Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - American-Jewish actor Michael Rapaport said on Monday that the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, and the wave of antisemitism that it triggered across the United States, were deeply personal for him and enhanced his connection with Judaism. Rapaport spoke to JNS on the sidelines of the annual Pulse of Israel conference in Jerusalem, where he received the "Leadership of Zion Award" from the hands of CEO and founder Avi Abelow. The comedian has emerged as a leading voice for Israel in Hollywood, at a...
(JNS) - The lone Republican Jewish lawmaker in the Florida State legislature said Tuesday that he could never have imagined considering whether it was safe for Jews to live in the United States, even though the Sunshine State is the "gold standard" for fighting antisemitism. Randy Fine spoke after months of often violent antisemitic protests across the U.S. that have shaken American Jewry in ways not seen since World War II. "I would never have thought that I would live at a time when I would wo...
Sderot, Israel (JNS) - Israel is fighting against the enemies of the United States in a war orchestrated by Iran, helped by Russian intelligence and funded by money from China, said Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, in Israel on Monday. A former Republican presidential candidate known for her stalwart support for Israel, she spoke during a solidarity visit to communities near the Gaza Strip and just days after announcing that she would be v...
(JNS) - The Meisels did not know that their son was serving in Gaza when he was called up for reserve duty immediately after the outbreak of the war, but when the longtime volunteer medic fell in battle, they knew exactly how best to commemorate his memory: a bullet proof ambulance for Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service. Master Sgt. (res.) Nitai Meisels, 30, served in an elite tank unit. He was killed in December, during a mission to locate hostages in a Palestinian refugee camp in the...
(JNS) - The head of South Africa's second-largest church visiting Israel in solidarity with the Jewish state said Sunday that the South African government is out of sync with the people in its stance on the war with Hamas by supporting a terror organization. The unequivocal remarks by the South African Christian leader against the ruling African National Congress come just weeks before general elections in South Africa, which has emerged as one of Israel's most vocal critics in the world over...
(JNS) - "A farmer does not leave his land." Six months after losing his wife, his 15-year-old son and one of his legs in the Oct. 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, Avida Bachar is back on his land. Walking with a cane and a prosthetic leg after nearly half a year in the hospital, the 50-year-old farmer stares out at the avocado plantation in Kibbutz Be'eri, where he was born and which lies less than a mile from the border with Gaza. On Oct. 7, Bachar's wife and son...
(JNS) - A group of more than 20 parliamentarians from around the world will gather in Jerusalem this weekend, in the largest political solidarity mission to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre. The Christian lawmakers will add their voices to calls to dismantle UNRWA over its ties to Hamas terrorism and speak out against Iran as the chief origin of regional terrorism, and are expected to voice opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. The three-day Israel Allies Foundation Chairman's...
(JNS) - The head of a prominent group of American Christian media broadcasters urged members in the association to cease using the term "West Bank" when reporting about Israel's biblical heartland. The announcement by the National Religious Broadcasters during their annual Christian Media Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, comes amid an intense media war of narratives in reporting about Israel as the war against Hamas in Gaza rages for a fifth month. "NRB opposes the use of the erroneous term...
(JNS) — The Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has spurred a historic level of Jewish philanthropy, with the largest emergency fund set up when the war broke out alone raising nearly $800 million, the Jewish Federations of North America said on Monday. The surge in donations following the Hamas massacre that triggered the now four-month-old war created a huge surge in interest in giving to the Jewish state as it fights the Islamic terrorist group after years of decline in giving. “In these past months, we have witnessed our community comin...
(JNS) — The heads of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus on Feb. 7 pressed Dutch legislators to cut funding to UNRWA altogether, as Israel seeks alternatives for the U.N. body over its ties to Palestinian terrorism. The discussion, at the Dutch House of Representatives, comes amid Israeli calls for UNRWA to be replaced by responsible aid agencies; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the work and functions of UNRWA need to be preserved. “With the recent horrific reports verifying UNRWA employees’ complicity in the Oct. 7...
(JNS) — Scores of Christian supporters from around the world gathered in Israel’s parliament on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus in a show of solidarity amid the war against Hamas in Gaza. The event, which came on a somber day following the single deadliest attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out three and half months ago underscored the growing force of faith-based diplomacy around the globe. “Over the last 20 years, you have proven in the best possible way what true fr...
(JNS) - An art exhibition is debuting Thursday at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the memory of the Shoah is fresh on the minds of Israelis following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The exhibition, titled "Bigger Than Me," features six oil paintings and some 10 additional sketches by the Israeli artist Shai Azoulay. It has been given added significance following the Hamas massacre, the worst single-day attack on the Jewish people since the...
(JNS) — A proposal to encourage the voluntary emigration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as part of a post-war plan is no longer being considered due to opposition from the Biden administration, a leading Israeli lawmaker said Wednesday. The idea, which former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. MK Danny Danon of the ruling Likud Party and MK Ram Ben Barak of the opposition Yesh Atid Party raised anew in a meeting with dozens of foreign diplomats at the Knesset on Wednesday, is not on the government agenda due to American pressure, Danon told J...
