Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel will not cooperate with an FBI investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who died in May in an exchange of fire between Palestinian and Israeli troops, Israel’s defense minister said. “The American Justice Department’s decision to investigate the regrettable death of Shireen Abu Akleh is a grave mistake,” Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister, said Monday on Twitter. “I made clear to American representatives that we stand behind Israeli soldiers, we will not cooperate...
(JTA) — Five days after Nancy Pelosi made history in 2007 as the first woman elected to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, she held an event at her alma mater, the private Roman Catholic university, Trinity Washington. She asked a rabbi, the Reform movement’s David Saperstein, to headline the event because she saw the movement as taking the lead on a crisis that deeply concerned her, in Darfur. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” Saperstein said, quoting Leviticus. Pelosi was so pleased with Saperstein’s remarks t...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden called Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him on being reelected Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu said the two would work to expand the Abraham Accords. "President Biden called me to congratulate me on my elections victory and said the U.S.-Israel alliance is as resilient as ever,' Netanyahu said Monday in Hebrew on Twitter. "I thanked President Biden for our close personal friendship of 40 years and for his commitment to the state of Israel. I told him we intend on reaching more peace agreements and...
(JTA) — A poll of Jewish voters showed them overwhelmingly listing abortion rights and risks to democracy as their top issues when they voted in midterm elections. The poll commissioned by J Street and another exit poll conducted on behalf of Fox News Channel and the Associated Press also showed substantial majorities of Jews voting Democratic, although they differed on how big the majorities were. That is commensurate with Jewish voting in the past, which favors Democrats two-to-one generally. The J Street poll showed 74 percent of r...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to concede this week’s election as most of the votes were counted by the end of Thursday. “The State of Israel is above any political consideration. I wish Netanyahu luck for the sake of the people of Israel and the State of Israel,” Lapid wrote in a statement. Netanyahu, meantime, has launched the negotiating process to form the next government with the far-right Religious Zionist party and haredi Orthodox parties. With a total of 64 seats,...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Israeli president Isaac Herzog had a message and stuck to it: Israel and the United States are on the same page no matter who wins elections in both countries next month. "We have elections in Israel, and you're having midterm elections in the United States," Herzog told President Joe Biden in the public portion of their meeting Wednesday, Oct. 26, in the Oval Office. "But one thing is clear - and I think this visit epitomizes it best - is that our friendship and strong bond transcends all political differences and opinions...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a gay man in a conservative-leaning area, and a Black woman from California — all are among the nearly two-dozen Jews who are hoping to enter Congress next year. Among the 46 Jewish nominees for the U.S. House of Representatives are 22 incumbents — 21 Democrats and a single Republican. (Five Jewish incumbents retired or lost a primary this cycle.) The remaining 24 are challengers or running in open seats. Using a number of nonpartisan sources, including the Cook Political Report and 2...
(JTA) — After years of negotiation and military posturing, Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered agreement that establishes maritime boundaries between the countries, allowing each to explore for fossil fuels unthreatened by the prospect of an attack. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, heading into an election next Tuesday and under fire from his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the deal concedes too much, cast the deal as a historic breakthrough. “This is a diplomatic achievement,” Lapid said at the start of the C...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump, the former U.S. president, has once again said he is baffled by the lack of appreciation he feels coming from American Jews. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” he said on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” He added, “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — before it is too lat...
(JTA) — Israel’s government has approved an historic maritime accord with Lebanon, as both countries are under pressure to get the agreement signed before October ends and their leaders may change. The Israeli and U.S. governments pushed back against claims that the deal ceded too much to Lebanon. The details of the deal are not yet in place, but Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday at a press conference, hours after his cabinet approved the deal, that Israel had declined two last-minute Lebanese demands. Lebanon had wanted to rem...
