Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - It is a tragedy in its own right that Ilana Gritzewsky, a liberated Israeli hostage whom Hamas abused sexually, had to confront the United Nations expert on violence against women, according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. "It's absolutely horrible that this should have to be the case," Neuer told JNS on Wednesday, the day after Gritzewsky appeared before the U.N. Human Rights Council to address Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. "It's...
(JNS) — As details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s new Iran framework agreement begin to emerge, Jewish organizations and policy experts said that questions remain whether its terms go far enough and if Tehran can be trusted to adhere to them. “Whether or not this agreement succeeds lies in strict verification and intrusive enforcement,” Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS. “Given Iran’s 47-year history of deceit and deception, its secretive nuclear program and its role as paymaster and armorer of terrorist proxi...
(JNS) - No Israeli athlete had assumed the podium at the Olympic games before Yael Arad won a silver medal in judo at the 1992 summer games in Barcelona. More than 30 years and 20 Israeli medals later, the legendary judoka, who is now president of Israel's Olympic Committee, is traveling across the United States to raise support for Israeli athletes ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. "We feel that Israeli athletes are doing much more than sports," Arad, 59, told JNS on a visit to New York. She...
(JNS) - Growing up in Israel, Ofir Akunis remembers spending Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independence Days, dancing in Kings of Israel Square, which was renamed Rabin Square after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. This year, it felt different to Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York. "It's a unique feeling - to be somewhere else in the world during Yom Ha'atzmaut," he told JNS. "It's totally different. This is an ordinary day here. It's a day off for the employees...
(JNS) — Before discovering the story of Joseph and Rebecca Bau, who married secretly in the Plaszow concentration camp during the Holocaust, Deborah Smerecnik never imagined that she would make a film. “It was the love story that drew me in and the fact that there were so many miracles,” she told JNS. “I’m very much a believer in miracles, and I wanted to tell a redemptive story that encourages people to hold on and persevere.” Smerecnik, who wrote the 2024 film “Bau: Artist at War,” devoted some 15 years to the project, which she admits she...
(JNS) — Ayelet Samerano, whose 21-year-old son Yonatan Samerano was shot by Hamas terrorists and abducted by a UNRWA social worker on Oct. 7, 2023, is relieved that her desperate calls for action are finally being answered. “Today we’re seeing the results of our hard work,” she told JNS, after the Knesset passed two laws on Monday that make it illegal for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to operate on Israeli soil, and for Israeli officials to work with the U.N. agency. Samerano talked with JNS on Monday night after she spoke at an O...
