Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commended U.S. President Donald Trump on his "historic" summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on Tuesday. "I commend U.S. President Donald Trump on the historic summit in Singapore. This is an important step in the effort to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons," he said in a statement. Netanyahu, who has been outspoken in his warnings regarding Iran's nuclear program, also praised the American leader for his "strong stand" against...
Palestinians from the Gaza Strip once again launched burning kites at civilian communities on the Israeli side of the border Tuesday, setting hundreds of dunams of farmland alight adjacent to Kibbutz Nir Am, Sapir College and Netiv Ha'Asara. In response, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) announced Tuesday that it will sue Hamas in international legal court for the massive environmental damages inflicted on JNF land surrounding the Gaza border. The area has been hit hard in the last two months with...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Of the more than 60 deaths that occurred during the recent clashes between Israel and Palestinians at the Gaza border, none was as divisive as that of Layla Ghandour. Ghandour, an 8-month-old girl, died after an uncle, himself only 12, brought her to the edge of the protest zone, where she was reported to have inhaled Israeli tear gas. Palestinians immediately raised Ghandour as a symbol of Israeli oppression, elevating the infant to the status of martyr and blaming the Israeli a...
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Monday that the media should either figure out a better way to deal with the border protests or stop its negative coverage of the Jewish state. Addressing a media conference in Jerusalem, Friedman said that news outlets have been unfair in their coverage of the deadly protests on the Gaza border over the past few months. He advised reporters to “keep your mouths shut” unless they know better than Israel how to deal with the demonstrations. Some criticism of Israel may be legitimate, Friedman all...
JERUSALEM-It's easy to spot Iris Yifrach as she walks through the crowds in a packed shopping mall in central Israel. And it's not just because she's wearing a bright yellow blouse and matching headscarf. Yifrach has been a public figure since June 2014, when her 19-year-old son, Eyal, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists in the West Bank. For 18 days that month, Israel and Jewish communities worldwide were gripped by his June 12 disappearance along with two Jewish 16-year-olds,...
(JTA)—Israelis want nothing more than for their country to be considered normal. That may have to wait. A much-anticipated soccer game between the Argentine and Israeli national teams was cancelled Wednesday because, Israeli and Argentine officials say, of physical threats made to the Argentine players—including megastar forward Lionel Messi. The exhibition game was set for Saturday night in Jerusalem, less than a week before the beginning of the World Cup. Beyond the disappointment of tens of thousands of Israeli soccer fans, the can...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel should withdraw as host of the Eurovision song contest if it is not held in Jerusalem, an Israeli government minister said. “I will recommend to the government that if the Eurovision is not in Jerusalem, then it wouldn’t be right to host it,” Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on Thursday morning. Her statement came a day after Argentina’s national soccer team canceled a friendly match in Jerusalem over pressure and physical threats from pro-Palestinian groups. “It will cost Isr...
‘The Band’s Visit’ wins 10 Tony Awards, including for best musical (JTA)—“The Band’s Visit,” a jewel-box musical based on an Israeli film about an Egyptian band stranded in a hardscrabble Negev town, won the 2018 Tony Award for best musical. “The Band’s Visit” dominated its categories during the 72nd annual Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. Ari’el Stachel, the California-born son of an Israeli-Yemeni father and an Ashkenazi mother from New York, won the award for best featured actor in a musical for his performance a...
(JTA)-A Ugandan rabbi called on Israel to recognize his community after the government ruled against allowing members to move to the Jewish state. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu confirmed a report in Haaretz last week that the Israeli Interior Ministry had denied a community member's immigration application. The Interior Ministry, according to Sizomu, said the decision represented its stance on the Ugandan Jewish community, not just the applicant, Kibita Yosef. Sizomu, who leads the community of...
NEW YORK—Jewish National Fund revealed its new Plant Your Way website that easily allows individuals to raise money for a future trip to Israel while helping build the land of Israel. First introduced in 2000, Plant Your Way has allowed many hundreds of young people a personal fundraising platform to raise money for a trip to Israel while giving back at the same time. Over the last 18 years, more than $1.3 million has been generated for Jewish National Fund projects, typically by high school students. The new platform allows p...
The US condemned the Palestinians following the worst day of bombing by Gaza-based terror organizations that Israel has experienced since Operation Protective Edge, and called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the UNSC "should be outraged and respond" to the largest attacks emanating from Gaza since 2014, which are "directed at innocent Israeli civilians." Throughout Tuesday and the following night, the Gaza-based Hamas and...
(JTA)—A U.S.-drafted statement condemning rocket attacks on Israel was blocked in the United Nations Security Council by Kuwait. Kuwait is a non-permanent member of the council and represents the Arab countries. It blocked the resolution proposed on Wednesday ahead of an emergency Security Council meeting called by the United States to discuss the nearly 24 hours of rocket and mortar strikes by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip on southern Israeli communities. Kuwait had circulated its own draft resolution about two weeks ago c...