(JNS) — An Olympic champion who won Israel’s first-ever world gold in gymnastics is auctioning off the medal to raise money for the Gaza border communities devastated in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists. Artem Dolgopyat, 26, won the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on floor exercise in Belgium on the very day of the massacre, when thousands of Hamas terrorists burst into southern Israel and overran nearly two dozen Israeli communities, murdering 1,200 people, most civilians, abducting 240 others to Gaza and laying waste to the...
(JNS) - A pair of eyeglasses. In 66 days, that is the only trace found of the 70-year-old American-Canadian teacher who was shot by Hamas terrorists when out for a walk with her husband on the grounds of their southern Israel kibbutz the morning of Oct. 7. Judi Weinstein Haggai is currently the oldest woman among those kidnapped by Hamas that day whose fate is unknown. In all, more than two months after the attack, 117 people are still being held by Hamas-along with the bodies of 20 people...
(JNS) - Is it OK to eat? Can we look out the window? Is it alright to leave the room? These were among the questions that scores of traumatized Israeli children held hostage for over 50 days by Hamas in Gaza asked doctors and social workers during their first days of freedom and recuperation earlier this month. Slowly, the children began to regain their trust. A half-smile; an immediately granted after midnight request for schnitzel and mashed potatoes. After some days, they were released from...
(OFAKIM, Israel, JNS) — A reverential silence fell on the room as the four American-Muslim women bowed their heads in prayer on Friday for the victims of the Hamas attack on Israel. Moments earlier, the interfaith crowd in the apartment in this western Negev city, which included Muslims, Jews, a white-turbaned Sikh, a mixed Israeli family and Mayor Yitzhak Danino, stood mesmerized as the Arabic words of supplication for the Israelis murdered in the massacre were intoned. “The Muslim world was...
(JNS) - The remains of a 12-year-old Israeli girl, burned alive alongside her twin brother and great-aunt in the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southwestern Israel, have been identified by archaeologists sifting through the rubble, family members said on Sunday. Liel Hetzroni was murdered, together with her twin brother Yanai and their 73-year-old great-aunt Ayala, in the attack on Kibbutz Be'eri after they were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, who were then engaged in a firefight with...
(JNS) - Nine months old. The smiling red-haired baby had recently started to crawl after rocking on all fours. Kfir Bibas lived with his parents and 4-year-old brother in a kibbutz in southern Israel. On Oct. 7, their lives were changed forever as the family-mom Shiri, dad Yarden, and the two kids-was abducted by Hamas to Gaza when the Islamist terrorists overran the area and went on a murderous rampage. At nine months old, Kfir is the youngest of the roughly 240 hostages-including 32...
(JNS) — “This is a second Holocaust for me,” said survivor Ruth Haran, 87, who is reliving a childhood nightmare. Twice now, she has made it out alive from the inferno. But the death, the destruction and the fear have all returned and come full circle for the great-grandmother, eight decades after the Holocaust. Her son and two other family members were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israeli communities in southern Israel. Seven other members of her family, including her daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, aged 3 and 8, we...
(JNS) - The messages kept coming in to Kibbutz Holit's emergency WhatsApp group. "Save us, save us," "Where is the army?" "They are trying to burn down the houses" and "There's gunfire." A 7-year-old girl reported that she was hiding in a closet; a 15-year-old reported that his parents were killed and that he was shot in the stomach; a woman reported that she was suffocating from the smoke in the safe room of her burning house. And a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor huddled in the safe room of his...
(JNS) — A 73-year-old grandmother, her 43-year-old son and barely 10-month granddaughter. Three generations of one Israeli family brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were laid to rest Sunday side by side, the infant sharing the same coffin as her father. In ceremonies across the country, a nation in mourning was burying its dead from the worst assault on Israel in half a century, and the most deadly one-day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In many cases, the c...
(JNS) - "You're not going out. You are not going out." Those were 63-year-old Vivian Roitman's fateful words to her 72-year-old husband Menachem on the morning of Oct. 7, after the Hamas terrorists who had ransacked their home in southern Israel and failed to open the door to the safe room in which they were hiding had left the house. She didn't know it then, but the terrorists would be back less than two hours later for another attempt to murder or kidnap them, and then again for a third...
(JNS) - The Hamas gunman aimed his rifle at the elderly couple in their home in Ofakim, southern Israel, early Saturday morning. He held a grenade on Rachel Edri's head, began screaming "Allah Akbar" and announced he was a "martyr." But Edri maintained her composure. Thinking quickly, she offered the group of five terrorists refreshments, and later a meal, engaging them in small talk, playing for time until security personnel could arrive. For the next 20 hours, Rachel and her husband, David,...
(JNS) - A cache of weapons believed to have been hidden by Jews during their revolt against the Romans nearly two millennia ago has been uncovered in the Judean Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The cache, comprising four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords and a shafted weapon, were found in a crevice in a cave in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea about two months ago. They were apparently hidden by Judean rebels after being seized from the...
