Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 54
(JNS)-A total of 41 Democrats and 31 Republicans are in Israel on overlapping party tours to get a firsthand view of the complex security challenges Israel faces and to express their unconditional, bipartisan support for the Jewish state. The delegations are touring Israel's borders and gaining insight into Israeli advances in areas of defense, agriculture, commercial technology, and water desalination and conservation. In addition, the groups met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,... Full story
(JNS)-Fifty-eight Jewish organizations gathered in New York City on Wednesday for a "National Consultation on Responses to Antisemitism" to address ever increasing anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, Europe and around the world. Organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations and hosted at the offices of UJA-Federation of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the consultation was attended by Jewish leaders and included two members of the U.S. Administration,... Full story
(JNS)-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman fired back at The New York Times on Wednesday over an article castigating him for claiming that Israel was "on the side of God" while speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the upcoming U.S. peace proposal. Speaking to a group of evangelical faith leaders at the Aish Hatorah World Center, overlooking the Western Wall plaza and the Temple Mount, Friedman said that, "apparently, there was nothing more offensive I could have said to... Full story
(JNS)—There are no words for the experience of commemorating the horrific death, together with Holocaust survivors, on the sacred grounds of the Birkenau extermination camp, where more than 1 million Jews were sent to the gas chambers and crematoriums just 75 years ago. March of the Living, over the past 31 years, has brought nearly 300,000 Jews and members of nations around the world to see for themselves the site of one of the most heinous and sophisticated crimes in human history, and to walk the nearly two miles from Auschwitz to B... Full story
(JNS)-While the AIPAC policy conferences features panels and breakout sessions on almost every issue central to the geostrategic challenges facing the State of Israel, one key issue is repeatedly left off the schedule. That is the issue of Jewish settlements and growing neighborhoods outside the Green Line. To that end, more than 700 conference participants gathered off-campus on Sunday night to participate in an event supporting approximately 700,000 living in Judea, Samaria and periphery neigh... Full story
(JNS)—For the second time in two months, the leadership of the Jewish Federation of North America has made it clear that it is fed up with the policies of Israel’s government. According to multiple news reports, JFNA leaders told Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Relations this past week that “relations between Israel and U.S. Jewry are at their lowest point since the state of Israel was established.” Eric Goldstein, chief executive of the UJA-Federation of New York—the only leader willing to come on record—is reported as stating that “people... Full story
(JNS)-The controversial Canary Mission-an anonymous campus watchdog group that exposes organizations, academics and activists that demonize Israel on college campuses-recently came under fire when the San Francisco Jewish Federation indicated that it would no longer facilitate private-donor funding of the group. Articles in The Forward blasted the organization as "shadowy" for refusing to identify its leadership and sources of funding. Yet for pro-Israel student activists who are actively... Full story
(JNS)-The passage of an Israeli law to withhold funds that the Palestinian Authority uses to pay murderers for killing Jews is the correction of an unconscionable injustice. That a democratic country with a High Court of Justice has allowed itself to transfer funds month after month to a murder-sponsoring entity within its midst is not just bad policy, it is completely illegal and utterly immoral. Israeli parliamentarians finally awoke to the reality that the P.A. pays more than $360 million a... Full story
(JNS)—Amid all the challenges Israel is facing—the Iran nuclear threat; the presence of Iranian-backed forces and Hezbollah troops along Israel’s northern border; rioters and arsonists along the Gaza border; and Palestinians in the West Bank constantly inciting against Israel and paying terrorists millions of dollars each to kill Jews in a sophisticated “pay-to-slay” stipend scheme—the last thing Israel needs is to pour fuel on the fire of an international community that questions Jews’ rights to live in the only region of the world named J... Full story
(JNS)-In an interview, former U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted that he tried to help former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres defeat Benjamin Netanyahu during Israel's elections in 1996, just a year after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Clinton stated in an interview on Israel's Channel 10 news that it "would be fair to say" that he assisted in the process to elect Shimon Peres, adding that "I tried to do it in a way that didn't overtly involve me." He explained... Full story
(JNS)-On the margins of the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C., more than 300 conference attendees gathered at the prestigious Sixth & I Historic Synagogue on Monday to express support for the nearly 500,000 residents of Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. AIPAC leaders did not permit the session on one of Israel's most controversial topics to be included within the conference's vast schedule. Yet the high-profile event was co-sponsored by Israel's Ministry of Strategic... Full story
Recognizing it is easier to influence those who are more prone to be natural supporters of the Jewish state than it is to sway journalists who cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a perceived anti-Israel bias, the Israeli government this week offered Christian media professionals a crash course in Israel advocacy and diplomacy. More than 130 journalists from 30 countries converged in Jerusalem for Israel’s inaugural Christian Media Summit, which was sponsored by the Government Press Office and spearheaded by Minister of Jerusalem A... Full story
