Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Obama administration's anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office's portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe. Circumcision has become a top focus for Ira Forman, the State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. He has been using the pulpit his office provides to warn European governments that moves to ban ritual circumcision could lead to the demise of their countries' Jewish communities. "Because circumcision is essentially universal...
NEW YORK—Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national emergency medical response organization, has issued a list of emergency needs Americans can sponsor as it continues saving lives amid increasing rocket attacks from Gaza. MDA, which does not receive Israeli government funding for its operations, has activated its entire 13,000 volunteer corps and manned all of its 1,000 ambulances in response to sustained rocket fire from Gaza. The latest operations have strained MDA’s resources, which also must be dedicated to standard, day-to-day emergencies...
JERUSALEM—The Helmsley Charitable Trust has announced 1.75 million dollars in grants to two Israeli institutions that help disabled children and adults, as well as their families. These grants are part of a continuing effort to invest in Israel’s leading institutions and critical initiatives toward the goal of strengthening Israel in the field of heath care and assuring that people with disabilities have quality community-based services. The $1,000,000 grant to Shalva, The Association for Mentally and Physically Challenged Children in Israel, i...
Shachar Bar, an art therapist who teaches in Sderot, became increasingly alarmed after seeing the thousands of children of the western Negev suffering the cumulative effects of trauma due to the ongoing barrage of Kassam rockets from Gazan Palestinians. Teachers reported the fear and panic being heightened each time the recorded alert “Color Red” sounded, giving students 15 second to run for cover. “Children experienced real developmental regressions, some began bedwetting,” she said. “They were getting hysterical when the alarm sounded—s...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Had the shrapnel fallen a foot to the right, gas station attendant Michael Savlov would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Dor Alon gas station in southern Tel Aviv. Savlov was with a customer in the station's office Thursday morning when a rocket from Gaza was intercepted overhead by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. The rocket exploded in the air, but shrapnel fell onto the gas station, only narrowly missing the gas tanks. "It was like a truck hitting...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—As rockets from the Gaza Strip targeted Jerusalem for a second straight day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taken to a special safe room. Two of the rockets fired last Thursday afternoon were intercepted by Iron Dome and two landed in open areas. The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility. One of the rockets landed in an area near Jerusalem under the control of the Palestinian Authority. A warning siren in Jerusalem came in the middle of a briefing by Netanyahu during a Knesset c...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It's midnight here and two balding men in blue vests are on the move. Someone has sprayed tear gas at a club two blocks away. Outside a club known as The Mossad, located in a warehouse in the dilapidated Tel Aviv neighborhood of Florentin, groups of high-school students mill about sporting stylish haircuts, revealing clothes and dazed expressions. A boy in a black shirt and jeans lies passed out on the sidewalk as a woman in a blue vest makes sure he has not suffocated on his own...
MOSCOW (JTA)-Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked senior rabbis from Israel and Europe for what he called their help in Russia's fight against the revival of Nazism. Putin made the statement on Wednesday during a meeting in the Russian capital with more than a dozen prominent rabbis, including Berel Lazar, a chief rabbi of Russia, and Yitzchak Yosef and Israel Meir Lau, Israel's chief rabbis. "Of particular concern is the revival of Nazi ideas," Putin told the delegation of rabbis, which...
Damage from Gaza rocket cuts power to 70,000 in strip JERUSALEM (JTA)—A rocket fired from Gaza damaged power lines in Israel that resulted in the loss of power to 70,000 Palestinians in the coastal strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Infrastructure Minister Silvan Shalom instructed the Israel Electric Company not to endanger its employees by repairing the lines from Sunday night’s outage while the threat of rocket attacks from Gaza remains. The lines were knocked down at Kissufim, near the Gaza border. “The power company plans...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Escalations between Hamas and Israel are nothing new. What's missing this time, analysts say, is the alignment of outside interests that has resolved such fights in the past. Egypt's government lacks the influence over Hamas of its predecessors and the United States is in hand-washing mode on the Middle East, said Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service. "In the past, Egyptians could play a major role and America had an interest" in...
MODIIN, Israel (JTA)-They were their mothers' sons. They were all of our sons. They were dear boys. They were martyrs for Israel. They were funny, clever, creative. They are the messengers of the Jewish people in heaven. The joint funeral Tuesday of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach provided a capstone to a harrowing ordeal that over 18 days united Israelis in hope and prayer. When the teens were found dead Monday night, their bodies lying half exposed in a field near Hebron, the...
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched "Operation Protective Edge" in Gaza after at least 80 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel on Monday night. Above Netivot and Ashdod, the Iron Dome missile defense system shot down 12 rockets. In Ashdod, residents fled for shelter as rocket sirens sounded throughout the city, and eight people were injured. Beersheba-Israel's largest southern city-and Ofakim were also subjected to Gaza rocket fire, with most of those rockets either striking open...
Emerging from the chaos of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has gained the world’s attention for its brutal medieval-style Islamic justice and its swift victories in Iraq, threatening to overrun the weak U.S.-backed government there. But now ISIS is also setting its sights on Jordan, threatening to drag Israel into the global jihadist conflict. “They are a vicious and brutal group, and have even done some things that al-Qaeda thought were unwise,” Elliot Abrams, who served as deputy natio...
