the Syrian regime’s military presence in Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria, and have built a base in the area, Syrian opposition sources reported this week. The move indicates that Russia intends to create a more permanent military presence near Israel’s northern border, and comes after the implementation of a Syrian cease-fire agreement brokered by the U.S. and Russia in July. The Lebanon-based and Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen media network corroborated the reports, stating that Russi...
