Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1905 - 1929 of 2213
U.S. immigration to Israel drops 13 percent JERUSALEM (JTA)—Immigration to Israel rose slightly in 2013 to 19,200, but that included a significant drop in immigrants from the United States. Last year Israel absorbed 18,940 new immigrants. The most dramatic increase in aliyah came from France, with 3,120 immigrants, a 63 percent increase over the previous year. The Jewish Agency for Israel credited its own programs to introduce French young people to Israel for the rise. Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption and the Jewish Agency are...
The security situation in Israel has grown increasingly tense of late, with a spike in terror attacks carried out on numerous fronts, and through various means, by both recognized terror groups and presumed “lone wolf” assailants. But such developments don’t rattle VADM (ret.) Yedidia Yaari. “I sleep well because I know we (Israelis) have the capability to outsmart our enemies in every respect,” says Yaari—president and CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Israel’s second-largest government owned defense company—in an interview with...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)-On a busy street near the Dutch Parliament, three white musicians in blackface regale passersby with holiday tunes about the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, and his slave, Black Pete. Many native Dutchmen view dressing up as Black Pete in December as a venerable tradition, but others consider it a racist affront to victims of slavery. With Holland marking the 150th anniversary of abolition this year, the controversy over Black Pete has reached new heights. Hundreds...
(JNS.org) Canada has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to dismiss its special investigator, Richard Falk, over a recent statement accusing Israel of having “genocidal intentions” against the Palestinians in an interview on the Russia Today (RT) television network. “When you target a group, an ethnic group and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal,” Falk told RT. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird called on the U.N. to dismiss Falk immediate...
The media reported that Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), rejected the peace proposals submitted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The Palestinians leaked that Abbas sent a letter to Kerry reiterating his complete opposition to the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This was declared a “red line” that the Palestinians will not cross. This “red line” is not just about semantics, but rather the essence of the conflict. The Palestinian position amounts to denying the Jews the right to establish their state in t...
(Israel21c)-In an upcoming space mission, the Vecoy platform-which tricks viruses into committing suicide-will be tested to see how it works in zero gravity. The Israeli company Vecoy Nanomedicine became a media sensation last year after ISRAEL21c covered the company's virus "decoy" designed to outwit the world's worst viral enemies before they do any damage. The biomed technology platform tricks a virus into committing suicide, a tactic which could eventually neutralize viral threats like...
BERLIN (JTA)—A painting by Marc Chagall discovered in a sensational art trove found in Munich is believed to have been looted by the Nazis from a Latvian Jewish family. According to the German newspaper Bild, evidence was uncovered that the painting from the collection hidden for decades by the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, may have been looted during the Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union in 1941. Experts told Bild that the painting, “Allegorical Scene,” is now worth nearly $1.5 million. The painting was claimed in the 1950s by Savel...
WADI AL-NAAM, Israel (JTA)-In this unofficial Bedouin town of 14,000 not far from Beersheva in the Negev Desert, families live in clusters of shanties with intermittent electricity provided by generators or solar panels. A communal structure has soft plastic walls and dirt floors, with a small pit at one end for an open fire that provides the room's only heat. Roads in many places are demarcated only by piles of rocks. For decades, Bedouin tribes like those living in Wadi al-Naam and similar set...
By Cnaan Liphshiz PARIS (JTA)-In an overcrowded conference room in the heart of Paris' 14th arrondissement, 100 French Jews are losing their patience. They have gathered at the Paris office of the Jewish Agency for Israel for a lecture on immigrating to Israel, but the agency staff is running behind. Its 20 staffers are coping with a 57 percent jump in the number of French Jews moving to Israel over the last year and a surge of applications. In addition to four weekly public talks, they are...
U.S. rented apartment to spy on Israel’s defense minister JERUSALEM (JTA)—The United States in 2007 rented an apartment directly across the road from then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, it was reported in the wake of revelations that the U.S. and British intelligence were spying on Israeli leaders. Washington said the apartment was rented for a Marine working in the U.S. Embassy’s security department, Yediot Acharonot reported Sunday, adding that Israeli intelligence discovered that a large amount of electronic equipment was delivered to and s...
Jerusalem and its environs were blanketed with snow, causing access routes to Jerusalem, including Highway 1, to be blocked for part of the day as municipal crews worked to clear the roads in the city; school was canceled for the day. Shown here are young people sitting at a cafe table set up amid the snow on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on Dec. 15. Some two feet of snow fell on Mount Hermon in Israel's north. Roads were closed due to flooding in the Negev Desert in the south. Syria and Lebanon also...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Amid simmering tensions over Iran policy, the Obama and Netanyahu governments appear to have quietly forged common ground in recent weeks on Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the United States accepting that a possible “framework” agreement might not address every outstanding issue in the negotiations. Such an agreement, the United States and Israel seem to agree, would maintain a role for Israel in providing for its security, presumably by maintaining some form of military presence in the West Bank. What’s not clear is if the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When it comes to the deal between Iran and major powers, Israel and the pro-Israel community are retreating from a strategy of confrontation and working instead to influence the contours of a final agreement. In a conference call last week, Howard Kohr, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s executive director, advised pro-Israel activists and leaders not to confront the Obama administration directly over the “difference of strategy” between the United States and Israel on Iran. Instead, Kohr said to focus on passing...
