Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Part 3 of a 3-part series The Republican Party’s candidates for the 2016 presidential race have, since the Paris terror attacks on Nov. 13, 2015, and the San Bernardino terror attack on Dec. 2, 2015, placed an increasing emphasis on their proposed measures aimed at increasing America’s national security. These proposals range from the intense to the laughable and, to some, the intensely laughable. Regarding the Islamic State (ISIS) group, an increasing threat to the West, multiple candidates support a ground operation in the Middle East aga... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at an annual U.S.-Israel confab, said Israel’s government must consider the consequences of evolving toward a single state incorporating the Palestinian areas. “How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish democratic state?” Kerry said Saturday at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C. Would Palestinians “be relegated to a permanent underclass? Would they be segregated?” he asked. Kerry’s forceful questioning of Israeli policy as well Israeli Defense Minister Mosh... Full story
(JNS.org) The Vatican issued an unprecedented declaration that the Jewish people are part of God’s salvation without explicitly confessing Christ as their savior, in a document that includes other changes in Catholic Church teachings related to Christian-Jewish relations. On Thursday, the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews presented the “A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations” document during a press conference at the Vatican to mark the 50th anniversary of the “Nostra Aetate... Full story
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Middle East has gone through monumental changes over thousands of years, but one thing has never changed: an affinity for hummus. This conclusion was reached after fava seeds were discovered during an excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in the Galilee, showing that prehistoric man living in the southern Near East some 10,000 years ago preferred a diet consisting of legumes. The joint IAA-Weizmann Institute research project, which examined fava seeds unearthed in recent years at... Full story
While Christians in Iraq and Syria face the threat of extinction at the hands of the Islamic State terror group, the U.S. State Department remains silent on the prospect of publicly designating the atrocities against Christians and other Mideast religious minorities as “genocide.” According to a recent investigative piece by journalist Michael Isikoff for Yahoo! News, the State Department is in the midst of internal discussions to officially recognize the Yazidi people as genocide victims. But a lingering question remains: Will other rel... Full story
(JTA)-Itzhak Perlman, the Israeli-born violin virtuoso, was named the third winner of the Genesis Prize. Perlman was named the winner on Monday of the annual $1 million prize that has been dubbed the "Jewish Nobel." He joins former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the actor-director Michael Douglas as recipients. "I was totally dumbfounded," Perlman told JTA about learning he had been selected as this year's winner. "I'm a musician. I play the fiddle. So I was so totally taken aback... Full story
(JNS.org) Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Greece will not follow recently implemented European Union guidelines to label Israeli products from Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem. Israel and Greece agreed on extensive bilateral cooperation in economic matters, technology, science, education, trade, energy, and agriculture following last month’s meeting between Kotzias and Netanyahu. Greece joins Hungary in its defiance of the EU’s directive to remove “Ma... Full story
Obama calls on Israelis and Palestinians to ‘exercise restraint’ NEW YORK (JTA)—President Barack Obama, making a surprise address, told a Haaretz-sponsored conference in New York that Israelis and Palestinians must “exercise restraint.” “Inexcusable violence has taken too many lives—Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and others,” Obama said via teleconference on Sunday morning at HaaretzQ, the liberal Israeli newspaper’s event with the New Israel Fund. “I’ve been clear that Palestinian leaders have to condemn the ongoing attacks and stop the... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—During last week’s climate summit outside Paris, the 195 delegate countries—including Israel—committed to implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improving their goals every five years. The aim: Keep Earth from warming more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. “This demands international discipline, which is not easy, but for the good of humanity, I hope that it will be found,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the climate talks, told his Cabinet on Sunday. “It... Full story
In recent years, the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings, the Syrian civil war, and the growth of jihadist terror groups like Islamic State have countered the perception that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of instability in the Middle East. Adding to the mix, mutual concern over the Iran nuclear deal and declining American leadership in the region has made ties between Israel and some Arab states warmer than ever before. In line with this narrative, Israel recently announced that it is opening its first-ever diplomatic off... Full story
The Syrian civil war continues to fester and has now drawn in nearly every major world power, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Syria's neighbor of Turkey, who all have different and sometimes opposing interests. The geopolitical situation recently escalated to new heights on Nov. 24, when a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter jet near the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey, which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),... Full story
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arab nations who never established a Palestinian state. The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow, for the Arabs in neighboring lands, who control 99.9 percent of the Middle East land, have never recognized a Palestinian entity. They have always considered Palestine and its inhabitants part of the great “Arab nation,” historically and politically as an integral part of Greater Syria - Suriyya al-Kubra - a des... Full story
