Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 122
(JNS) - Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) was rebuked on the House floor on Wednesday after accusing Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) of supporting Hezbollah during debate over her War Powers resolution concerning U.S. forces in Lebanon. Tlaib's measure would direct the president to withdraw U.S. armed forces from Southern Lebanon, arguing the United States is acting without congressional authorization by providing intelligence and coordinating activities related to Israel's military actions against...
(JNS) — The Israel Day on Fifth parade in Manhattan on May 31 made a statement both for who was and was not present, according to Ofir Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York. “To all our enemies all around the world, but specifically here in New York City, we are here to stay, we are strong, we are proud and my suggestion to all of these elected officials, who are thinking that we will disappear, the answer is ‘no,’” Akunis told JNS after the parade. “The opposite is the truth,” the...
Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza at the U.S.-backed Board of Peace, told the United Nations Security Council to “use every means at its disposal” to pressure Hamas to disarm. Amid concern that the stalled effort to get the terror group to lay down its arms will leave Gaza’s recovery paralyzed, Mladenov, a former U.N. envoy for the Middle East peace process, addressed the Security Council on Thursday. “There is no recovery in Gaza,” he said. Mladenov briefed the council on the board’s first report on the state of affairs in...
(JNS) — Several pro-Israel, Democratic House members, including multiple Jews, could face tough races to be reelected to Congress if proposed redistricting maps, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled come to pass. “The proposed map is a blatant attempt to push out pro-Israel, Democratic champions in Congress,” Brian Romick, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told JNS. “It’s bad for our country. It’s bad for those who care about Israel, and it’s a violation of Florida’s redistricting constitutional amendment,” Romick said. “We...
(JNS) — The U.N. Security Council returned its focus to Gaza on Tuesday during an open debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after months in which other global crises had drawn attention away. The council had concentrated heavily on Gaza following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, before a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in late 2025 shifted priorities. “A pivotal juncture has been reached” in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, said Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and a founding executive board m...
(JNS) — Gaza’s human development has been set back 77 years, with recovery and reconstruction needs totaling $71.4 billion over the next decade, according to an assessment released this week by the European Union, the United Nations and World Bank. The final report, the Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, notes an “unprecedented loss of life and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis” brought on by the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, carried out by unnamed “militant groups,” leading to the Israel-Hamas war. The report...
(JNS) - Three-time Super Bowl champion Julian Edelman, longtime broadcaster Al Michaels-known for his call of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice"-and basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman headline the 2026 class of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. The 20-member class, announced on Wednesday, also includes former NBA player Omri Casspi, Argentine world champion boxer Carolina Duer and Israeli Paralympian Zipora Rubin-Rosenbaum, a 31-time medalist. Founded in 1981 as the successor to the...
(JNS) — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) filed three joint resolutions of disapproval on Thursday targeting U.S. arms sales to Israel. The resolutions set up another test of Democratic support for Israel, after a record 27 senators tied to the Democratic caucus voted in favor of a similar Sanders resolution last summer to halt the sale of tens of thousands of automatic assault rifles to Israel amid the Jewish state’s war against the Hamas terror organization. The Thursday filings address the $658 million in munitions sales the Trump adm...
(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...
Germany’s largest political party moves to end funding for UNRWA, tighten oversight of PA aid (JNS) — The largest political party in the German federal legislature is calling for an end to financial support of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the global body’s Palestinian aid organization, according to Jüdische Allgemeine, the country’s national Jewish weekly newspaper. The Christian Democratic Union, led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, unanimously approved a motion on Feb. 21 calling for stricter criteria for aid payments to the Pale...
(JNS) - Rev. Jesse Jackson, the American civil-rights leader, former aide to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a two-time Democratic Party presidential candidate, whose relationship with American Jews was marked by both cooperation and controversy, died on Feb. 17. He was 84 years old. Jackson rose to national prominence as a protégé of King during the civil-rights movement and later founded Operation PUSH in 1971 and the Rainbow Coalition during his first presidential campaign in 1984. The n...
(JNS) — The largest political party in the German federal legislature is calling for an end to financial support of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the global body’s Palestinian aid organization, according to Jüdische Allgemeine, the country’s national Jewish weekly newspaper. The Christian Democratic Union, led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, unanimously approved a motion on Feb. 21 calling for stricter criteria for aid payments to the Palestinians, and an end to German and European donations to UNRWA. The social services agency has com...
(JNS) - Backed by Mexico and Brazil, Gabriel Boric, Chile's outgoing president, nominated former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, a harsh critic of the Jewish state, to be the next secretary-general of the United Nations. Boric, who is also anti-Israel, made the announcement on Monday. José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician who is set to assume the Chilean presidency next month, would be unlikely to nominate Bachelet, 74, for the role. Bachelet, who was Brazil's president twice-from...
