Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1395 - 1419 of 2213
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The assassin's bullet that killed former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago on Nov. 4 also stunted the center-left party that championed peace: Rabin's once-mighty Labor. In the two decades since Rabin's slaying at the hands of a Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir-the killer opposed a peace deal with the Palestinians-Labor has fallen from being Israel's founding party and moderate-left flagship to competing among a handful of opposition factions, a perennial loser in...
Will Recant pulls both heartstrings and purse strings for a living. As the head of the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, a consortium of 49 national Jewish organizations, he has been at the center of the American Jewish reaction to 20 global crises in the last 20 years. Of late, his focus has been on Syria. Last month, Jewish organizations across the country and denominational spectrum revved up their response to the refugee crisis plunging millions into desperate need and stumping world leaders, led by Recant in his role as an assistant...
1,000 gather at Rabin memorial to hear Bill Clinton, Obama TEL AVIV (JTA)—An estimated 100,000 people remembered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a Tel Aviv rally marking the 20th anniversary of his assassination that featured speeches by President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton. On Saturday night at the plaza bearing Rabin’s name, Clinton praised Rabin’s willingness to take risks for peace and exhorted the crowd to finish his work. Clinton guided Israeli-Palestinian negotiations when Rabin was prime minister that led to the O...
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a resolution last Wednesday, Oct. 21, listing Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron—the world’s most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people and Kever Rachel, Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem—Judaism’s third holiest site—as Muslim sites. These sites are part and parcel of the Jewish tradition and history and present a direct connection between the Jewish People and their ancient homeland. Buried in the Cave of the P...
Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid addressed the nature of Palestinian society and conflict at the Oct. 19 event titled "Life Under the Palestinian Authority: A Palestinian Speaks Out," held at the University of Central Florida (UCF). Born in the Jordanian occupied Old City in East Jerusalem in 1958, he spent the first 33 years of his life in the Shuafat refugee camp and was a prominent figure of the First Intifada. He was arrested in 1995 by the Palestinian Presidential Guard for...
After he personally consulted with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, whom President Barack Obama pulled away from attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent address to the U.N. General Assembly, prominent Jewish leader Malcolm Hoenlein shed light on the controversy in an interview with the Nachum Segal Network radio station on Friday. Hoenlein-executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella body...
A bipartisan group of five U.S. congressmen spent the last week touring Israel, despite the daily terrorist attacks and deteriorating security situation. Rep. Alan Lowenthal D-CA, Rep. Jim Jordan R-OH, Rep. Scott Garrett R-NJ, Rep. Raoul Labrador R-ID and Rep. Mark Meadows R-NC traveled across the country to learn the facts behind the headlines and pledge their support to the Jewish state in these challenging times. The educational trip was sponsored by Proclaiming Justice to the Nations and hosted by Yes! Israel. Highlights of the jam-packed...
TORONTO (JTA)-The election of Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau as prime minister represents the first change in Canadian government since Stephen Harper and his Conservatives assumed power in 2006. What is unlikely to change, however, is Ottawa's robust support for Israel-a policy cemented under Harper, whose forceful backing of the Jewish state earned him a reputation as one of world's most pro-Israel political leaders. When it comes to core Jewish issues, Trudeau has said all the right...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In assigning blame for the recent wave of violence in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned to the usual suspects-Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But he has also accused a lesser-known group that operates within Israel's borders: the Islamic Movement, a religious political group and social service organization. Netanyahu has seized on the inflammatory rhetoric of the movement's northern branch, which claims the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is "in danger" and...
‘Subway Guy’ Jared Fogle pays $1 million to victims (JTA)—Jared Fogle, the former Subway pitchman, has paid $1 million in restitution to his victims. Fogle, 38, who became known as “the Subway Guy,” pleaded guilty in August to charges of distributing and receiving pornography, and having sex with minors. Also as part of his plea deal, Fogle, who is Jewish, will serve five to 12 1/2 years in federal prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven DeBrota announced on Oct. 22 in Indianapolis that Fogle had paid restitution of $100,000 each to 10 of his...
NEW YORK—Jewish National Fund (JNF) has announced that while world news may ignore the latest events in Israel over the past month, JNF is responding by encouraging Americans and its donors to stand in support of Israel. Since recent terror incidents began in and around Israel on September 13 (Erev Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year), JNF is leading the way in solidarity and has seen registration pick up in recent days on its missions and tours to Israel. Aliyah, the term used for those people who emigrate to Israel, has also picked up and con...
