Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - Israel's Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused European countries of standing on the sidelines during the war with Iran while benefiting from the weakening of the Islamic Republic's military capabilities. In an X post, the ministry shared a CNN segment with NATO chief Mark Rutte, who praised U.S. President Donald Trump for degrading Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, which he said was "really very important for your and my safety, here in the U.S., in Europe, in the...
(JNS) - Israel is home to some 111,000 Holocaust survivors and victims of antisemitic persecution, according to new government estimates released ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026. Women make up about 63 percent of survivors, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s. Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday that the global Jewish population stood at 15.8 million at the start of 2025, including 7.2 million Jews in Israel, or roughly 45 percent of the total, and 6.3 million in the...
(JNS) — A recently-launched E.U.-backed digital archive documenting the history of Greek Jews is offering free public access to more than 212,000 documents and over two million digital records, the European Jewish Congress said this week. The Iossipos (“Josephus”) project, named after the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, has been implemented by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki with roughly €4 million ($4.3 million) in funding from Brussels’ National Strategic Reference Framework 2021–2027 program. Described by its developers...
Israeli troops have taken operational control of a destroyed stadium in southeastern Lebanon where slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah once threatened the Jewish state, the military said on Monday, confirming a major raid in the Bint Jbeil area. “Bint Jbeil in the year 2000. Someone stood here, in this field, and claimed that Israel is a cobweb filled with spiders that must be exterminated. Today, that man is gone, the compound is gone, and his words are worth nothing,” Brig. Gen. Guy Levy, commander of the 98th Paratroopers Division, said...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces' "Operation Roaring Lion" against the Islamic Republic will continue "with full force, on all fronts," until all objectives are achieved, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. The premier in his statement commented on the elimination of Brig. Gen. Majid Khademi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' intelligence chief, and Asghar Bakri, who commanded Unit 840 of the IRGC's Quds Force. "Another central arm of the Iranian terror regime has been severe...
(JNS) — The IDF attacked the largest petrochemical facility in Iran, located in Asaluyeh, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Monday. With that operation and another last week, Iran’s two major petrochemical facilities, together accounting for 85 percent of the country’s total petrochemical exports, are out of action. “The IDF has now aggressively attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical facility located in Asaluyeh—a major target responsible for about 50 percent of the country’s petrochemical production, after last week’s second major facil...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces killed Brig.-Gen. Majid Khademi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence chief and one of the IRGC’s most senior operatives, Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed on Monday. “The terrorist regime in Iran continues to launch missiles at the Israeli home front, killing and harming Israeli civilians,” Katz said during a situational assessment with senior military officials. “I was updated by the chief of staff that, overnight in Tehran, the IDF eliminated Majid Khadami, head of the IRGC intelligenc...
(JNS) - One Israeli was kiled when Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists struck his vehicle in the Galilee Panhandle on Sunday morning. "Medics and paramedics report a man trapped in a vehicle with no signs of life," the Magen David Adom emergency response group stated. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that "fire from Lebanese territory toward a community on the northern border was identified." It added, "There is damage and there are casualties." The victim was later identified as Ofer...
Four bodies have been retrieved from under the rubble at the site of the Iranian ballistic missile impact in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, rescue services said on Monday afternoon. Following overnight efforts with the Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command, "two trapped individuals who were found under the rubble without signs of life," the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority said early on Monday. "Rescue operations and attempts are still ongoing at this time in an effort to reach two...
(JNS) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared on Monday morning that he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump and was "deeply proud" that Israel could "contribute to saving a brave American warrior," referring to the rescue mission of the downed pilot from Iranian territory. "I spoke earlier with President Donald Trump and personally congratulated him on his bold decision and a perfectly executed American mission to rescue the downed pilot from enemy territory," Netanyahu tweeted. He...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces has killed more than 1,000 Hezbollah operatives since the Iranian-backed terrorist group joined the war on March 2, “and that number will continue to rise,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said on Sunday. The military is striking Hezbollah “with determination, extensively and across multiple fronts,” Zamir said during a visit to Ras el-Bayada, a strategic coastal headland located near Tyre that is the northernmost point in Southern Lebanon where Israeli soldiers are currently operating on the ground. T...
In a Passover eve address steeped in biblical imagery, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday framed Israel’s campaign against Iran and its proxies through the lens of the biblical Exodus, declaring that Israel had dealt its enemies “ten blows” echoing the Ten Plagues. Netanyahu listed strikes against Hamas, Hezbollah, Bashar Assad’s fallen regime in Syria, Palestinian terror groups and the Houthis in Yemen, alongside five direct blows to Iran — targeting its nuclear program, missile capabilities, regime infrastru...
(JNS) - The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved on Wednesday the Cabinet's decision to extend the nationwide emergency situation until April 14 amid the ongoing war with Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command guidelines currently restrict educational and work activities, as well as gatherings of more than 50 people outdoors and 100 people indoors. National forests, parks, hiking trails and roadside recreation areas across the country have...