Germany’s largest synagogue, on Rykestrasse in Berlin, reopened in 2007 after a lavish restoration. The synagogue, with a 1,200-person capacity, has been described as one of the jewels of Germany’s Jewish community. And although this event happened six years ago, the interesting thing about it was that the gathering of rabbis bringing the Torah to the synagogue in a ceremony witnessed by political leaders and Holocaust survivors from around the world was led by former Temple Israel Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski. Restoration of the neo-classical bui...
Ron Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), called upon Hillary Clinton to present the organization's second annual Theodor Herzl Award to Marion and Elie Wiesel last month at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Clinton recalled a lecture Wiesel gave at the White House on the eve of a new millennium. "He emphasized that indifference is more dangerous than anger and hatred," she said. "Elie's own story of survival has steeled the world's resolve that an atrocity like the Holocaust can...
Now that the U.S. and other P5+1 powers made an interim nuclear deal with Iran without Israel's involvement, the Jewish state is free to act as it sees fit on the Iranian issue without consulting America, former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in an exclusive interview with JNS.org. The U.S. "has indicated that they are going to act independently of Israel as it relates to Iran," Huckabee said, calling that a "very foolish policy." "I think now [the...
(JTA)-On the last evening in November, at least 31 protesters were taken into custody and dozens treated for injuries following a violent confrontation with Ukrainian police in Kiev's Independence Square. But that wasn't enough to intimidate the crowds who have occupied the main square of the capital since Nov. 21. Thousands showed up the following morning, including a young woman carrying a 10-liter pot of fresh borscht to help the crowd through another cold day on the square. It was "like a...
It was a true miracle for a young couple from Dolev, whose one-year-old daughter was kidnapped by local Palestinians that had hijacked the family’s car on Tuesday afternoon, December 3. Driving home to Dolev, a community located in the southern Samarian hills north of Jerusalem, the Israeli mother had her daughter buckled in the back car seat, when a Palestinian vehicle that had been tailgating suddenly bumped into the rear end of her car. “I pulled over and got out to check what had happened. There were three Palestinians in the other veh...
Iran: No traces of ex-FBI agent Levinson (JTA)—There are no traces in Iran of Robert Levinson, the retired American-Jewish FBI agent who vanished in the country six years ago, according to Iran’s foreign minister. Javad Zarif made the assertion Sunday on the CBS news show “Face the Nation” two days after the Washington Post reported that Levinson had been working for the CIA in a rogue operation. The U.S. government has said publicly that Levinson, who left the FBI in 1998, was in Iran on business as a private citizen. Emails and other documen...
Renen Schorr explains how Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School saved Israel’s film industry and propelled it to international acclaim. On December 12, audiences across the world will mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Perlov, an Israeli filmmaker most of them haven’t even heard of. In 39 different countries at 50 arty venues, 5,000 people will watch a movie inspired by one of Perlov’s masterpieces and produced by graduates of and students at the Sam Spiegel Film & TV School in Jerusalem. This simultaneous screeni...
(JTA)—They can’t agree on the project’s goal. They can’t agree on who supports it. They can’t even agree on its name. But when it comes to the Israeli government’s plan to relocate 30,000 Negev Bedouin, representatives and allies of the Bedouin community agree with the right wing on one thing: the Prawer plan must be stopped. At a meeting this week, leaders of an alliance between Negev Bedouin and several left-wing groups adopted a proposal to join with “right-wing opponents” of a bill that would relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from th...
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (JTA)-In the early 1940s, at a time when it was virtually impossible for a South African of color to secure a professional apprenticeship, the Jewish law firm Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman gave a young black man a job as a clerk. It was among the first encounters in what would become a lifelong relationship between Nelson Mandela and South Africa's tiny Jewish community, impacting the statesman's life at several defining moments-from his arrival in Johannesburg from the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)— There’s the six-month interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program that trades some sanctions relief for a freeze on Iran’s nuclear program. And then there’s the interim before the interim begins. Little noticed in the wake of the historic pact reached last month by Iran and the major powers is the fact that technically, the deal is not yet underway. A commission of experts from the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain, China and France, working with Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, first must work out the technic...
SAHARONIM, Israel (JTA)- A long chain-link fence with barbed wire seems to rise up out of the desert at the new Sadot facility in Israel for African migrants. Situated along Israel's barren border with Egypt and across the street from the notorious Ketziot Prison, which houses thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Sadot is slated to begin operations this month as an "open residence facility" for some 3,300 African migrants. In a large dirt field, long rows of railroad-style red-and-beige rooms...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-At least 28 protesters were arrested and 15 police officers injured during protests over a plan to resettle Bedouin into permanent communities in southern Israel. The thousands of protesters in the Negev Desert, Haifa, eastern Jerusalem and the Arab-Israel community of Taibe threw rocks at police forces and blocked roads as part of a so-called Day of Rage against the plan. Police used water cannons, tear gas and sound grenades to disperse the demonstrators, according to The New...
