Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The Jewish National Fund asks everyone to turn attention to homes and forests that are in immediate danger across Israel. A series of wildfires are raging across Northern and Central Israel. Many homes have already been destroyed, families displaced, and more residents are being evacuated. Israel's firefighting capacity is being stressed to its limits. The threat is so great that the prime minister has put a request out to surrounding countries for assistance. Always underfunded, KKL's and...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Fires throughout Israel, fanned by dry conditions and high winds, have led to the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes. Several homes have been destroyed by the conflagrations on Tuesday and Wednesday. A brush fire that began Tuesday and spread to Zichron Yaakov, located at the southern tip of the Carmel Forest in northern Israel, continued to burn on Wednesday, destroying at least 10 homes and damaging dozens more. Several adults and children were treated for...
Air Supply gives free concert tickets to wives of Israeli firefighters JERUSALEM (JTA)—After postponing a concert in Haifa last week due to massive fires there, the band Air Supply gave away 200 tickets to the wives of Israeli firefighters. The concert was rescheduled for Sunday after being canceled last Friday. “This is a gesture to wives of firefighters, who went through incredibly difficult days and nights,” concert producer Dudi Berkowitz said, according to Ynet. “We decided to give them an evening away from it all with some good music....
WASHINGTON (JTA)-In recent months, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have each emphasized what in recent years hardly needed emphasizing: mainstream Jewish support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reiterations of support signify a concern growing among Jewish organizations about deepening partisan differences on what has been since 2002 a rare area of broad political consensus in Israel and...
Israeli army conscription rate drops 3.5% since 2010 (JTA)—The rate of enlistment into the Israel Defense Forces has dropped by 3.5 percent over the past five years, army sources said. In 2016, the IDF saw the conscription of 72 percent of people who are initially listed as duty bound to serve in the military, Army Radio reported Wednesday. Among the 28 percent who do not enlist are tens of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews, who once were allowed an automatic exemption from serving until a 2014 law decreed they sign up for the army or other f...
(JTA)-As a Jewish family originally from the Ivory Coast, Amy and George Camara and their four children felt somewhat immune to the rising anti-Semitic thuggery in France. The Camaras, relieved to leave their war-torn African country, settled in the northern French city of Lille in 2012. Because they fit no one's Jewish stereotype, they said they were able to live as Jews without fear-despite, in recent years, the rise in attacks on French Jews from a small segment of Muslim extremists. But the...
The Hadassah Medical Center is continuing to receive positive findings with its Phase II clinical trial using its unique stem cell approach to stop the progression and reversing the disabilities of multiple sclerosis. The Hadassah-developed treatment involves intrathecal injection-injection of the patient's own bone marrow-derived stem cells directly into the spinal fluid-so that the cells circulate all the way around the brain and the spinal cord, where they are needed. Hadassah began its...
New York Observer, owned by Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, ceases print edition (JTA)—The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper owned by President-elect Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, will cease publishing a print edition. The Nov. 9 edition was the last print edition, the Observer’s parent company, Observer Media, announced in a statement. The newspaper will continue to be available online as Observer.com. The decision to end the print edition and change its name “signals an end of an era when The Observer served as a fixture of M...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)—His name was never mentioned during the Netherlands’ main commemoration event for Kristallnacht, but Donald Trump was likely on everyone’s mind at the ceremony at the Dutch capital’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue. It wasn’t for any imagined parallels between Trump’s election as U.S. president and the campaign of violence that the Nazis unleashed 78 years ago against German and Austrian Jews, which many historians see as the opening shot of the Holocaust. Most European Jews, whose families still live in the shadow of that pogrom...
One of the leaders in the fight against breast cancer is Dr. Tamar Peretz Yablonski, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, whose tenacity and determination to find a cure inspires her and countless others. "My parents always taught me to fight, to look on the bright side," Yablonski, director of Hadassah Medical Center's Sharett Institute of Oncology in Israel, told JNS.org. As Hadassah continues its important research work in finding a cure, the organization celebrates 20 years since its...
Anti-Trump ad in Florida substitutes ‘Jews’ for ‘Muslims’ in candidate’s anti-immigrant speech (JTA)—An anti-Trump ad that substitutes the word “Jews” for “Muslims” in an anti-immigrant speech by the presidential candidate is running in the swing state of Florida. A similar ad running in Utah substitutes “Mormons” for Muslims. The ads were launched by TruthPAC, a new super PAC launched Friday by Dick Brass, a former executive at Microsoft and Oracle, the Huffington Post reported. Brass told the Huffington Post he launched the PAC to prevent Tru...
(JNS.org)—The Palestinian Authority and Jordan are warning members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee against opposing a planned resolution on Jerusalem set for a vote last Wednesday, Oct. 26. The 21-member World Heritage Committee is considering a resolution that solely refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by its Muslim name, Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which ignores any Jewish or Christian ties to the site. Temple Mount was home to the First and Second Jewish Temples. The resolution is similar to one passed by the 56-member UNESCO Executive Com...
(JNS.org)-Lawmakers from 17 countries signed a declaration last Thursday against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) resolution and called for international recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital of Israel. The UNESCO resolution rejected any Jewish link to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the declaration, 19 MPs representing the 17 countries, said that "the U.N. resolution is disconnected from reality and is...
