Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA)—Naftali Bennett and Tzipi Livni don’t agree on much. Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, sees the West Bank as an inseparable part of the Jewish state and wants Israel to annex its settlements there. Livni, the justice minister, says Israel can remain a Jewish democracy only by evacuating settlements. But on one thing they agree: Israel must break its status quo with the Palestinians. Bennett and Livni were two of the five politicians who presented a range of responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last Sunda...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Is the new Palestinian government kosher under U.S. law? A range of American Middle East policy analysts and current and former U.S. officials say that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threaded the needle last week and created a government of technocrats untainted by Hamas and not subject to its influence, although Hamas has declared its backing of the government. That could all change, however, if elections to replace the interim government are held in about six...
Kerry calls for release of kidnapped Israelis, cites likely Hamas involvement (JTA)—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for the immediate release of three kidnapped Israeli teens and noted the “many indications” pointing to Hamas’ involvement. In a statement released Sunday afternoon, more than 48 hours after the teens’ abduction, Kerry said he “strongly condemns” the kidnapping and reiterated that Hamas is a “terrorist organization.” Kerry said Washington officials “continue to offer our full support for Israel in its search for the miss...
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA)—It isn’t every day that Jewish organizations reject funding for Holocaust commemorations. But that’s what happened in Hungary this spring when Jewish groups refused nearly $1 million in special state grants to protest what they see as the government’s whitewashing of Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. “We wanted to send a very strong message to the government that we are interested in truthful, not symbolic, remembrance, and this is something money cannot buy,” sai...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Blocks away from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the headquarters of two major banks, in the corner of the lobby of a boutique hotel, Nimrod Gruber sticks his hand into an ATM. A few seconds later, a QR code prints out. Gruber takes the slip of paper and walks away, no cash in hand. He’s not worried. He owns the ATM, and there’s nothing like it in the Middle East. It identifies users by scanning their palms, and instead of dispensing dollars, euros or shekels, it dispenses Bitcoin. “It shows up in your account in 30 seconds...
Israel's 120-seat parliament today chose long-time Likud member Reuven Rivlin as the country's next president who will succeed the popular Shimon Peres, who retires next month at the age of 90. Rivlin, who served two terms as speaker of the Knesset, has been a member of parliament for almost 20 years. He won on the second round of voting after none of the original five candidates, including Nobel chemistry laureate Dan Schectman, failed to achieve an overall majority. Rivlin beat out rival...
Elie Wiesel, humanitarian, Nobel Prize laureate and chairman of The Algemeiner’s Advisory Board, said he turned down an offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to succeed Shimon Peres as president of the State of Israel, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported. In an interview, Wiesel said he was flattered, but didn’t think the job was for him: “Why should I be president? Leave me alone. I write books. I wasn’t meant to do that.” Wiesel said Netanyahu had telephoned him in New York three times: “You will be the president of the Sta...
Now here’s an episode for Breaking Bad. In an “Only-in-Israel” moment, border police recently delayed hauling in a suspected drug dealer until he fulfilled the ancient Jewish ritual of seeing to his son’s brit mila (circumcision). When a team of officers first arrived at the suspect’s residence in southern Israel, they were met at the front door by a 60-year-old woman and four children, who tried to stall the raid. But police pulled out their search warrant, and busted down the door in order to search the premises, according to Israel’s Channel...
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new partner, Hamas, praised an overnight shooting attack against soldiers at a checkpoint in northern Samaria, Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported. The Gaza-based group lauded what it called “the shooting attack that took place at the Tapuach Junction in eastern Shechem that led to the death of Alaa Mahmoud Odeh and the wounding of a Zionist soldier,” Ma’ariv said. Israeli troops shot and killed Odeh, 31, of the village of Awartaa when he pulled out a pistol and opened fire on them, near midnight. But while Ham...
(JTA)-It was the threat that European authorities dreaded-and Europe's Jews suffered the first blow. The suspect arrested in the attack last month at the Jewish museum in Brussels that left four dead was a French-born jihadist who had returned home from fighting in Syria. Now European Jewish institutions are left to reckon with the danger of European jihadists coming home from Syria with deadly new skills, extremist fervor and malicious intentions. "There has been a change and it requires us to...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Sol Lapidus earned the Order of Lenin, the Soviet Union's highest medal, for his role as a partisan fighter in the Belarussian forest during World War II. Lapidus proudly wore the bronze-and-red medal pinned to his suit jacket last Wednesday at the United Nations, where he joined approximately 150 mostly white-haired Jewish Red Army veterans, their lapels festooned with similar decorations. The small army of aged veterans had gathered to make history again, to announce what was...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Which way will Presbyterians go this time? That’s a question Jewish groups and their Presbyterian allies are nervously asking as they work to head off divestment efforts within the church targeting Israel. The fear is the efforts could pass this time after a narrow defeat two years ago. A successful divestment vote at the biennial Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly this month could precipitate a rupture between the mainline Protestant denomination and the Jewish community, they warn. Jewish-Presbyterian rel...
