Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)—The families of five American citizens killed in terror attacks in Israel are suing Facebook for $1 billion, accusing the social network of providing material support to Hamas for its incitement and violence. Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, an advocacy organization based in Israel, filed the lawsuit Sunday night in Manhattan federal court. The suit alleges that Facebook is violating the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act by assisting terror groups such as Hamas in “recruiting, radicalizing, and instructing terrorists, raising funds, creating fea...
Netanyahu investigation has been launched, Israel’s attorney general confirms JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s attorney general has confirmed that he has ordered an investigation into accusations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what the Israeli media is reporting as a money-laundering probe. Avichai Mandelblit stressed to the media that the investigation opened late Sunday is initial and not a criminal investigation, according to reports. The attorney general reportedly discussed the accusations with the police intelligence unit, the s...
EDINBURGH, Scotland (JTA)-The last time that Scotland voted on whether to become independent from the United Kingdom, most of its 7,000 Jews thought doing so was a bad idea. Worried that Scottish independence would encourage nationalism and embolden an already aggressive anti-Israel movement with deep roots in the pro-independence camp, Jews here were relieved when, during a 2014 referendum, 62 percent of Scottish voters supported remaining in the United Kingdom. Less than two years after that...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-"I am proud to be a Vlach," says Yiannis Boutaris, the mayor of Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Ostensibly, we're here at the Washington Hilton to discuss Boutaris' bid to put the Jewish back in Thessaloniki, a city-perhaps best known as Salonika-once home to the largest numbers of Jews in Greece. But I'm the one who brought up the Vlachs, a dwindling minority of speakers of an ancient Latin dialect, scattered throughout the Balkans. When he ambles over, I greet him...
It was Oct. 27, 2015, shortly after 10 a.m. Two terrorists from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber boarded an Egged bus in the East Talpiot area. One was armed with a gun, the other with a knife. They started shooting and stabbing passengers, including 76-year-old Richard Lakin, who died two weeks later from his wounds. “We spent almost two weeks at Hadassah Hospital trying to save his life,” recalls Richard’s son Micah Lakin Avni, CEO of Peninsula Group Ltd., a publicly traded Israeli commercial finance institution. “During those t...
(JTA)-Only a week ago, Jeremy Corbyn seemed to have survived his biggest public relations debacle as the leader of Britain's Labour Party: the proliferation of anti-Semitic rhetoric among its members. Yet this week, the British vote to leave the European Union achieved what Corbyn's opponents failed to do in their attacks against him over anti-Semitism. On Tuesday, 172 Labour lawmakers among the total 229 in the Parliament said they had no confidence in Corbyn, opening the door to a challenge...
(JNS.org) Israel and Turkey have agreed to normalize ties after a six-year rift in their diplomatic relationship. “Israel and Turkey are two major regional powers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “The disconnect between us prevented necessary cooperation.” Turkish-Israeli relations broke down after the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, in which nine Turkish militants were killed in clashes after they attacked Israeli commandos who boarded a ship that was trying to breach the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza. According to reports citing...
PARIS-Arab immigration to France and deep-seated anti-Semitism in that country mean French Jews have no future there, the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel said. Natan Sharansky made this declaration on Monday in the French capital, where he was attending a Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, held in the city for the first time as a sign of solidarity with French Jews. "We came here because there are historical processes here," Sharansky said of France, which for the past two years has...
VENICE, Italy (JTA)-It's been more than 50 years since the Nuremberg trials, yet proving the Holocaust actually happened remains an ongoing project. Why? For one, the Nazis covered their tracks, deliberately leaving gaps in the historical record. (In the death-camp blueprints that survive, for example, gas chambers were often labeled as morgues or "undressing rooms.") As the years pass, survivors and eyewitnesses are dying or suffering dementia. Add in social media-including the rise of the...
A German court recently sentenced 94-year-old Reinhold Hanning, a former Nazi, to five years in prison for being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 Jews between January 1942 and June 1944, when he served as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Hanning served in a unit that handled newly transported prisoners, and assisted in selecting those who would temporarily live as slave laborers and those who would be murdered on the day of their arrival. He was not accused of personally killing a single prisoner, but...
Netanyahu launches Africa tour with Entebbe commemoration (JTA)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a tour of East Africa by marking the 40th anniversary of the raid at Entebbe that killed his brother. “We were powerless no more,” Netanyahu said Monday of the July 4, 1976 Israeli commando raid on the Ugandan airport where German and Palestinian terrorists were holding more than 100 Israelis hostage after having hijacked a plane. His older brother, Yoni, who commanded the rescue unit, was killed in the raid. Netanyahu laid a wre...
Great Britain and the rest of Europe woke up to a new reality Friday as a slim majority of British voters said their country should leave the European Union. Markets trembled, British currency crashed and British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his pending resignation. It was a major blow to an alliance formed specifically to avoid a repeat of the nationalist rivalries that led to the First and Second World Wars. Although Britain's Jews appeared as split as the rest of the country over...
