Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel has already defeated the Palestinians. All that's left is for them to surrender. That, at least, was an argument being made in Jerusalem last week. Led by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, pro-Israel leaders and analysts gathered here to highlight local support for their aim of reframing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict internationally. "After more than a century, the conflict is really over," Daniel Pipes, the forum's president told JTA. "As an American, I would...
(JTA)-The Israeli chief rabbinate says that its list of foreign rabbis has been misconstrued, and that the list does not imply that those rabbis cannot be trusted to vouch for the Jewish identities of their followers. On Saturday, JTA reported on a list of some 160 rabbis whose efforts to confirm the Jewish identities of immigrants were rejected by Israel's haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate. In order to get married in Israel, immigrants must provide the rabbinate proof of their Jewish...
A meeting between Trump’s negotiating team and Palestinian officials took place in Jerusalem instead of Ramallah because of the PA’s refusal to host the U.S. ambassador to Israel. In an unusual occurrence, United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman attended a meeting with Palestinian Authority officials alongside President Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on Tuesday, July 11. Explaining the unexpected inclusion of Friedman, a senior White House officia...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Liberal American Jews are feeling thwarted in their years-long campaign for the right to pray as they wish at the Western Wall. Long frustrated that the plaza in front of the wall is run as an Orthodox synagogue, they were doubly incensed when Israel's political establishment scrapped an agreement that would have boosted access to their own space nearby. Meanwhile, another group of Jewish worshippers has gained public approval and political traction by setting their sights a bit...
Israeli soldier who shot downed Palestinian moving to house arrest JERUSALEM (JTA)—Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for shooting a downed Palestinian terrorist, will be released to house arrest. Azaria, who was convicted in January and sentenced in February, has been confined to the closed Nachshonim military base since being arrested in March 2016. However, his military service is ending Thursday and he must leave the base. A military court ruled Monday that Azaria will go to house arrest. He will be required to remai...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Carmel Shama HaCohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, is second to none in his admiration for the Trump administration’s United Nations envoy, Nikki Haley. In fact, he’d like to clone her. Shama HaCohen appreciated Haley’s efforts in trying to head off last week’s vote by UNESCO’s Heritage Committee naming Hebron’s Old City an endangered heritage site. And he believes the joint U.S.-Israeli bid to kill a resolution Israel saw as one-sided might have succeeded had a U.S. official of Haley’s caliber been onsite in Krakow, where...
An upcoming vote by the United Nations cultural body UNESCO on whether to declare Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs as an endangered Palestinian heritage site is the latest example of "narrative warfare" against Israel and Jews, legal experts say. As part of an ongoing Palestinian-engineered diplomatic campaign, an "emergency resolution" UNESCO presented to its World Heritage Committee claims Israel is causing "irreversible negative effect on the integrity, authenticity and/or the distinctive...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-An internal Palestinian dispute has left Gaza's nearly 2 million Palestinian residents dangerously vulnerable to a heat wave, but Israel could get burned, too. The West Bank Palestinian Authority has recently spearheaded a sharp reduction of electricity to the coastal enclave with Israel's cooperation, resulting in the exacerbation of Gaza's already dire humanitarian crisis and hints of new alliances that could lead to new military conflict with Israel. The electricity cuts are...
Former Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) student-athletes Adam Greenberg (University of Illinois, 2010), Zev Halikman (Florida Atlantic University, 2017), David Melnick (Northwestern University, 2011) and Ory Tasman(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016/University of Central Florida women's collegiate club coach) comprise nearly a quarter of the total roster that the United States will send to compete in Open Men's Water Polo competition at the 20th World Maccabiah Games on July...
Building off the last few years of rumors and reports regarding clandestine relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, mainly motivated by their shared concerns over Iran's nuclear program and destabilizing regional activities, two recent developments highlight a potential route for Israel to firm up support within the Arab world. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified a treaty to hand over two strategic islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's King Salman...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Haredi Orthodox Jews agree with their non-Orthodox brethren on one thing: The future of the Jewish people is at stake in the debate raging over who controls the Western Wall and conversion in Israel. Other than that, though, there is little common ground. According to Nachum Eisenstein, the chief rabbi of eastern Jerusalem's haredi Maalot Dafna neighborhood, Reform and Conservative Judaism threaten to undermine the survival of the Jewish people. "The reason why Judaism is the...
While Israeli government ministers in recent weeks have dueled over the acceptance of Palestinian "refugees" in a possible future Palestinian state, experts say the Arab world continues to refuse to take responsibility for the issue. "Unfortunately, responsibility is something which Arabs do not believe in, and therefore they demand that Israel solves a problem which they created," said Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a research associate at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies...
Israeli soldier injured in suspected Palestinian car ramming, knife attack JERUSALEM (JTA)—An Israeli soldier was moderately wounded after a suspected car ramming and knife attack in the West Bank. The attack took place Monday afternoon near the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, the IDF said. The alleged attacker was shot by Israeli forces. He was treated at the scene by Israel Defense Forces medical personnel. The attacker, who was not immediately identified, later died at the scene, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported. The Palestinian d...
