Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 351 - 375 of 485
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The hardest part was loading the assault rifle. That's not because he was a newbie, unaccustomed to the workings of a Tavor rifle. Rather, 1st Sgt. Izzy Ezagui had lost an arm in combat. He'd overcome seemingly insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles and got a posting on a base in the Negev. And so his next challenge began: He had to prove he could still fight. Ezagui is the only combat soldier with an amputation to serve as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces reserves. For him,... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-The chain of events is familiar: Israel's security forces detain a terrorism suspect, deny him access to his lawyer and interrogate him. The detainee alleges that he was tortured during the interrogation. His lawyers decry the abuses and are backed up by Israeli human rights groups. Supporters of the detainee riot in the street, injuring Israeli forces. The Israeli government denies the charges and condemns the rioters. It's a progression that has occurred time and again with... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Sitting in front of a computer at the center of Israel's largest army base, a soldier stares at the screen, moving pixel by pixel over a satellite photograph, picking out details and finding patterns. A few years ago N.S., who has autism, thought the Israel Defense Forces wouldn't take him. N.S., who like other soldiers could not give his name due to IDF protocol, spent his childhood in mainstream classroom settings, where he had focused on studying film and Arabic, but expected... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—During last week’s climate summit outside Paris, the 195 delegate countries—including Israel—committed to implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improving their goals every five years. The aim: Keep Earth from warming more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. “This demands international discipline, which is not easy, but for the good of humanity, I hope that it will be found,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the climate talks, told his Cabinet on Sunday. “It... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-It was 2 a.m. when Illana Attali's friend's screams woke her. Her friend had just heard about the series of coordinated terror attacks on Paris-a wave of violence that would kill at least 129 people on Friday. A Paris native who moved to Tel Aviv five years ago, Attali, 31, had been on a desert hike with two friends and had turned off her phone. When she first heard about the attacks, she thought it was just a bad dream. All three friends began sobbing and decided to head back to... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Some 100,000 people joined together in central Tel Aviv on Saturday to pay tribute to slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but they were divided over what exactly they were rallying for. The demonstration, which marked the 20th anniversary of Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist incensed by his government's efforts to reach a peace accord with the Palestinians, was called "Remembering the murder, fighting for democracy"-a nod to the slaying's universal lesson of respecting... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem prior to the establishment of Israel, for inspiring Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe, he meant to show the long history of Palestinian anti-Semitism. Regardless of his intent, Netanyahu was hit with a tsunami of backlash from historians and politicians who accused him of distorting history. Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League and the German government have all criticized... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The assassin's bullet that killed former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago on Nov. 4 also stunted the center-left party that championed peace: Rabin's once-mighty Labor. In the two decades since Rabin's slaying at the hands of a Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir-the killer opposed a peace deal with the Palestinians-Labor has fallen from being Israel's founding party and moderate-left flagship to competing among a handful of opposition factions, a perennial loser in... Full story
(JTA)-"What's the deal with emails, anyway?" Sounds like a line on a "Seinfeld" episode (or Modern Seinfeld, anyway). But last night we heard it on the "Saturday Night Live" spoof of the first Democratic debate. The speaker was Bernie Sanders' doppelganger, "Seinfeld" creator Larry David. David is a Jewish curmudgeon who also plays a Jewish curmudgeon on his HBO show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." So when Sanders, another Jewish curmudgeon, decided to run for president, it was clearly the role David... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In assigning blame for the recent wave of violence in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned to the usual suspects-Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But he has also accused a lesser-known group that operates within Israel's borders: the Islamic Movement, a religious political group and social service organization. Netanyahu has seized on the inflammatory rhetoric of the movement's northern branch, which claims the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is "in danger" and... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-"No pepper spray, no tear gas, no nightsticks," sighed Itzhak Mizrahi to three disappointed men, as if it were a mantra he'd recited dozens of times. The glass-topped display case in Magnum, the central Jerusalem gun shop Mizrahi has owned for three decades, featured a wide variety of pistols last Thursday. The pepper spray compartment, however, was empty, stormed earlier in the week by nervous Israelis hoping to defend themselves from stabbing attacks. The country is suffering... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israelis seeking an escape from last week’s daily terror attacks couldn’t fly to the moon, but they had a chance to hear from someone who did—Buzz Aldrin. In Israel’s terror-riven capital, the Israel Space Agency—the country’s version of NASA—is hosting this year’s International Astronautical Conference, the premier confab for all things space. An exhibition hall shows off a range of gadgets and robotics, and talks fill the schedule this week with titles like “The State of Space Situational Awareness, Conjunction Warning... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israelis have become accustomed to dismal news in the past few weeks-mornings and evenings punctuated by stabbings, car attacks and rock throwing. The cycle of random violence has left dozens of Israelis and Palestinians dead, and many fearing the worst: The start of a third intifada, or armed Palestinian uprising, that could claim hundreds more lives. But since the second intifada started in 2000, fears of a repeat have proved unfounded. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas took plenty of shots at each other. But in their dueling speeches to the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian Authority president directed much of their fire at the same target: the assembled world leaders. Netanyahu blamed world powers and international bodies for enthusiastically supporting what he sees as a misguided Iran deal. He began and ended his speech by calling on the U.N. to correct its record... Full story