NEW YORK (JTA) - What does a fervent religious movement do after the death of its singular leader? That was the existential question the Chabad-Lubavitch movement faced 20 years ago this week when its charismatic rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died with no heir. Amid the grief and turbulence following his 1994 death, many believed Chabad would be torn apart by those who believed it should proclaim its departed rebbe as the messiah and those who didn't, or that the messianists would doom the...
By Linda Gradstein The Media Line JERUSALEM—Three of the six young Israelis who were arrested for the murder of 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir have confessed to the killing and have cooperated in a reenactment for police in the Jerusalem forest where the body was found. The murder has sparked outrage in Israel, both because of the brutality of the act — Abu Khdeir was reportedly burned to death — and because, according to media reports, the killers are ultra-Orthodox Jews. “The hand that did this murder is impure,” Rabbi Benny Lau...
JNS.org– The full recording of the emergency call made by one of the kidnapped Israeli teens was released on July 2. On the recording, the murderers can be heard singing in celebration in Arabic, saying “Three!” after gunshots that presumably killed the teens were fired. The 2-minute, 9-second recording was published on the Ynet website. On Tuesday, the first 49 seconds of the call were released by Israeli police. In that portion of the call, a voice, identified as Gilad Shaar by his father, Ofir, says in a whispering voice to police, “They...
“One of the abducted youths put up a serious fight against his captors,” a source connected to the forensic examinations of the bodies of the three teens, told Israel’s Walla News on June 30. The families of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frankel, 16, eulogized their sons in separate ceremonies in their communities, Elad, Talmon, and Nof Ayalon. Yifrach “died a hero,” his grandfather Ezra, said in his eulogy. “He didn’t go like a lamb to the slaughter,” he said, according to The Times of Israel. All three youths had “glorified...
(JTA)—Leaders of the Czech Jewish community criticized a local film festival’s decision to honor actor and director Mel Gibson. Gibson was due to receive a lifetime achievement award last Friday at the Karlovy Vary film festival. But the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities said in a statement July 3 that Gibson was unworthy of the honor both because of a 2006 drunken anti-Semitic rant and because of his controversial 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” which some critics had called anti-Semitic. The federation called the film “one of...
PARIS (JTA) - On their 40th wedding anniversary, Avital and Natan Sharansky went sightseeing in the City of Lights. But the Sharanskys didn't follow the trail of countless couples who come here to kiss at the Eiffel Tower or slip so-called love locks on bridges over the River Seine. Theirs was an itinerary that demonstrated a different kind of commitment. "Avital is taking me to see all the places where she organized protest rallies for my release," Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish...
‘Several Jewish suspects’ arrested in murder of Palestinian teen JERUSALEM (JTA)—”Several Jewish suspects” have been arrested in connection with the murder of a Palestinian teen, Israel’s Shin Bet security service said. The arrests in the July 2 abduction and murder of Muhammad Abu Khieder in eastern Jerusalem came Sunday morning, according to a Shin Bet statement. The suspects are being questioned, according to the statement, which added, “All other details regarding the investigation are under a judicial gag order.” One of the suspects co...
Israel’s cabinet approved a proposal by Israel’s tourism minister to hire up to 1500 Jordanians to work in hotels in Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat. The approval comes amid a growing shortage of workers and as the high summer season begins. “I see this as an important step in Israel-Jordan relations,” Tourism Minister Uzi Landau told The Media Line. “My hope is the Jordanians will come, work and enjoy the people and the salary here.” The workers will all have to be vetted by Israel’s security services. They will enter Israel each morning vi...
The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers-Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16-who'd been kidnapped from a hitchhiking post south of Bethlehem on June 12 were found in a field north of Hebron in Judea-Samaria. Reports started coming in from The Algemeiner, Israel's Channel Two and Channel Ten, CNN, The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Forward around 1 p.m. EDT on Monday, citing sources in the Israeli military. "They were under a pile of rocks in an open field" between Halhul...
They’re divesting from three companies for the crime of selling products to Israel security forces and Jews in Judea and Samaria. “In no way is this a reflection of our lack of love” for the Jewish people. So assured Heath Rada, the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s moderator, at their annual Assembly on Friday, June 20, 2014, moments after his church voted to divest from three companies. Their crime: selling products to Israel security forces and Jews living in Judea and Samaria. Supporters of divestment erupted in tears when the results were re...
NEW YORK-Taglit-Birthright Israel has passed a significant milestone with the designation of the program's 400,000th participant: Ryan Hunter, 20, a student from Syosset, N.Y. (Long Island). By reaching this milestone, Taglit-Birthright Israel turns a corner and has now provided a free heritage trip to half of the young Jewish adults who are eligible every year. Hunter is the group captain for the 'Amazing Israel Lacrosse' Taglit-Birthright Israel special interest group tour, in which he and...
Almost every day, Nadia Matar, 48, steers her battered white SUV along the hilly roads between Jerusalem and Gush Etzion to visit the soldiers stationed at Shdema. The revival of the small former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) army base located on Israeli-controlled land is one of the concrete achievements of Nadia and Yehudit Katsover, 66, her co-chair in the activist Women in Green movement. But Shdema is just the tip of the iceberg in what the women hope to achieve in the larger battle to shift...