WESTERBORK, Netherlands (JTA)-Nothing about the footage that Rudolf Breslauer filmed here on May 30, 1944, suggests that it was taken inside one of Europe's largest Nazi concentration camps. In the film by Breslauer, a German-Jewish inmate of the Westerbork camp in Holland's northeast, prisoners are seen playing soccer enthusiastically in team uniforms, complete with a referee in a special outfit. A middle-aged man wearing a suit and a boy who may have been his grandson stroll cheerfully in the...
RAMAT GAN, Israel (JTA)-Danny Janel first noticed Allison Silfen's smile in July 2013. They were hanging out with other athletes in a hotel room a few evenings after arriving in Israel. He was smitten. She had already noticed him on the flight over. Half asleep, Silfen creaked open her eyes just as Janel stepped to the rear of the airplane to don tefillin. "I spotted a good-looking Jewish guy," Silfen remembered of that first glimpse. Janel and Silfen had come here to play for the basketball...
(JNS.org) U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed the U.N. Security Council Thursday for its inaction on Iran, which she says has "repeatedly and deliberately violated" sanctions. "The Security Council has failed to even take minimal steps to respond to these violations," Haley told a council briefing on Iran. "We must show Iran that we will not tolerate their egregious flaunting of U.N. resolutions." Jeffery Feltman, the U.N.'s under-secretary-general for political affairs,...
(JTA)-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shelved a controversial bill that would have made the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Netanyahu's office announced Friday that the legislation will not be considered for six months while a "team" he will appoint comes up with recommendations for an "arrangement" on the issue. The decision comes after an outcry by the Reform and Conservative movements and American Jewish...
(JTA)-American Jewish leaders are calling it a betrayal. They say that 17 months after achieving an historic agreement to provide a non-Orthodox space at Judaism's holiest prayer site, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged in a Cabinet vote Sunday, effectively canceling the deal and caving to the interests of his haredi Orthodox coalition partners. Netanyahu disagrees. Far from killing the compromise, he believes the vote has given it new life. And far from betraying Diaspora Jewry,...
Mortar shells fired from Syria into the Israeli Golan Heights Saturday prompted the IDF to respond with a retaliatory strike in Syria, purportedly killing Syrian soldiers. Despite the incidents, a military escalation between Israel and Syria is unlikely and is in neither side's interest, said Prof. Efraim Inbar, former director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University. "This is nothing new for the IDF to retaliate to spillover from Syria," Inbar told...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For years, Laurie Grauer had waved a rainbow flag emblazoned with a Jewish star at the Chicago Dyke March, sometimes marching near activists waving Palestinian flags. It had never been a problem. But this year, Grauer was confronted by the LGBT parade's organizers, questioned about her support for Israel and asked to leave because she was carrying the flag. She was one of three women with Jewish flags kicked out of Sunday's parade. Grauer says she was used to Israel being a...
J Street meets with US ambassador to Israel David Friedman (JTA)—The leadership of J Street, the liberal American Jewish Middle East policy group, met with David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel who before his nomination had derided the group as worse than Nazi collaborators. “We appreciate the willingness of Ambassador Friedman to meet members of Congress under the auspices of J Street,” said a statement from J Street distributed after the meeting on Monday. Friedman at the meeting was joined by a congressional delegation trave...
(JTA)-Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders are fighting again over an age-old question: Who counts as a Jew? And who gets to decide? This week, Israel's government inflamed simmering tensions over Jewish conversion when a Cabinet committee advanced a bill that would further empower the country's haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. The measure declares that the rabbinate is the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. Defenders of the bill say it consolidates the...
(JTA)-They've tried strongly worded statements. They've tried private meetings with the prime minister. They've tried negotiations, protest and prayer. But for the past five years, despite broad internal consensus and consistent pressure, the American Jewish establishment has been unable to persuade Israel's government to create an equitable space for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall. The latest setback in that fight came Sunday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the...
During the 20th Maccabiah Games next month, about 7,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries will descend upon the Holy Land to join 2,500 Israeli athletes in the Olympic-style competition. Held every four years, the Jewish multi-sport competition is the world's third-largest sporting event. From July 4-18, the Maccabiah Games will have the added significance of coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the reunification of this year's host city, Jerusalem. "Fifty years after unification, we have fin...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-When the Islamic State claimed credit for an attack on Israeli soil for the first time Friday and vowed to strike again, the response here was not fear but incredulity. Israeli officials generally dismissed the militant Islamist group's assertion that it was behind the shooting and stabbing in Jerusalem that left a 23-year-old policewoman dead along with her attackers. Top U.S. experts on the group said the officials would be wise to think again. "This is a pattern that we see....