Several people were lightly wounded in an Iranian missile barrage on Tuesday morning, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service was cited as saying, as local media reported damage to buildings at impact sites in the Tel Aviv area. MDA said its teams were dispatched to search several locations in the central region following the barrage and that further updates would be issued. Police said Tel Aviv District officers, Border Police and bomb disposal experts were handling “several scenes of falling munitions parts,” and urged the public to fo...
(JNS) — At the 14th annual commemoration ceremony on Thursday for the murder of four French Jews at a Jewish school in Toulouse, participants booed representatives of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, forcing them to leave. The incident occurred at the city’s Capitole square, where hundreds had gathered for speeches and a wreath-laying tribute, Sud Radio reported. When LFI lawmakers François Piquemal and Hadrien Clouet laid their wreath, dozens of people began booing them, calling them “far-left fascists” and “antisemites,” and shouting...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday night struck regime sites in northern Iran for the first time since the start of "Operation Roaring Lion" against the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28, according to the Israeli military. Strikes were carried out by the Israeli Air Force, at the guidance of the Israeli Navy and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, according to an initial statement, which did not include additional details. The IDF also struck over 200 regime targets in central and...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday wished the “brave people of Iran” a Happy Nowruz, the Persian new year, which falls on the March equinox, the first day of Spring. “To the brave people of Iran, I wish you, as I do every year, a happy holiday season, beginning with the Festival of Lights. It signifies the age old belief of the Iranian people that light will triumph over darkness, that good will triumph over evil,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Festival of Fire, which falls on the Wednesday before the Persian n...
(JNS) - Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of a hostage murdered in Gaza, was selected to feature in USA Today's "2026 Women of the Year" list, in which she recounted how her personal grief is touching tens of thousands of strangers worldwide. "I'm trying very hard to own and greet the grief that I feel every single day, in a way of actually thinking of it as a privilege. I had this beautiful son. He was and he is a blessing," she wrote. Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was held hostage by...
(JNS)- Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, of Dearborn Heights, drove a truck into the largest Reform temple in North America and opened fire on security guards, injuring one, in West Bloomfield, Mich., a suburb some 25 miles northwest of Detroit. The terrorist is confirmed dead, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office said. "At some point during the gunfight, Ghazali suffers a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," said Jennifer Runyan, FBI Detroit's special agent in charge. "He has no previous...
(JNS) — Israel’s flag carrier, El Al, announced Sunday that it will launch six non-stop flights to New York that started last Monday to help thousands of U.S. citizens who have been stranded in the country since the outbreak of the Iran war to return home. The flights, which are designated exclusively for American citizens as part of an agreement with the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, will operate at full capacity and will not be subject to the current 100-passenger limit per outbound flight. It was not immediately cle...
(JNS) — The only offer extended to Iran was “unconditional surrender,” Israeli Knesset speaker Amir Ohana, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said on Tuesday. Ohana was responding to a post in which Ghalibaf said that the Islamic Republic was no longer seeking to negotiate a truce with the United States and Israel. “Absolutely, we are not seeking a ceasefire; we believe we must strike the aggressor in the mouth so that it learns a lesson and never again even thinks of aggressing against our dear Iran...
(JNS) — The Samaria Regional Council on Wednesday morning erected the first residential structures on Mount Ebal, around 10 months after Israel’s Cabinet approved the establishment of a new community at the site. Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, together with the Amana settlement movement, worked overnight to establish the village after receiving formal Interior Ministry approval last month, Dagan said. “This morning, we’re privileged to feel the wings of history beating,” he said. “To make history together here by establishin...
About one-third of $4,965,000 in security funding that Massachusetts gave to 167 nonprofits in the state went to Jewish organizations, including synagogues, according to a JNS analysis. Of the listed nonprofits, 55 (about 33%) were Jewish, and they received $1,606,876 (about 32%) of the funding, which came from the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Grant Program and the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Personnel Grant Program. In addition to the 55, Brandeis University, which states that it is “animated by a set of values that are rooted in Jewish...
(JNS) — Israel’s elimination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was made possible by using Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on the movements of those close to the cleric. Israeli intelligence “hacked” nearly all traffic cameras in Tehran over a period of years, encrypting the footage and transmitting it to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to The Financial Times, which first reported the story, citing two sources familiar with the operation. One camera in particular provided a strategic vantage point, enabling analysts...
(JNS) — Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran and a leader of the opposition against the Islamic Republic, on Tuesday called on ethnic minorities to unite against the regime, saying it was nearing collapse. “You are an inseparable part of Iran’s historical and cultural fabric—communities that have always stood as guardians of our territorial integrity and the dignity and honor of our nation,” the exiled crown prince said in a statement addressed to the nation’s minorities. However, “from the very first days of the Islamic Repub...
