Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Trump says he may attend Jerusalem embassy opening WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump said he may be present in Jerusalem when the U.S. Embassy opens in May. “We’re looking at coming,” Trump said Monday in opening his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C. “If I can, I will” Trump said last month that the embassy move from Tel Aviv would take place in May, timed with Israel’s 70th anniversary, following his recognition in December that Jerusalem is the capital. He is also planning to build a new embassy...
The most offensive attacks made by Palestinians and their supporters against Israelis are comparisons to the Nazis. These analogies demonstrate a profound ignorance of history—and a malicious hatred of Jews. As an educational service to these ignoramuses and propagandists, I would like to provide some examples of what the Nazis did to the Jews. First, I must apologize for the graphic nature of some of the examples, but they were purposely chosen because they are so horrific that they are not often discussed. The discussion of the Holocaust is o...
(Israel Hayom / Exclusive to JNS via JNS)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday hailed a recently announced US plan to relocate the American Embassy in Israel from its current abode in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as early as May of this year, calling the move “a great moment for the State of Israel.” “President Trump’s decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem will make our Independence Day celebration even happier,” Netanyahu said, noting that the planned relocation will coincide with the celebrations of the 70th anniversary o...
(JNS)-US Reps. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) and David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) no doubt anticipated an eye-opening experience when they visited the Temple Mount on Thursday as part of their current trip to Israel. So imagine their surprise when they were detained by Israel police after an Islamic Waqf official, which administers the Temple Mount, lodged a complaint against them. It appears that they violated some unknown rule when Tipton bent down to pick up a broken olive branch off the ground. His...
(JNS)—The United States will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14, in time for Israel’s 70th anniversary, according to a State Department official. Steven Goldstein, undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, said on Friday that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had approved a security plan for a “facility” in Jerusalem, the Associated Press reported. “We’re looking at that as a possible date, but safety of the Marines and other people who visit and work there is primary,” said Goldstein. According to the preliminary p...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—An impression of what is believed to be the 2,700-year-old personal seal of the prophet Isaiah was uncovered in Jerusalem. Isaiah lived during the eighth century BCE and prophesized about the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile. Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University reported on her discovery Thursday in the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine. The impression of the seal, or bulla, was found during excavations in the area just below the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The seal was f...
Trump administration to move US Embassy to Jerusalem in May, Israel’s 70th birthday WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Trump administration will formally move the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in May to coincide with Israel’s 70th anniversary. “We’re planning to open the new US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem in May,” a State Department spokesman told JTA in an email. “The Embassy opening will coincide with Israel’s 70th anniversary.” The spokesman did not reveal a specific date, but May 14 would mark 70 years since Israel’s establishment. The...
(JNS)—The annual funding Israel receives from the United States may be increased by $200 million in 2019, according to President Donald Trump’s fiscal year budget request. Israel is expected to receive $3.3 billion in 2019. The requested funds are the result of a $38 billion 10-year memorandum of understanding signed between Israel and the United States at the end of President Barack Obama’s term in office. The additional proposed funds are being apportioned to provide “assistance to bolster Israel’s capacity to defend itself and maintain its q...
(JTA)—The pluralistic youth movement BBYO will expand its Jewish learning programs with the help of a $3.9 million grant. On Wednesday, BBYO announced that it had received the grant from the Maimonides Fund, which supports initiatives related to education and Jewish identity in North America and Israel. The grant will be used to to hire educators, speakers and song leaders to work with BBYO’s teen participants at the group’s international convention, weekend retreats and summer camps, the group said in a statement. It will also support Israe...
(JNS)-Israel's Knesset voted Feb. 11 to make Ariel University in Samaria the state's ninth accredited institution of higher learning. The vote officially places the university under the auspices of Israel's Council for Higher Education. Parliamentarians voted in favor of the bill, 56-35. Full accreditation will enable Ariel University to advance plans to develop a medical school. Ariel, one of Israel's largest Jewish settlements, has approximately 20,000 residents. Accreditation of the...
(JNS)—As a small Islamic sect of an estimated 20 million people—about 1 percent of the global Muslim population—the Ahmadiyya community is a persecuted minority across the Middle East. But at the southern entrance of the northern Israeli city of Haifa lies Kababir village, home to 2,000 residents, 70 percent of whom are Ahmadi Muslims. In Kababir, Ahmadis enjoy full religious and cultural freedom and pray in the only Ahmadi mosque in the Middle East, opened in 1934 and redone in 1979. The safe haven they have found in the Jewish State, as co...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-There's a battle going on among pro-Israel leaders, and it's over Qatar. It's like watching ice hockey players clear the bench for a brawl, only the antagonists are all on the same team. The folks lining up to praise or bury the emirate are best known for sharing the same stages, and often the same opinions about their overarching concern: Israel. But here they are, old friends at odds over another small Middle Eastern state surrounded by hostiles. What's going on? Here's a...