By June Glazer Most people who donate to Jewish National Fund (JNF) for tree planting in Israel do so in honor or in memory of loved ones. So, too, with Ron Werner, board president of JNF's Mountain States region, who, on his own and with his family, has planted more than 1,500 trees. However, his most recent donation of an additional 1,000 trees, together with his partner, Jim Hering, may be a rare instance when those loved ones are canine. In late May, Werner and Hering donated a grove in...
Complaints about Hitler video led to firing, Jewish banker claims (JTA)—A former executive at BNP Paribas North America Inc. filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he was fired by the bank after complaining about a training video that featured Nazi imagery. Jean-Marc Orlando said in the suit filed Friday in Manhattan U.S. District Court that he was terminated as managing director in the bank’s fixed-income division in New York after complaining about the video portraying the head of a competing bank as Hitler, Reuters reported. Orlando, who was...
By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA)-The new Palestinian unity government brought together rivals Hamas and Fatah, but it has opened a divide between allies Israel and the United States. "I'm deeply troubled by the announcement that the United States will work with the Palestinian government backed by Hamas," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. The Obama administration's announcement this week that it would continue working with and funding the Pa...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Its leaders call it a “historic development,” a “paradigm shift” and a “change in the relationship” between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. But when it comes to the details of the Joint Initiative of the Government of Israel and World Jewry, key questions have yet to be answered, including what it will do and who will fund it. Conceived last year as a partnership between the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency for Israel and major Diaspora Jewish bodies, the initiative aims to strengthen Diaspora Jewish identity and connections b...
ALGEMEINER-A day after Pope Francis was pictured praying at Israel's security barrier on Sunday, beneath a slogan that compared Palestinians with Jews under the Nazi regime, Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu explained to him in no uncertain terms why the wall was erected in the first place. At a Jerusalem memorial for terror victims, Netanyahu told the pope, "When my son was 10 years old, his best friend was a girl, a beautiful Ethiopian girl, who sat next to him in class. One day she didn't...
An Israeli team hopes to send a Torah scroll to the moon’s surface in an effort to preserve a part of Jewish culture in case of an apocalypse, Britain’s Daily Mail reported on Friday. The scroll would travel outside Earth’s atmosphere with other Earth artifacts as part of the Google Lunar XPrize mission, a competition among private companies to send vehicles to the moon with the goal of maintaining Earth’s relics beyond a world-ending event, such as a nuclear war. The sacred text would be transported in a capsule enabling it to survive on the...
After two intense days of religious ceremonies in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, unscheduled photo opportunities, and debilitating traffic arrangements, Israelis and interfaith relations experts are trying to attach the appropriate symbolism to Pope Francis’s visit to the region. Nearly every stop made by the pontiff was subjected to simultaneous scrutiny and praise. While long-term tensions between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church were made apparent by the trip, some experts are a...
TEL AVIV—Miriam and Emmanuel Riva were “the cream of the crop,” grieving family and friends said of the 50-year-old couple, slain in May 24’s shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Two employees of the center were also killed, Israel Radio said. The couple, who lived in Tel Aviv and leave behind a 15- and a 17-year-old daughter, were Israeli Foreign Ministry employees for the last four years, and were due to return to Israel on May 29, friends said. “Up until two years ago, Emmanuel was the vice-consul in Berlin; they were...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—One small step by Israelis could become a giant leap for the State of Israel. At a Tel Aviv University laboratory, a team of 20 Israelis is building a spacecraft they believe will make Israel only the fourth country—after the United States, Russia and China—to touch down on the moon. The project, known as SpaceIL, looks like a long shot. The three-legged hexagonal craft appears too puny for interstellar travel, measuring just 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Of the initiative’s three founders, only one holds an academic degree...
After 52 years, the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” tuned up for a fervently anticipated June 4 gig in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park. And the impetus for the Rolling Stones’ historic arrival during their 14 On Fire European tour came from none other than Bob Dylan, according to Israel’s Channel 2 news. “Bob Dylan was coming off stage,” guitarist Ronnie Wood replied in a video interview to reporters’ questions, “and I asked him, ‘where you going?’ and he said, ‘Israel! We’re going to Tel Aviv!’ “He had a big smile on his face, because he l...
KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—At an empty Chabad school near the banks of the Dnieper River here in Ukraine’s capital city, six uniformed Jews with handguns and bulletproof vests are practicing urban warfare. Leading the training last week is a brawny man who at irregular intervals barks Hebrew-language commands at the men to test their drilled responses to different scenarios, including “ma’atzor” (firearm malfunction) and “mekhabel” (terrorist). The men, who belong to Kiev’s newly formed Jewish Self-Defense Force, all have some combat skills from the...
Washington Jewish Week The killing of a major pro-Israel bill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week has ignited another round of finger pointing between Democratic and Republican legislators, with both sides accusing the other of playing politics. Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) pulled the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013 (S. 462) from the committee's agenda May 19, after ranking member Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) proposed an amendment requiring the...
Israel’s Security Cabinet: No negotiations with gov’t that includes Hamas JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Security Cabinet unanimously decided not to negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes the terrorist organization Hamas. The Security Cabinet met Monday following the swearing-in of the Palestinian unity government. “Today, Abu Mazen said yes to terrorism and no to peace,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “This is the direct continuation of Abu Maz...