(JNS) — New York City Police Department officers arrested a man who repeatedly rammed a car into an entrance to Chabad world headquarters in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. No injuries reported. The NYPD told JNs that officers responded at around 8:45 p.m. to 770 Eastern Parkway, where they saw a gray Honda sedan which “collided into entrance doors at the bottom of a sloped driveway in front of 770 Eastern Parkway.” “The operator of the vehicle was taken into custody and the investigation remains ongoing,” NYPD said. The department told JNS that...
(JNS) — Former hostage Moran Stella Yanai called out U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, claiming he was not interested in hearing her claims of sexual violence while in Hamas captivity. Yanai was selling jewelry at the Nova Music Festival when she was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She was held for 54 days before her release as part of a ceasefire. Yanai told Israel’s Channel 12 that she and fellow hostage Nili Margalit, a nurse taken from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and re...
A Jewish American fighter pilot shot down over China in World War II was finally laid to rest on American soil last week, with dirt from Israel placed over his coffin. Lt. Morton Sher, who flew with the famed Flying Tigers, was buried on Sunday in a cemetery in Greenville, S.C., where his headstone and an empty grave have awaited him for 80 years. The oldest son of David and Anna Sher, he was born in Baltimore before his family moved to the South. Active at Congregation Beth Israel in...
The United States remains open to nuclear pact talks with Iran, which again rejected Washington’s advances during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday. The session focused on implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, of 2015 which outlined Iran’s commitments to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The permanent Security Council members—United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia—signed the agreement, as did Germany and the European Union. Tuesday marked the first council...
(JNS) - Legendary Jewish film director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday afternoon, according to TMZ. The outlet cited law enforcement sources in reporting that the couple suffered lacerations consistent with a knife attack. A family member is being questioned by investigators, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press. Reports indicate that the suspect is the couple's son, Nick, who has a long history of drug...
(JNS) - Movie producers often close sets to protect the secrecy of their films, but they don't usually do so to protect the physical and mental health of those nearby. That's just what happened with the four-part series "Red Alert" about the Israeli heroes, who rose up in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel. During a scene about the terror attacks on Kibbutz Nir Oz, Lawrence Bender, executive producer of the series, told the crew to line trucks up around the set, so that...
(JNS) — On the first day of the Jewish National Fund-USA’s annual Global Conference, held in the heart of South Florida’s extensive Jewish community from Oct. 23-26, CEO Russell Robinson met with representatives from cities not particularly known as bastions of American Judaism. It’s part of a basic business strategy, Robinson told those in attendance. “If you’re not forecasting where your customer acquisition is going to be, if you’re not looking at your customer base and examining those pieces, you won’t be in business long,” he said....
(JNS) — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) are urging the Trump administration to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations for possible links to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Congress members wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, asking him to look into whether CAIR, a decades-old organization that says it advocates for Muslim civil rights, is providing material support for terrorism, based on its history and its conduct following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. The Tre...
(JNS) — A senior Trump administration adviser told reporters on Wednesday that efforts are underway to demilitarize Gaza. “We’re defining a path that makes everyone feel safe,” the adviser, who declined to be named, told reporters. “It’s not realistic to expect people to just drop arms.” “The dynamic is complex, but the sentiment from Arab mediators and from Hamas is to keep working together toward a solution,” the adviser said. The adviser and another senior U.S. adviser, who also spoke to reporters anonymously, told reporters that ph...
(JNS) — Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, referred on Monday to convicted Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons, including those with blood on their hands, as “political prisoners” during a press briefing. Leavitt confirmed that Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy for special missions, and Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, are in Egypt to lead technical talks with Israel and Hamas on implementing the peace plan which Trump unveiled last week. Leavitt said that Hamas’s...
(JNS) — Meeting with European diplomats on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly went as one would expect of representatives of countries that have been recognizing a state of “Palestine,” which the Jewish state and others say rewards Hamas, according to Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International. “What we have here on an international level is a ‘don’t confuse me with the facts’ worldview,” Mariaschin told JNS. “All of these arguments, which we feel are well grounded, are clearly not getting through in terms of p...
(JNS) — The Israeli mission to the United Nations held an event honoring the “women who stepped forward when the world stood still” at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Tuesday. “On Oct. 7, not only was the cruelty of Hamas revealed to the world, but also the heroism of Israeli women,” Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said at the event. “In the face of terror and murder, they stood up like lionesses,” he said. “They fought, saved and protected.” “We carry their spirit with us. The women of Israel have proven...