Israel Air Force aircraft on May 22 bombed an "underground Hamas terror infrastructure" in northern Gaza and two military targets that belong to the terror organization's naval force. The IDF stated that the strikes were in response to the cross-border incident that occurred earlier in the day in which a number of terrorists infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip and set a military post on fire. Palestinian sources reported that the strike on the naval target set a boat on fire. The IDF...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—An Israeli woman mocked a Chabad rabbi at Ben Gurion Airport as he helped another man don tefillin. The woman, whose actions were captured on a cellphone video posted on Facebook, mocked the men, laughing and screeching on Monday morning as they practiced the religious rite. She yelled at them in Hebrew to “move because you are bothering me” and asked rhetorically, “Why are you doing this here? There are people here.” Several people in the terminal asked her to tone down, but instead she became louder. The video, which has...
(JTA)—Jewish converts in America may have a much harder time being accepted in Israel because of a new set of regulations proposed by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. If adopted, some activists in Israel say, the new guidelines for religious courts could drive a deeper wedge between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. The Chief Rabbinate, which controls Jewish marriage, divorce, conversion and burial in the Jewish state, is largely run by haredi Orthodox leaders. For years it has clashed with rabbis in America, even Orthodox ones, who have more liberal int...
Roseanne sobbed and apologized about racist tweet in unaired interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (JTA)—Roseanne Barr reportedly cried and apologized for her racist tweet in a podcast interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Barr “was sobbing and very apologetic about the whole thing,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, which cited an unnamed source. Boteach did not air the interview. The call in to the podcast came two days after ABC canceled her show last week over the tweet mocking Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama...
(JNS)-Gaza's second-largest terrorist faction, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is leading the current dangerous escalation of the security situation, which may yet escalate further, and which represents the most serious flare-up of violence since the 2014 armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. Col. (ret.) Shay Shaul, former deputy head of the National Security Council of Israel, told JNS that PIJ could be motivated by one of two things. The first is that the terror organization is seeking...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., said she was "deeply disappointed" in Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for stopping the U.N. Security Council from investigating Israeli actions on the border with the Gaza Strip. "I'm deeply disappointed in Ambassador Haley's decision to block a U.N. inquiry into yesterday's events," Feinstein, who is Jewish, said Tuesday in a statement. "Without question there should be an independent investigation when the lives of so...
Paraguay made history on Monday when it moved its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, just days after the US and Guatemala made the same move. Paraguay's President Horacio Cartes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and several heads of state from both countries were present at the momentous ceremony. At the ceremony, Netanyahu lauded Cartes as "a great friend of Israel and a great personal friend of mine. You're an unbelievable friend, and I have to say that this...
The Beitar Jerusalem soccer team has announced that it has begun the process to add President Donald Trump's name to its club title in honor of his actions on behalf of Israel and his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Beitar Jerusalem owner Eli Tabib said Sunday that he is renaming the team "Beitar Trump Jerusalem" to thank the American president for moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital. "For 70 years, Jerusalem awaited international recognition, until President Donald...
(JNS)—Knesset Christian Allies Caucus held an event in the Knesset’s Jerusalem Hall on Wednesday, celebrating both the U.S. and Guatemalan embassy moves from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Members of Israel’s parliament and Christian leaders gathered to talk about their commonalities, shared support and the future of the Jewish state. The KCAC works to build direct lines of communication, cooperation and coordination, between the Knesset and Christian leaders around the world. The Israeli branch of KCAC has 19 members of Knesset from seven polit...
(JTA)-Josef Kopf survived Sobibor by killing a guard and staging the first successful escape from that death camp in Poland, where the Nazis murdered 250,000 Jews. But Kopf, whose unlikely escape in 1943 preceded by several months a full-scale uprising at Sobibor, did not live to see Nazi Germany's defeat. After the liberation in 1944, he returned to his hometown of Turobin to reclaim some possessions-and was never seen or heard from again. "We always assumed Josef was killed by a local, but we...
(JNS)-Some 50 percent of air-defense batteries belonging to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad have been destroyed after they fired on Israel Air Force jets in recent months during multiple operations, a senior air-force source said on Wednesday. The officer was speaking to reporters during an international air conference hosted in Israel, which brought together commanders from 20 foreign air-force establishments to discuss professional and operational matters with the IAF....
Philip Roth won’t be having a Jewish funeral NEW YORK (JTA)—Philip Roth forbade any Jewish rituals from being performed at his funeral. The prolific Jewish-American author, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, will be buried on Monday at the Bard College Cemetery, his biographer, Blake Bailey, told JTA. Roth had originally looked into being buried next to his parents at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey, Bailey said in a phone interview on Friday. However, the area surrounding the Jewish burial ground had in recent years bec...
(JNS)-A great deal of ink has been spilled writing about the growing partisan divide in Washington, D.C. In fact, one of the few remaining bipartisan issues has been support for Israel. But even so, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 27 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel over the situation regarding the Palestinians, compared to a whopping 79 percent of Republicans. The dichotomy was on full display this week in reaction to the opening of the new U.S. embassy in...