PHILADELPHIA—The Middle East Forum’s “Islamist Money in Politics” (IMIP) project has recorded an additional $12,061 in campaign contributions from Islamist sources to Hillary Clinton since releasing its list of the top ten recipients of Islamist money for 2015-2016 on October 20. The new figures come from just-released FEC filings from August and September. Clinton has padded her lead atop the list, accepting $53,226 from prominent Islamists. This includes $16,216 from individuals associated with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),...
Jewish Federations of North America and its predecessor organizations have had a longstanding policy of not officially traveling beyond Israel’s 1967 borders. In reality, however, representatives have already done so. Top leaders of JFNA held a secretive meeting Wednesday to approve changing its policy of not traveling into Judea and Samaria to visit Jewish settlements or Palestinian communities. The conference call was led by JFNA Chairman Richard Sandler, who is executive vice president of the Milken Family Foundation in Los Angeles. P...
Danielle Berrin slams Ari Shavit for not apologizing for ‘committing sexual assault’ (JTA)—Jewish-American reporter Danielle Berrin slammed prominent Israeli journalist Ari Shavit for not admitting and apologizing for allegedly sexually assaulting her. “As recounted in my article, he engaged in physically aggressive behavior—grabbing the back of my head, lurching at me for a kiss, pulling and pawing at me, and pressuring me to enter his hotel room,” she wrote in a response published Friday in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. She added: “Thr...
JERUSALEM—Israel could have done a better job of enlisting Christian allies in its efforts to prevent the United Nations from passing a resolution erasing the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Western Wall, one South African legislator claims. Speaking with JNS.org in Hebron Wednesday, MP Kenneth Meshoe, of the African Christian Democratic Party, alleged that Jerusalem was slow in mobilizing its allies across the world, which prevented organizing a grass roots campaign on its behalf. “If many of these countries knew beforehand what was...
(JTA)—If the latest draft resolution at UNESCO on “Occupied Palestine” succeeded in the Palestinians’ aims to reclaim the world’s attention, then it was a Pyrrhic victory at best and a setback at worst. Part of an effort on Jerusalem initiated at UNESCO in 2015 by the Palestinian Authority, the Oct. 12 vote saw a comfortable majority of states, including Russia and China, pass language calling on Israel “to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City,” as one clause reads. Only six coun...
Frustrated with Trump, Sheldon Adelson said to focus on Senate (JTA)—Jewish philanthropist and top Republican donor Sheldon Adelson’s reported impatience with Donald Trump is reflected in the emphasis Adelson is placing on the battle for control of the Senate, CNN reported. Adelson has given at least $40 million to super PACs focused solely on the fight for Congress, while the $10 million he dedicated to a pro-Trump super PAC is only advertising in states with competitive Senate races. CNN and other outlets, citing unnamed figures close to Ade...
The United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, passed a resolution Thursday, Oct. 13, that condemns Israeli actions at Jerusalem's holy sites and ignores any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall complex. Calling the vote "another hallucinatory decision" by the group, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple and the Western Wall is like saying that China is not connected to the Great Wall of China or the Egypt has no connection...
UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova on Friday came out against the agency's executive board for adopting a resolution that disregards the connection between Judaism and Temple Mount and casts doubt over the link between the religion and the Western Wall. "The Al Aqsa Mosque [or] Al-Haram al-Sharif, the sacred shrine of Muslims, is also the Har HaBayit-or Temple Mount-whose Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism," Bokova said in a statement. The Executive Board of the United Nations...
JERUSALEM-A police officer and a civilian were killed and six were wounded during a drive-by shooting in Jerusalem this weekend, raising concerns about the possible resumption of the wave of lone wolf terror attacks that convulsed Israel earlier this year. Yosef "Yosi" Kirme, 29, and Levanah Malichi, 60, were killed in the attack, which occurred at the Ammunition Hill light rail station on Sunday when a Palestinian man drove past spraying bullets from a car. Malichi, who was waiting for the...
JERUSALEM—A newly approved plan to build 98 homes in the Shiloh Valley in northern Samaria has renewed longstanding tensions between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue of “West Bank” settlement construction. Both the U.S. State Department and the White House have issued statements strongly condemning the plan—continuing a pattern of condemnations whenever Israel announces plans to build homes in territories captured from Jordan during the 1967 Six Day War. These territories lie at the center...
(JNS.org)—The United Nations Security Council is expected to convene next week in an informal session, spearheaded by the Palestinians, to discuss Israeli settlements as an “obstacle to peace” in an eventual push for a formal Security Council resolution against Israel. “The existence and expansion of the settlements on Palestinians lands, which were occupied in 1967, endanger a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the two-state solution,” according to the position paper distributed to participants of the meeting, obtained by Yediot...
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arab nations who never established a Palestinian state themselves. Arabs in neighboring states, who control 99.9 percent of the Middle East land, have never recognized a Palestinian entity. The Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN in 1947 recommended to partition Palestine, and to establish “an Arab and a Jewish state” (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian sta...