The Hamas terrorist group is open about its mission of destroying Israel. But the current wave of Palestinian terror consuming the Jewish state has led Israeli leaders to instead blame the unrest on Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas over his failure to condemn terrorism and his incitement of violence, casting doubt on the common assessment of Abbas as a moderate by Western governments and media. Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-"No pepper spray, no tear gas, no nightsticks," sighed Itzhak Mizrahi to three disappointed men, as if it were a mantra he'd recited dozens of times. The glass-topped display case in Magnum, the central Jerusalem gun shop Mizrahi has owned for three decades, featured a wide variety of pistols last Thursday. The pepper spray compartment, however, was empty, stormed earlier in the week by nervous Israelis hoping to defend themselves from stabbing attacks. The country is suffering...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Paris that he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to stem the wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank. “Later this week I will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu because he will be in Germany... we will meet there,” Kerry said Sunday at UNESCO headquarters, the French news agency AFP reported. “And then I will go the the region and I will meet with President Abbas, I will meet with King Abdullah [of...
Their pictures and their names are burned on our hearts-victims of terrorism whose final moments we can't even imagine. It's in precisely these times that the job of spiritual leaders is both most challenging and most needed. All across Israel, rabbis are being asked to make whatever sense can be made of the ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli Jews doing the kinds of regular things people do daily: going to work, dropping off the kids, visiting friends, going shopping,...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israelis have become accustomed to dismal news in the past few weeks-mornings and evenings punctuated by stabbings, car attacks and rock throwing. The cycle of random violence has left dozens of Israelis and Palestinians dead, and many fearing the worst: The start of a third intifada, or armed Palestinian uprising, that could claim hundreds more lives. But since the second intifada started in 2000, fears of a repeat have proved unfounded. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian...
Jerusalem peace rally brings out Jews and Arabs JERUSALEM (JTA)—Some 1,500 Jews and Arabs rallied in Jerusalem for an end to the current violence and a resumption of the peace process. The peace protest on Saturday night came after a day in which four Palestinians were killed during what are believed to be attempted stabbing attacks. The alleged assailants were killed in separate attacks, including two in Jerusalem. Three Israeli police officers and another alleged Palestinian assailant were wounded in the incidents. In addition to the Jerusale...
(JTA)-As a defiant Russia again flexes military muscles in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Cold War analogies are, perhaps, unavoidable. The deployment last month of Russian warplanes in Syria laid bare Moscow's readiness to use force to punish leaders who would challenge its authority-as in Ukraine, from which it annexed Crimea in March 2014-and to defend its strategic allies, like Syria's embattled president, Bashar Assad. During the Cold War, Kremlin intervention generally meant bad news...
The heartbreaking murder of Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama, gunned down by Palestinian terrorists in front of their children, will generate tear-filled eulogies and anguished recitations of tehillim (Psalms) throughout the Jewish world. As they should. But then what? The depressingly familiar post-terrorist attack ritual is already unfolding before our eyes. The Obama administration has issued a formalistic condemnation, adding its standard, amoral appeal: "We urge all sides to maintain...
BERLIN (JTA)—Israel’s government is in cahoots with Syrian President Bashar Assad. America wants to keep the Syrian civil war going for as long as possible. Russia is outmaneuvering the United States on the global stage. Those are some of the viewpoints you’re likely to hear if you talk politics with Syrians pouring out of their war-torn country and into Europe. When I went to Berlin recently to write about the wave of migrants arriving in Germany, one of the questions I was most curious about was something that had nagged at me since the r...
In the fourth shooting at a U.S. college campus since August, 10 people were killed Oct. 1 when a 26-year-old gunman opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon. Many would be surprised to learn that part of the solution to the American school shooting epidemic might be found in Israel. School shooters present a challenge to both forensic psychiatry and law enforcement agencies. But new research by Prof. Yair Neuman, a member of the Homeland Security Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), is...
(JNS.org) The Islamic State terror group is reportedly making gains in the Golan Heights region near the Israeli-Syrian border as rebel groups operating in the area face ammunition and weaponry shortages. According to a spokesman from the Free Syrian Army, the moderate group fighting both the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State, there are around 500-700 Islamic State fighters currently active in the Syrian Golan Heights towns of Jamlah and Ash-Shajarah, which are adjacent to the Israeli border, the Times of Israel...
WARSAW, Poland—The City Council in the town of Bialystok recently rejected a zoning plan that would have prevented a meat production plant’s plans to build a high-rise apartment building on the grounds of a Jewish cemetery. The vote was 12-8 with one abstention. “In the center of Bialystok there were six cemeteries,” said council member Zbigniew Brozek at the meeting. Using this reasoning for rejecting the zoning plan, he explained, “If we want to protect them it would be impossible to build anything [in the city].” Another councilman...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas took plenty of shots at each other. But in their dueling speeches to the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian Authority president directed much of their fire at the same target: the assembled world leaders. Netanyahu blamed world powers and international bodies for enthusiastically supporting what he sees as a misguided Iran deal. He began and ended his speech by calling on the U.N. to correct its record...
Anti-Zionists are targeting South Africa, but hold tight and wait to see what happens, South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein tells JNS.org regarding reports of an impending dual citizenship crisis that may affect his country’s Jewish community. Discussing an early-September call by a deputy cabinet minister and senior official in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) political party that the government should look at changing current laws to ban South Africa’s citizens from holding dual citizenship—which would prevent them from fight...
