Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2030 - 2054 of 2213
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel handily won the most medals at the 19th Maccabiah Games, which came to a close in Jerusalem. The games closing ceremony last Tuesday at Teddy Stadium featured some of Israel’s most popular pop music groups, such as Balkan Beat Box and Infected Mushroom. Speakers urged the athletes to consider making Israel their permanent home. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the National Basketball Association, presented the Most Outstanding Ath...
West Bank settlements join Israel’s list of national priority communities JERUSALEM (JTA)—Fifteen West Bank settlements were added to the list of communities approved by Israel’s Cabinet that are entitled to extra government benefits. Some 90 settlements were among the 600 national priority communities on the list that was approved Sunday by a vote of 15-0 with four abstentions, including Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s lead negotiator in the revived peace talks with the Palestinians. Four of the settlements were legalized this year. S...
Suppose that Israeli President Shimon Peres and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat entered therapy together. “What keeps you up at night?” the American therapist asks the 90-year-old Israeli president in a soothing voice. “My prostate, heartburn, and Iran—to bomb or not to bomb?” Peres answers in his characteristic Polish accent. She then turned to Arafat. “You’re in a safe place here,” she promises. “He is trying to kill me—to poison me!” Arafat yells about Peres. Many Palestinians still believe that Israel poisoned Arafat, who...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The inauguration of a new Iranian president is an opportunity to address international concern over Iran’s nuclear program, the White House said. The White House statement Sunday, a day after Hassan Rohani was inaugurated, was notably not in President Obama’s name and did not congratulate Rohani but the “Iranian people.” “We again congratulate the Iranian people for making their voices heard during Iran’s election,” the statement said. “The inauguration of President Rohani presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to re...
ERUSALEM (JTA)—Early in the morning o, at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av, the Western Wall plaza was a cacophonous mess. Women of the Wall, the activist group that holds women’s prayer services each month at the site known as the Kotel, loudly sang festive prayers at a spot far from the wall itself. Police had barricaded them there, ostensibly for their own protection. A few feet away, a group of haredi Orthodox boys shouted at them, called them Nazis, blew whistles, waved signs and...
When Jerusalem resident Eli Beer implemented a neighborhood-based volunteer emergency response system to Israel in 2006, he wasn’t dreaming of prizes, only of saving lives. But in recognition of the fact that United Hatzalah of Israel has brought together some 2,100 trained volunteers from every sector of Israeli society to respond to medical emergencies in Arab and Jewish neighborhoods without discrimination, Beer and Arab-Israeli United Hatzalah-East Jerusalem leader Murad Alyan were chosen to receive the 2013 Victor J. Goldberg IIE Prize f...
Mika Bromberg stood outside the Israeli Prime Minister’s office holding a black-and-white poster of Avraham Bromberg, her brother-in-law and an Israeli soldier who was killed while hitchhiking in 1981. The attackers shot him, stole his gun, and pushed him out of the car. He was found on the side of a highway, and died of his wounds two days later. Maher and Kareem Younis, two Arab citizens of Israel, were tried and found guilty of the murder, and received a sentence of life imprisonment, later reduced to 40 years. In an ironic twist, one of the...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Eventually, all Jews will end up in Israel, Cliff Katz says. But for now, a labor dispute in the Jewish state is holding things up. Katz, 47, decided to immigrate from Texas about a year ago. He filled out all the paperwork, paid the fees and already had two job interviews lined up for later this summer. But the dispute between the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s union and the Finance Ministry has led the Foreign Ministry to halt all consular services, including processing new imm...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Women of the Wall asked the rabbi of the Western Wall to allow the group to use one of the site’s Torah scrolls. In a letter sent Sunday, Women of the Wall made the request to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz for their Rosh Chodesh prayer service, marking the start of the new Jewish month. The group asked to use one of the site’s 100 scrolls available for public use or to bring in its own. According to regulations established several years ago by Rabinowitz, worshippers are not allowed to bring a Torah scroll from outside the site....
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Cabinet unanimously approved the appointment of Ron Dermer as Israeli ambassador to the United States. The appointment of Dermer, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was approved Sunday during the regular weekly Cabinet meeting. Dermer, who immigrated to Israel from Florida 15 years ago, succeeds Michael Oren, a New Jersey native. Oren announced on July 5 that he would be vacating his post in the fall. “Ron is one of the most talented and dedicated people I know,” Netanyahu said after the vot...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Israeli Cabinet approved a measure that would require a public referendum or vote on any peace agreement that involves withdrawing from land Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Cabinet approved the legislation, which will create a new Basic Law, at its regular meeting on Sunday. The legislation will be brought to a vote of the full Knesset on Wednesday for a first reading. “It is important that every citizen have a direct vote on fateful decisions such as these that will determine the future of the state,” Prime...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel will refuse to cooperate with the European Union in West Bank areas under Israeli control in retaliation for the EU’s new guidelines concerning the occupied territories. Under the orders of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, the Israel Defense Forces’ civil administration will stop cooperating with the European Union on joint projects to benefit the Palestinians. The decision to cease cooperation with the EU in Area C of the West Bank was first reported on Hebrew news websites in Israel on July 25 and confirmed by Th...