(JNS)-Two Israeli soldiers who accidentally entered the Palestinian city of Jenin on Monday were attacked by a mob of dozens of young Palestinians who also stole one of their weapons. The two soldiers, a man and a woman, were lightly to moderately injured. Images of the female soldier's bloody face circulated through social media, after she was injured from shattered windshield glass. She was evacuated to a hospital in Afula. Video from the attack shows the mob haranguing and attacking the...
Trump negotiators welcome Abbas’ recognition of Jerusalem as holy to Jews WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump’s top negotiators welcomed a U.N. speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that recognized Jerusalem’s holiness to Jews, a sign that the sides are edging back toward restarting peace talks. Trump administration officials nonetheless made clear that there was no retreat from the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital made by the American president in December. In another sign that peace efforts could soo...
(JTA)-Polish President Andrzej Duda signed and finalized a law limiting rhetoric about the Holocaust, leading to a rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The United States is "disappointed," Tillerson said Tuesday, following Duda's final approval of a law introduced on Jan 26 in the Polish parliament. It prescribes up to six years in prison to anyone who blames the Polish state or nation for crimes the law says were perpetrated exclusively by Nazi Germany during World War II. The...
WARSAW, Poland (JTA)-Debate over a Polish law that proposes to outlaw rhetoric blaming Poland for Nazi crimes has prompted a wave of anti-Semitic comments in the Polish media. RMF, one of the largest Polish commercial radio stations, suspended a journalist who wrote about the "war with the Jews." Poland's state-owned television station apologized to the Israeli ambassador for a tweet alleging that the Jewish opposition to the law was part of an attempt to seize Polish property. Also, a former...
(JTA)—The American-Israeli man charged with making hundreds of bomb threats to Jewish community centers in the United States, including The Roth Family JCC in Maitland, and elsewhere briefly escaped from police custody in Israel. The computer hacker, 19, from Ashkelon in southern Israel, attended a hearing in Jerusalem District Court on Monday. Following the hearing, Michael Kadar was taken to an interrogation and detention center in Jerusalem before being transferred to the Nitzan Prison and Detention Center in Ramla, where he is being h...
(JNS)-The Irish and Jewish people share a common history of suffering cruel persecution and achieving national redemption against immeasurable odds. But today, modern Ireland is one of Europe's fiercest critics of Israel. This tension was on display last week as the Irish Senate was considering legislation aimed at criminalizing trade with Israeli settlements. The legislation, titled "Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018," calls to "prohibit the import and sale of...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Nearly 80 years after being persecuted by the Nazi-allied Vichy French government, some 25,000 elderly Algerian Jews are being recognized for the first time as Holocaust survivors by the German government. Algerian Jews had their French citizenship stripped in 1940 by the Vichy government, which then ruled the area. Nuremberg-like laws banned Jews from working as doctors, lawyers, teachers and in government. Children were kicked out of French schools. On Tuesday, 78 years after th...
(JTA)-In a deeply divided nation that is still reeling from a toxic presidential election last spring, as well as jihadist and racist attacks, Mennel Ibtissem's performances offered a rare vision of hope. The blue-eyed Muslim woman sang Arabic and French-language renditions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on national television in France while wearing a head cover. She was a favorite on the French edition of "The Voice" talent and reality show, seeming to embody the values of coexistence and...
Republican Jewish Coalition chairman says its members are ‘thrilled’ with Trump (JTA)—The chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition said its members are “thrilled” about the performance of President Donald Trump, especially with his approach to the Middle East. “I think they’re feeling thrilled,” said former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman in an interview with McClatchy at the weekend’s annual RJC leadership conference in Las Vegas. “If you look at the change of what has happened with Israel, in terms of moving the capital to Jerusalem, the toug...
(JTA)-In 2015, Ukraine's president signed a law whose critics say stifles debate on the historical record of World War II and whitewashes local perpetrators of the Holocaust. Law 2538-1 criminalized any rhetoric insulting to the memory of anti-communist partisans. And it celebrates the legacy of such combatants-ostensibly including the ones who murdered countless Jewish and Polish citizens while collaborating with Nazi Germany. The law generated some backlash, including an open letter by more...
A Knesset delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was successful in softening the language of a resolution denouncing the US’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli construction in the “occupied territories,” while successfully pushing it to call on the Palestinians to cease their practice of financially incentivizing Palestinian terrorists. The final resolution, submitted to PACE’s Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy at the initiative of Palestinian delegates, states that “the role of the...
WARSAW, Poland (JTA)-The Polish Senate passed legislation that criminalizes accusing the Polish state of the crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. The amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance was adopted early Thursday morning by a vote of 57-23, with two abstentions. The legislation, designed to make it clear that Nazi Germany is responsible for the crimes against humanity that took place in the camps, was approved last week by the lower house of the Polish...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass a law that would extend foreign assistance only to “friendly” nations, a dig at the countries that voted in the United Nations to censure the United States for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said Tuesday in his State of the Union address to Congress to a standing ovation from Republicans, as well as his Jewish daughter, I...