BERLIN (JTA)—A new Torah scroll in a German city was completed with interfaith help, including from a Muslim leader. Bilal El-Zayat, president of the Islamic Community of Marburg placed his hand atop that of Torah scribe Rabbi Josef Chranovski as he penned one of the last 15 letters of the Torah to spell out the statement “Witnessed by all Israel.” Also joining in the ritual to mark the Marburg congregation’s 10th anniversary last week were local Protestant and Catholic clergy, as well as the central German city’s mayor and his predecess... Full story
Netanyahu: Palestinian refusal to recognize Jewish state ‘core’ of conflict WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and rejected U.S. warnings that Israel was devolving toward a single state. The “root cause of the problem,” Netanyahu said in a video address Sunday to the annual Saban Forum, is that “the Palestinians have not yet been willing to cross that conceptual bridge, the emotional bridge of giving up t... Full story
Report: Paris attacks mastermind planned attack on Jews as well (JTA)—The mastermind of last month’s Paris attacks also planned to strike Jewish targets, Reuters reported, citing sources close to the investigation. The plans by Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, disclosed in a confidential police witness statement, were leaked last week to the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles, Reuters reported over the weekend. According to the witness statement, Abaaoud asked his cousin Hasna Ait Boulahcen to hide him while he prepared more attacks fol... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It was 2 a.m. when Illana Attali's friend's screams woke her. Her friend had just heard about the series of coordinated terror attacks on Paris-a wave of violence that would kill at least 129 people on Friday. A Paris native who moved to Tel Aviv five years ago, Attali, 31, had been on a desert hike with two friends and had turned off her phone. When she first heard about the attacks, she thought it was just a bad dream. All three friends began sobbing and decided to head back to... Full story
JNS.org—Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old American yeshiva student from Massachusetts, was among the three people killed in a Palestinian terror attack in Gush Etzion on Thursday, Nov. 19. Schwartz was riding in a van with five of his friends from Yeshivat Ashreinu in Beit Shemesh when a Palestinian terrorist driving in the opposite direction opened fire on the van and other cars stuck in traffic. The students were heading back to the yeshiva after handing out food to IDF soldiers. “Ezra wanted nothing more than to help feed another person, to stu... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-The series of terrorist attacks that killed at least 129 in Paris pose a couple of major challenges for the United States, Jewish officials and security experts said. The challenges: security threats from the the 200 or so Islamic State fighters who have returned to the United States, and moral questions surrounding America's absorption of Syrian war refugees. The key takeaway from Friday's attacks, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility, is that the plotters managed to... Full story
British born Muslim Kasim Hafeez made the remarkable journey from an adherent of Islamic extremist ideology to a proud Zionist, and finally, to Room 116 of the University of Central Florida's College of Business Administration on the night of Nov. 18. While there, Ben Suster and the UCF Knights for Israel student group hosted Hafeez for a talk before a standing-room-only audience titled "The Day I Stopped Hating Israel," discussing his journey from British Muslim to Muslim extremist to Israeli... Full story
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel is the sixth-healthiest country in the world and is the only Middle Eastern country in the top 10, according to recent world health rankings compiled by media outlet Bloomberg and reported in the British newspaper The Independent. The rankings, compiled data from the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, placed Singapore in first place among 145 countries, with a “health grade” of 89.45 percent. Italy came in second, followed by Australia, Switzerland, and Japan. After Isr... Full story
Israeli woman, 20, killed in stabbing at West Bank site of recurring attacks JERUSALEM (JTA)—A 20-year-old Israeli woman was killed in a stabbing attack—the fourth attack in the West Bank in less than 24 hours. Hadar Bucharis of Safed, a city in northern Israel, was stabbed on Sunday afternoon at the Gush Etzion Junction, near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut. She was declared dead at a Jerusalem hospital. The assailant, identified by the Shin Bet security service as Wissam Tawabte, 34, was shot and killed by troops at the scene. Taw... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Think unity. On the heels of this year's rancorous and polarizing debate over the Iran nuclear deal, organizers of this week's General Assembly of Jewish federations wanted their annual conference to be an opportunity for reconciliation and healing in the Jewish community. At their conference in Washington, they talked about civility, touted the strength of the Israel-America relationship, and managed to secure the participation of Israel's prime minister-who a day before his... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)-It took agreeing to set aside differences on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get down to business on other issues afflicting the region, including the threat of Islamist extremism and the rise of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Appearing pleased and relaxed-if hoarse-after meeting with Obama for more than two hours on Monday, Netanyahu told reporters that the two had a pragmatic discussion... Full story
Despite their disagreement over the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. and Israel "can and should work together now" to ensure that Iran complies with the agreement and to curb Iranian aggression throughout the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in Washington, DC. A day after meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House, Netanyahu told the JFNA delegates, "You work tirelessly to... Full story
(JTA)—One of the suspected terrorists in the Paris attacks entered Europe with a flood of Syrian refugees, according to reports. On Sunday, the death toll in the attacks on the French capital rose to 132 as some of the wounded succumbed to their injuries in the hospital. Also Sunday, French Police issued an arrest warrant for a Belgian man, Abdeslam Salah, who is believed to be the brother of a terrorist who died in the attacks. Another brother was arrested in Belgium, according to reports. “This individual is dangerous, do not interact wit... Full story