(JTA)—Israel is prepared to make “very serious territorial concessions” if the Palestinian Authority recognizes Israel’s Jewish character, senior Israeli minister Yuval Steinitz told a British newspaper. In an interview published July 25 in The Daily Telegraph, Steinitz, Israel’s international relations minister, told The Daily Telegraph, “We are ready for a two states for two people solution. “Both sides will have to make very significant concessions and very difficult concessions. We will probably have to make very serious territorial c...
CAIRO—Muhammad Rizq slowly ascended the pulpit at the Al-Munira mosque in Imbaba, a poor northern Cairo neighborhood. His brusque leg movements made the wood creak with every step. “What do the people want?” he asked his flock rhetorically. “Do we want Islamic law or what the (Muslim) Brotherhood offered—civil strife?” As Egypt splits into two rival camps pitting secularists against Islamists, the puritanical Salafis are on the sidelines unsure of their next move. Salafis are Sunni Muslims associated with a strict, literal approach to Islam. T...
MUSRARA, Jerusalem – It is virtually impossible to eat a watermelon by yourself. The juicy red fruit begs to be shared, and in a large vacant lot just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, all kinds of people are sharing plates of watermelon and salty cheese. The event is called “The Meeting Point” and it harkens back to the 1970s when this area, which was a no-man’s land between Israel and Jordan from 1948 to 1967—was home to watermelon stands that brought Jerusalemites together. Today, the organizers have built a large wooden “bar...
NEVE ILAN, Israel (JTA)—Luke Rosener removed his orange T-shirt, changed into a white dress shirt and alighted from a chartered bus. The garb was a far cry from the uniform Rosener will wear while playing for the U.S. volleyball team at the Maccabiah Games, the 78-nation sports competition that began this week in Israel. The attire was more befitting a religious ceremony—in this case, his bar mitzvah. Rosener, 22, of Cupertino, Calif., had never had a bar mitzvah, owing to his family’s finan...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Michael Oren was deep inside the State Department, relaxed and taking on all comers: He had the facts on his side. It was 2004 and the department was reviewing newly declassified National Security Agency evidence reinforcing Israel’s longstanding claim that its 1967 air attack on the USS Liberty spy ship was a mistake. The attack killed 34 American personnel. Oren, a preeminent historian of the Six-Day War, was not suffering gladly those at the State Department conference who...
Gunmen in Sinai have stepped up attacks on Egypt’s police there, killing three policemen in separate attacks July 18. Earlier last week three cement workers were killed in a similar incident. Now Egyptian police are massing for an offensive in Sinai, with Israel’s tacit support. Israel has already allowed two infantry battalions to be deployed near the towns of Al-Arish and Rafah. Over the past few years, the Sinai has become increasingly lawless with Bedouins, Palestinians and other groups using Sinai for smuggling weapons and drugs into bot...
When Israeli doctors performed a CT scan on Abdulrazak, an 8-year-old Muslim boy from Ethiopia who was almost mauled to death by a wild hyena, they were surprised to find the rabid animal—that caused severe head, scalp and eye injuries to the young victim—had also taken a piece of his jaw bone. So, doctors at the government-run Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya added a bone graft operation to the list of planned life-saving surgeries already set up. “We’re trying to perform all the surgeri...
Thomas, pioneering journalist who retired following anti-Israel gibes, dies (JTA)—Helen Thomas, who paved the way for female journalists in Washington and beyond and retired after saying Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine,” has died. Thomas, who reported on every U.S. president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama working mostly for United Press International, died Saturday at her home in Washington from what was described as a long illness. She was 92. She was known for ending many...
Twitter [has] agreed to release data identifying users to French authorities in response to a January ruling by a French court regarding anti-Semitic tweets posted last October under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew). Users had jumped on the chance to tweet phrases like “a good Jew is a dead Jew,” ultimately forcing the French Jewish students’ union (UEJF) to file a lawsuit against Twitter for allowing that content to appear. [The] decision by Twitter was “a great victory in the fight against...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—During Ramadan, Muslim communities around the world experience a month of fasting, devotion and increased consciousness of their faith. They also remember those who are suffering around the world and seek an end to the forces of hatred that lead to violence against people of all faiths. The spirit of Ramadan, which lasts this year through Aug. 7, can serve as a positive force to bring people together and a powerful reminder of the common humanity that all people share. Muslim communities collect donations to aid those in n...
RAMALLAH—Palestinians are torn between being happy that many have received permits to visit Jerusalem and Israel during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan (July 8-Aug. 7), and being concerned for the West Bank shops which will lose a great deal of business to stores in Israel. Ramadan is considered the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. Religious Muslims all over the world fast from sunrise to sunset. At the end of the month, Muslims celebrate Eid Al Fitr where they visit relatives or take a few days off to travel. On a recent morning, d...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands—The intensity with which Israel reacted last week to new European guidelines prohibiting support for projects based in disputed territories surprised not only EU diplomats, but also their Israeli counterparts. The guidelines, which preclude already nonexistent EU grants to Israeli entities in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene an emergency meeting and release a sardonic statement t...
