Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS.org)—The American Historical Association (AHA) rejected two anti-Israel resolutions proposed by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement activists in a 144-55 vote at the association’s annual meeting on Sunday in New York. The resolutions, proposed by Historians Against the War (HAW), criticized Israeli policies but did not go as far as calling for a boycott of Israel. To become a member of HAW, which a separate entity from AHA, one must sign an online statement declaring opposition “to wars of aggression, military occup...
(JNS.org)—The Palestinian Authority’s unilateral quest for statehood and other forms of recognition in the international arena is among 10 points illustrating why the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians are no longer valid, wrote Alan Baker, Israel’s former ambassador to Canada, in a new article for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) think tank. In a September 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had stated that “all outstanding issues relating to permanent status...
LOD, Israel (JTA)-He says he's a leader of a "Zionist settlement" movement, but Raz Sofer's home is no West Bank outpost. Sofer, 25, is the manager of a 100-member student village in this mixed Jewish-Arab city in central Israel. The village, comprised of several apartment complexes, offers students cheap rent in exchange for volunteer work with Lod's poor residents, many of them Arab-Israelis. Sofer is fluent in Arabic and is proud of the students who volunteer in Arab kindergartens or run...
Victims of supermarket attack remembered at Paris synagogue PARIS (JTA)—Hundreds gathered with the leaders of France and Israel to remember the victims of an attack at a kosher supermarket near Paris. French President Francois Hollande and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined several hundred members of the Jewish community at the memorial Sunday night at the Grand Synagogue of Paris, also known as the Synagogue de la Victoire. Hollande did not deliver remarks at the synagogue. The sister of attack victim Yoav Hattab, one of four J...
NEW YORK (JTA)—A Palestinian-backed U.N. resolution setting a one-year deadline for a peace deal with Israel failed to garner sufficient votes for passage in the U.N. Security Council. The resolution, which was voted on Dec. 30, was aimed at achieving a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank by late 2017. Eight nations on the 15-member council votes yes, two voted no and five abstained. Nine votes were required for passage. Had nine votes been obtained, the United States, which voted against the resolution, was expected to exercise its Secu...
HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishing houses that sells English-language atlases to schools in the Middle East, made a large, intentional mistake-it omitted labeling Israel. In fact, the Middle East Atlases showed Jordan and Syria extending to the Mediterranean and clearly marked the position of the West Bank. The decision to omit Israel elicited a tremendous amount of anger online, and now HarperCollins is pulling its Middle East Atlas from sale in all territories, and has...
(JNS.org) The Knesset Finance Committee on Dec. 21, 2014 voted to allocate $3.1 million to build a tourism center in the Jewish community of Barkan in Samaria. Committee members from the Likud, Habayit Hayehudi, and Yisrael Beiteinu parties voted in favor of funding the center. “The visitors’ center in question is a crucial asset for Israel,” Likud MK Gila Gamliel said, according to Israel Hayom. “It’s intended to present scientific exhibits to thousands of young people and school pupils.” Responding to criticism of the vote’s result by Lab...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A Palestinian man was crushed to death as he tried to get through a West Bank checkpoint. Ahmad Samih Bdeir, 39, a construction worker from the village of Farun in the northern West Bank, died Dec. 31 at the Efraim checkpoint, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported. Bdeir reportedly was choked to death in the crush of people trying to get through the checkpoint. More than 15,000 Palestinian workers pass through al-Tayba checkpoint every day, Maan reported, citing the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions. A year ago, a...
(JNS.org) The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has barred a group of 37 orphans in Gaza from visiting Israel as part of a peace-building trip meant to heal wounds between the parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to trip organizers, the group, which included children ages 13-16, was turned back by Hamas authorities at the last minute at the Erez border crossing into Israel. The group had received approval from Israeli authorities for the weeklong trip. “This was a suspicious visit that aimed to normalize our children with t...
Abbas: Palestinians will resubmit statehood resolution JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinians will resubmit a statehood resolution to the United Nations Security Council. “We will go back to the Security Council until it recognizes our rights,” Abbas said Sunday in Ramallah, in the West Bank, Reuters reported. “We are determined to join international conventions and treaties despite the pressure. “We didn’t fail, the U.N. Security Council failed us. We’ll go again to the Security Council, why not? Pe...
Since its founding in 1948, Muslim-majority allies have been hard to come by for the Jewish state. Yet an improbable romance continues to develop between Israel and Azerbaijan. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon took a surprise trip to Azerbaijan in September, marking the first-ever visit by the holder of his position to a Muslim-majority nation in the Southern Caucasus region. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and former president Shimon Peres have also visited Azerbaijan, and Azer...
JERUSALEM— These are the results of the most recent poll conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. This joint survey was conducted with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Ramallah and Jerusalem. • Following the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014, 50 percent of Israelis and 38 percent of Palestinians support a permanent settlement package along the Clinton parameters and the Gen...