The Israeli government reopened the Temple Mount complex to Muslims and members of other faiths Sunday with strict new security measures, in the wake of last Friday's attack near the flashpoint holy site, in which Arab terrorists killed two Israeli Druze police officers. Israeli defense experts who specialize in understanding radical Islamic culture stress that such attacks are likely to occur again. "For many years, there has been the motivation to create an apocalypse between Islam and... Full story
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... Full story
A Palestinian driver rammed a truck into a crowd of Israeli soldiers Sunday at the scenic Haas Promenade overlooking Jerusalem's Old City, killing four and injuring 16 others in a terror attack that immediately drew comparisons to recent vehicular attacks in Europe. "This attack is part of the jihad against us, and the [car-ramming] methods that are being employed are part of the same methods that we saw recently in Nice and Berlin," Dr. Mordechai Kedar, senior lecturer in the Department of... Full story
JERUSALEM—A newly approved plan to build 98 homes in the Shiloh Valley in northern Samaria has renewed longstanding tensions between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue of “West Bank” settlement construction. Both the U.S. State Department and the White House have issued statements strongly condemning the plan—continuing a pattern of condemnations whenever Israel announces plans to build homes in territories captured from Jordan during the 1967 Six Day War. These territories lie at the center... Full story
After two intense days of religious ceremonies in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, unscheduled photo opportunities, and debilitating traffic arrangements, Israelis and interfaith relations experts are trying to attach the appropriate symbolism to Pope Francis’s visit to the region. Nearly every stop made by the pontiff was subjected to simultaneous scrutiny and praise. While long-term tensions between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church were made apparent by the trip, some experts are a... Full story
Close to half a million members of Israel's haredi public rallied in Jerusalem on Sunday, shutting down roads in and around the city, to protest a proposed bill that would mandate them to participate in the Israel Defense Forces and would criminalize those that refuse conscription. Some political parties-led notably by Finance Minister Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid-have made the issue of religious enlistment a focal point of their agendas, while religious leaders, who are conspicuously absent from the... Full story
Leaked comments Israeli Defense Minister Moshe [Bogie] Ya'alon made about U.S. Secretary State of State John Kerry's approach to Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations caused a diplomatic stir last week. Yet Ya'alon's reported remarks-which characterized Kerry's approach as an "obsession" and as "messianic"-appear to have less to do with any personal dislike of Kerry and more to do with how Kerry's pursuit of a two-state solution is at odds with the defense minister's understanding of... Full story
Upsurges in Palestinian terrorism have often accompanied progress-and eventual breakdowns-in Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations over the past 20 years. The latest round of talks, brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is proving to be no different. Palestinian attacks on Jewish military and civilian targets have been on the rise since a Lebanese sniper killed an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier in mid-December. A civilian hired by the IDF was murdered Dec. 24 while repairing... Full story
Several weeks after Bedouin and global anti-Israel elements celebrated the apparent cancelation of a plan to resettle tens of thousands of Bedouin in Israel's southern Negev region, the fate of the plan remains unknown. In a dramatic press conference on Dec.12, former Israeli minister Benny Begin, placed in charge of the implementation of the "Prawer Plan," resigned his post and announced that the plan would be withdrawn. Just days later, however, Knesset members continued to meet to discuss... Full story
An apparent antidote to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is coming from a once unlikely source. Chinese magnate Li Ka-Shing, among Asia’s richest businessmen, recently donated $130 million to Israel’s Technion University, as part of a joint venture with Shantou University that will establish the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology (TGIT). The gift, one of the largest ever to an Israeli university, is indicative of a pervasive deepening in the con... Full story
On the same day that the U.S. and Russia agreed to a deal stipulating that Syria must remove or destroy its chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014, Israelis were happy to spend Saturday’s 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in synagogue, and not on the battlefield or in safe rooms with gas masks. Yet Israelis’ long-term outlook on the situation in Syria isn’t as rosy. “Israelis are relieved in the short-term but concerned in the long-term,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli political pollster... Full story
Twenty years after the signing of the fateful Oslo Accords between Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, Knesset Members are heavily debating the merits of the peace process and the two-state solution paradigm. Parliamentarians from both Israel’s left and the right agree that the process has not yielded the results anyone would have hoped for, including the deaths of more than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians, and agree that th... Full story
As Israeli children begin their school year, one particular requirement for students is taking on a somewhat sudden and newfound sense of urgency—inoculation against polio. The disease, which many in Israel had believed to be completely eradicated for more than two decades, has recently been identified in sewage systems—first in the south and then in the north of the country—during routine testing. Many across Israel are invoking thoughts of a biblical-style plague outbreak, even though no fo... Full story