(JTA)-The parents of Steven Sotloff, the Jewish freelance journalist beheaded by the Islamic State nearly two years ago, have joined the families of three other killed U.S. hostages in urging President Barack Obama to bring home a missing American hostage. Shirley and Arthur Sotloff, in an essay published Wednesday in the McClatchy newspapers, called on Obama not to leave behind any Americans when he leaves office in January, referring to freelance journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in...
The influx of migrants and refugees into Europe has presented that continent's leaders and policymakers with some of their greatest current challenges. Those challenges "defy silver-bullet solutions," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken. Blinken, who made that remark at the 2016 Herzliya Conference, which took place from June 14-16 in Jerusalem and Herzliya, was highlighting one of the topics that reappeared in many of the dozens of speeches and panel discussions throughout th...
(JTA)-Dirty, hot and exhausted Israeli soldiers waiting for their bus home from the army base tend, understandably, to be in a hurry to get on board. But when I was living in Israel during the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, soldiers didn't jostle to be first in line. Rather, the most coveted position was second. That's because the bus driver had the right-under rules issued by the army and made clear to each armed soldier before she or he left the base-to order any soldier to sit in...
Since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been fraught with tension. Even within the framework of that tension, strong American military aid for Israel has been a constant during the Obama years. But during the last few weeks, that support has been called into question by the White House’s expression of opposition to additional funding for Israel’s highly touted missile defense systems. In a statement published June 14 by the White House’s Office of Management and Bud...
Abbas walks back claim that Israeli rabbis called to poison Palestinian water JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas walked back his claim that Israeli rabbis had called for the poisoning of Palestinian water and said he did not intend to offend Jewish people. “After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish peopl...
A newly released 10-minute online video produced by the Jerusalem-based Center for Near East Policy Research says that many of the Palestinians who have murdered Israelis during the so-called "stabbing intifada," which began in September 2015, were educated in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Titled "The UNRWA road to terror: Palestinian classroom incitement," the video claims that the current wave of violence was not...
(JNS.org)—World Jewish groups and Israeli leaders condemned the terror attack on Sunday, June 12, inside the LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Fla., in which a terrorist shot and killed at least 49 people and wounded 53 others. In what was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, 29-year-old terrorist Omar Mateen dialed 911 during the attack to express support for the Islamic State terror group as he used an assault rifle to gun down the victims. “On behalf of world Jewry, I condemn this horrific act of terror and wish to express the Jew...
(JNS.org) Israel is reportedly set to build a massive underground and aboveground concrete wall around the Gaza Strip in order to prevent infiltration by Hamas terrorists using cross-border attack tunnels. The wall, which will cost around NIS 2.2 billion ($567 million), will stretch along Israel’s entire 60-mile border with Gaza and will be built tens of meters under and above ground, according to Yedioth Ahronoth. “We have no desire to rule over Gaza, and as long as there is no alternative government there, we have no business being the...
Once controlling an empire spanning every continent, the United Kingdom has been undergoing an identity crisis in recent years. In 2014, Scotland, which has been part of the United Kingdom for over 300 years, held a referendum on whether to remain part of the country. Now in 2016, after years of discontent with the European Union (EU), the British people will decide on whether or not to leave the 28-country bloc in a June 23 referendum. For the British-Jewish community, which has faced growing...
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org)—At a meeting of Likud party ministers on Monday, June 13, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced questions regarding the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, two weeks after saying the initiative included some “positive elements” and that Israel is “willing to negotiate with Arab states’ revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002.” One Likud minister asked Netanyahu what he would do if Arab states were not willing to revise the initiative. “If the Ara...
Donald Trump praises Israel’s racial profiling, calls for same in U.S. (JTA)—Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that the United States use racial profiling like Israel to prevent mass attacks like the one in Orlando. “Well I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” Trump told the CBS news show “Face the Nation” on Sunday in a telephone interview. “Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate...
Omar Mateen had left a long and worrisome trail much before he stunned the world with the mass murder of 49 men and women at an Orlando nightclub For the past nine years, the 29-year-old New York-born resident of Ft. Pierce, Fla., worked as a security officer for the G4S company in the town of Jupiter, during which time, it appears, he managed to spook many of his co-workers, numerous acquaintances and his Internet bride. "When I saw his picture on the news, I thought, 'Of course, he did...
(JTA)-Here a plan, there a plan, everywhere a peace plan. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Authority may not exactly seem conducive to peace-Israel just formed what may be its most right-wing government ever, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging and becoming less popular. Yet peace plans have been coming at the region from all sides. No less than three Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals have been put forward in recent weeks, spanning a range of countries, leaders...