(JTA)-In Israel, American stores dot shopping malls and McDonald's branches proliferate. But one chain you won't see is Starbucks. Starbucks has franchises around the world, but its brief experiment with Israeli stores lasted just two years, from 2001 to 2003. Maybe, as some have suggested, Starbucks pulled out of Tel Aviv to appease an anti-Israel market in the Arab world. Or maybe pumpkin spice lattes didn't catch on in a country with no discernible fall season. Or maybe Starbucks just... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-First it was clashes on the Temple Mount. Then a mother and father were shot before the eyes of their four children. Then two men were killed in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City. Now Israelis fear the wave of conflict will only rise. Here's why the violence began, how it's escalated and what might be next. Four Israelis have died in two terror attacks over three days. The slow-burning Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flamed up in the past week with a series of terrorist... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-For Israelis, the Ten Days of Repentance from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur have turned into days of violence. Unrest has swelled in Jerusalem following an Israeli ban on a protest group at the Temple Mount, the holy site known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. The clashes have left one Israeli dead and dozens of Israelis and Palestinians injured. The clashes have been matched by a war of words, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring "war" on Palestinian stone... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—With hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring across the borders of the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a landmark change in policy last month: Germany would begin to accept Syrian refugees, no matter how they got there. Four days later, Israeli Interior Minister Silvan Shalom made a statement on the same topic, but with a different tone: Israel would do everything possible, he said, to remove migrants from its borders. “I continue to fight, with all my effort, against the phenomenon of illegal inf... Full story
ASSADS, Morocco (JTA)-We had to cross the gorge, and the only way was to walk single file on a narrow concrete gutter, maybe a foot wide, that bridged the two cliffs. Below us was a long, perilous drop onto the rocky depths. I was traveling deep into the rural communities of Morocco's Atlas Mountains, and so I'd expected to get a little dusty. But no one readied me for this afternoon trek in the desert sun. I was wearing a button-down shirt, slacks and dress shoes, and I was carrying my iPad,... Full story
(JTA)—Tired of hearing about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians or the machinations of a certain Islamic Republic? There’s plenty of other news happening in Israel, from uproars over the country’s enormous natural gas reserves to a growing push to legalize marijuana. Here are eight newsy items you may have missed in 5775 — and stories you should watch out for as the new year begins. 1. Israel’s controversial gas drilling increases Since the discovery of two huge offshore fields of natural gas in the Mediterranean Sea, Israel has turned... Full story
(JTA)-During my four months studying in Italy in the fall of 2007, you could say I had more than my fair share of strange Jewish experiences. Running late for a train one morning in Florence, I decided the best course of action would be to lay tefillin in the janitor's closet at the station, only to have a policeman threaten to arrest me for trespassing. Lost in Rome one Friday afternoon, a Smart car pulled up alongside me, a 17-year-old leaned out the window and, in Hebrew, invited me to jump i... Full story
CASTELNUOVO BERARDENGA, Italy (JTA)-Up a windy road in the tranquil Tuscan hills, down a gravel path and past acres of grapevines, a visitor will come across a stainless steel door frame secured with a piece of clear packing tape. The Hebrew scrawled on the adhesive reads: "David Solomon." Almost no one may remove this tape, open the door or use the winemaking equipment in an expansive room on the other side. Another door to the same room, sealed with a white plastic strip bearing a K inside a... Full story
NITZAN B, Israel (JTA)-Ask Aviel Eliaz and Itzik Wazana about their evacuation from Gaza 10 years ago this month and both will tell you it's like a tree. For Eliaz, it's an olive tree sitting in a large pot in his front yard. He planted the tree in 2000 at his former home in the Gaza settlement of Nisanit, only to uproot it when Israel withdrew from the coastal strip. Uprooted, too, were the strip's 8,000 residents. His family was resettled along with hundreds of others in this city of cheap... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Few communities were as battered during last summer's conflict between Israel and Hamas as Nahal Oz, a kibbutz of some 350 people located just a mile from the Gaza border. At one point in the fighting, 40 missiles landed on the community in a single day. Hamas militants attempting to infiltrate the kibbutz through a tunnel killed five Israeli soldiers. For much of the war, families with young children were evacuated to other communities far from the fighting. And just four days... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—The murder of a 16-year old girl at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade has sparked calls for LGBT-rights legislation—as well as pushback from those who oppose it. Shira Banki died Sunday after being stabbed while marching in the parade on Thursday night. Five others were wounded in the stabbing. “It never crossed our mind that Shira would be murdered as a symbol,” her parents said in a eulogy Monday, according to a copy of the text on the Israeli news site Ynet. “An unnecessary death of a young girl, innocent and full of good intent...
