Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) While the fates of Israel’s Tamar, Leviathan, and Tanin offshore natural gas reserves have yet to be decided, oil has been discovered in the Jewish state’s Golan Heights region, Channel 2 reported Tuesday. According to the report, recent exploratory drilling on the Golan has located a reserve of enough oil to supply Israel’s needs for many years to come. The Ofek company, which conducted the drilling on the southern Golan Heights, claims that the reserve contains nearly 1 billion barrels of black gold. Ofek...
Israel retaliatory strikes against Hamas kill pregnant Palestinian, 2-year-old daughter JERUSALEM (JTA)—A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 2-year-old daughter reportedly were killed in a retaliatory airstrike by Israel against Hamas. The early Sunday morning strike by the Israeli Air Force against what it called two “Hamas weapon manufacturing facilities” in the northern Gaza Strip came in response to two rocket attacks on Israel. The Palestinian Maan news agency reported on the two deaths. The Iron Dome missile defense system had inter...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-First it was clashes on the Temple Mount. Then a mother and father were shot before the eyes of their four children. Then two men were killed in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City. Now Israelis fear the wave of conflict will only rise. Here's why the violence began, how it's escalated and what might be next. Four Israelis have died in two terror attacks over three days. The slow-burning Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flamed up in the past week with a series of terrorist...
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 70th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Debate in the late morning of Oct. 1, 2015. Twitter accounts from inside the Debate Hall reported that the hall was packed in anticipation of Netanyahu before his address began, and the crowds greeted Netanyahu with a round of applause upon his assumption of the role at the speakers' podium, one of the only Heads of State to be greeted as such. Netanyahu's address to UNGA was straightforward. As he said,...
(JTA)-All anyone attending the United Nations General Assembly opening seemed to want to talk about was the threat posed to the world by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. That was much to the consternation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who argued in his speech before that body on Thursday that Iran, beyond the benefits accrued to it because of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal, was benefiting from the intensified focus on ISIS. "When your enemies fight each...
Not so much as a willingness to abide by past agreements with the Israelis or the rest of the world can now be said on the part of the Palestinian leadership. Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called president of Palestine, announced on Sept. 30, 2015, at the 70th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 70) that the Palestinians are no longer bound by any standing international law, treaty, or norm. He explicitly stated that he and the Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, meaning, as Abbas explicitly noted, that Palestinian...
Governments from around the world had their say at the speaker’s podium of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) general debate held in New York from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3. The Jewish and Israeli communities have stakes in many of the issues addressed by the speakers, including the Iran nuclear deal, the question of the Palestinians, and overall stability in the Middle East region. Israel and the general Jewish community found barely an ally among the nations present at the UN. Many countries followed a script of s...
As untouched mounds of trash piled up on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, in recent months, with no one coming to clean it up, a social movement began protesting under the motto “You Stink.” This “garbage crisis”—as it’s become known—has led to violent clashes between protesters and police and has showcased the broader inability of the Lebanese government to ward off its systemic dysfunction. Operating on a parallel track with Lebanon’s domestic unrest, the latest reports suggest that fighters from the Lebanese Shi’a Muslim terror group Hezb...
In dual Jerusalem stabbings by Palestinians, 2 Israelis killed JERUSALEM (JTA)—An Israeli teenager was stabbed by a Palestinian man outside Jerusalem’s Old City several hours after two Israeli men were killed in a similar attack nearby. The 15-year-old victim was in moderate condition after being treated on the scene early Sunday morning by paramedics, according to initial reports. He was taken to the hospital with wounds to his chest and back. The assailant reportedly fled the scene. A video posted online appeared to show him hundreds of fee...
Israeli company Soda-Stream has offered to take in Syrian refugees and employ them in its new factory in the Negev Desert. In an announcement over the weekend, SodaStream and the mayor of Rahat, which is near the home beverage maker's factory, said they can absorb up to 200 families. Some 30 percent of the 1,100 workers at the factory live in the Bedouin city led by Mayor Talal al-Krenawi. "As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I refuse to stand by and observe this human tragedy unfold right...
Recently the USDA and the EPA announced a food waste challenge with a goal to reduce food waste in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2030. How much food is really being wasted? Precise numbers are difficult to calculate, however, the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2010 published a report that an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is lost at the retail and consumer levels. Forty percent of all food manufactured goes to waste and never reaches the plate. Unfortunately, similar to every other western...
(JTA)—In a speech at the United Nations, Pope Francis praised the Iran nuclear deal and decried the persecution of minorities in the Middle East. “The recent agreement reached on the nuclear question in a sensitive region of Asia and the Middle East is proof of the potential of political good will and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience and constancy,” Francis said Friday to the U.N. General Assembly. “I express my hope that this agreement will be lasting and efficacious, and bring forth the desired fruits with the cooperation of all...
(JNS.org) Israel responded to Jordanian King Abdullah’s criticism of the Jewish state over the Temple Mount, telling the Jordanian leader it is Jordan itself that is violating the status quo at the holy site by allowing armed rioters there. According to a report by Israel’s Channel 2 on Monday, the Israeli government told King Abdullah to not “run away from your responsibility” in safeguarding the Temple Mount. “The Waqf (a Jordanian-run Islamic trust that oversees the Temple Mount) broke the status quo by letting rioters armed with stones sl...
(JNS.org)—The heads of the Israeli and Russian militaries met for the first time Monday as the two countries announced further joint coordination of their Syria-related activities. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot met with Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army General Valery Vasilevich Gerasimov following a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the Netanyahu-Putin meeting, the two nations agreed to form a “joint mechanism” in order to prevent any p...
LESBOS, Greece (JTA)-As the small rubber dinghy crowded with Syrians and Afghans emerged from the midnight-black sea to land on a desolate pebble beach, the first people to greet the bewildered and frightened refugees were two Israelis. "Does anyone need a doctor?" Majeda Kardosh, 27, a nurse from Nazareth, shouted repeatedly in Arabic as the asylum seekers scrambled ashore amid cries of celebration and tears of relief at surviving the short but perilous crossing from Turkey to this Greek...