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Anne Richard says the United States will dramatically increase the number of Syrian refugees allowed to resettle permanently in the United States from about 350 this year to close to 10,000 annually as the crisis grinds on into its fifth year. Summary The low number of Syrian refugees accepted so far by the United States, attributable in part to Germany and Sweden offering to "take a lot," will increase significantly in...
(JTA)-Citing failures by the organization traditionally responsible for bringing Jews to Israel, the founder of a Jerusalem-based interfaith charity said his organization would begin bringing more Jews to Israel from Europe-starting with Ukraine. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, accused the Jewish Agency for Israel of not responding quickly enough to demand for aliyah sparked by violence in Ukraine, prompting the fellowship to launch...
(JNS.org) Hamas has reportedly renewed work on its terror tunnels, using building materials transferred from Israel for the reconstruction of civilian structures in Gaza following this summer’s war. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Palestinian sources inside of Gaza said that after Israel allowed a limited flow of goods and materials into Gaza, a black market for mortar paste emerged that allowed Hamas to renew construction of concrete slabs used to line the inside of tunnels. Hamas has also started to rebuild its rocket arsenal from ...
Jewish National Fund (JNF) is hosting its Queen of Sheba Mission, the only trip available that brings American and Israeli women together, will depart for Israel for seven days on March 15, 2015. JNF missions are known to inspire and connect participants with the land and her people. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is a unique and unforgettable trip to Israel for women only—no husbands, no boyfriends—just women, experiencing life as their Israeli sisters do. Mission co-chairwoman Vivian Grossman of Weston, Florida, remarked, “The bonds...
(JNS.org)—Germany’s government said Monday that it plans to fund the Israeli navy’s purchase of four corvette warships from the German firm Thyssen Krupp. The funding agreement was reached between the two countries in November, and the German government has pledged as much as $143 million for the warships, according to a report by the German newspaper Bild. The deal must be approved by the German parliament’s budget committee, which will lead to the finalization of a contract by the end of the year, said German government spokesman Steffen...
Two teens arrested in firebombing that severely injured Israeli girl JERUSALEM (JTA)—Two Palestinian teens were arrested in connection with a firebombing that left an 11-year-old Israeli girl fighting for her life. The Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service said in a statement Saturday that the two were arrested Dec. 25 night in the village of Azzoun. The arrests occurred just hours after the attack that severely injured Ayala Shapira and lightly injured her father, Avner, who live in the nearby outpost of El Matan. One of t...
By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA)-In the sun-parched fields near where the largest oil spill in Israeli history poured millions of liters of crude oil into the desert on Dec. 4, an ambitious effort is underway to help reduce global dependency on petroleum for energy. Known as the Eilot Belt, the area is the site of Israel's largest solar energy field. It's the locus of an effort to provide by next year the daytime energy needs for the area's 55,000 residents and all their energy needs by 2020. The...
Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, has launched a crusade against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), tasked with providing “assistance and protection” for five million Palestinian refugees around the world. In Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, UNRWA gives food, aid, and runs schools. Eid said a recent study by well-known Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki shows that 70 percent of Palestinian refugees are seeking financial compensation rather than the “right of re...
ADL: Killing of N.Y. police officers ‘heinous, senseless, shocking’ (JTA)—The Anti-Defamation League called the killing of two New York Police Department officers a “heinous, senseless and shocking assault.” The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were shot in the head through the window of their patrol car in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. Shortly before the killings, the gunman, identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, threatened to shoot two “pigs” in retaliation for death of Eric Garner at the hands of police officers in July. “I’m pu...
LUGANSK, Ukraine (JTA)-In an unheated synagogue with no running water, a dozen Jews are trying to keep warm as temperatures here veer toward the single digits. Not moving too much helps keep the warmth under their thick coats, they say, a technique developed as the group gathered at least once a week to maintain a sense of community in a city torn by ongoing conflict between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army. "We usually stay for about two hours," says Igor Leonidovich, the synagogue's...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-This government was supposed to be different. During the last election campaign in 2012, Israelis seemed to tire of the existential issues that have plagued the country for decades. Barely anyone talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Long-simmering social tensions over the rising cost of living and the economic burdens of the underemployed haredi Orthodox community were going to finally get their due. The Knesset's arrivistes-former television personality Yair Lapid and...
The following is a speech by Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor delivered to the UN General Assembly on Nov. 24. Ambassador Prosor is Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations. Mr. President, I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside. The fact of...
Settlements or Jewish communities? West Bank or Judea and Samaria? East Jerusalem or eastern Jerusalem? Those are some of the language choices that journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are faced with each day-and those choices should not be taken lightly, experts say. "It's the terminology that actually defines the conflict and defines what you think about the conflict," says Ari Briggs, director of Regavim, an Israeli NGO that works on legal land use issues. "Whereas...