(JTA) — The U.S. Air Force Academy has pledged to “correct” its processes to ensure that it does not schedule key events on major faith holidays after a mandatory training exercise took place on Yom Kippur. “The U.S. Air Force Academy recognizes the importance of the holy days of all faiths. A training event was unintentionally scheduled this week during the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur,” Lt. Col. Brian Maguire, the director of public affairs, said in a statement his office emailed Thursday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Academy’s A...
(JTA) — It started with a shirt and ended in a conflagration over antisemitism and Republican politics. Such is the extended news cycle over multiple antisemitic comments during the last week by Kanye West, the artist and provocateur who prefers to go by Ye. On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, Instagram and Twitter, West made a string of comments reflecting a range of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories. The spree culminated with West’s vow to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” DEFCON is an acronym that refers to the state of alert of Ame...
(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has emphatically encouraged dialogue with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, despite his disagreements with the center-right pro-Israel lobby and calls among the pro-Palestinian community to disengage from the group. In a recording of his meeting last month with Palestinian Americans on the sidelines of the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York City obtained by The Times of Israel, Abbas also faulted the current Biden administration for not doing enough to pressur...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - The Biden administration is still hoping to close a deal between Israel and Lebanon on a maritime border. Still, Israel is citing the deal's apparent collapse to prepare for tensions on its northern border. "Special Presidential Coordinator Amos Hochstein continues his robust engagement to bring the maritime boundary discussions to a close," a National Security Council spokeswoman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "We remain in close communication with the Israelis and Lebanese. We are at a critical stage in the...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The lawmakers thanked the representatives from the social networks giants for attending the Capitol Hill hearing on antisemitism — after all, it was not an official congressional hearing and no one was obliged to turn up. But then, after some tense exchanges last Friday, things got acrimonious quickly: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Jewish Florida Democrat who convened the hearing, said that the tech reps’ stonewalling on whether and how antisemitism would be treated will lead to congressional action. “We’re all start...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s an argument that has percolated for years in salons and on social media and now members of Congress are duking it out: What fits better into the “progressive” portmanteau, supporting or opposing Israeli policies? Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who is Palestinian American and who is the only member of Congress who opposes Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state, said Tuesday that there was no room in the progressive movement for supporters of what she called Israel’s “apartheid” government. “I want you all...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden is bringing a Jewish High Holiday celebration to the White House for the first time. His White House is hosting a Rosh Hashanah reception tonight, Sept. 30, Jewish Insider reported on Monday. As vice president during the 2009-2017 Obama administration, Biden hosted Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot receptions at the Naval Observatory, the official vice presidential residence, the first vice president to do so. President Bill Clinton was the first president to host a Chanukah party for staff, and President George W....
(JTA) — Yair Lapid called the people around the table “family” and “brothers and sisters.” The vibe was unusual for the 50 or so Jewish leaders who convened Wednesday to meet the Israeli prime minister, and who were used to being lectured at by the man Lapid hopes to keep from returning to office, Benjamin Netanyahu. That was the point: Ahead of what is likely a close election on Nov. 1, Lapid, who is in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, wants to draw distinctions between himself and the leader of Israel’s Likud Party, am...
(JTA) — Israel’s government advanced a plan to build as many as 700 new apartment units in a suburb of Jerusalem that opponents say encroaches on a Palestinian village that straddles the country’s pre-1967 lines. The Jerusalem planning and building committee on Monday approved a plan for a new neighborhood called Givat Shaked, which would include high-rise buildings that come right up to the edge of Beit Safafa — a village that was split from 1948 until 1967, when Israel captured eastern Jerusalem in the Six-Day War. Haaretz quoted residen...
(JTA) - Last week, the chances that the United States would rejoin the Iran nuclear deal seemed higher than they had been in years. CNN and Reuters reported that Iran had dropped multiple demands in the ongoing negotiations over a new accord that would update the original reached in 2015. Senior U.S. officials were confident that the new deal would be sealed in days. Then on Monday, Iran's government said it wanted more time - extending into September - to examine the U.S. response to a recent proposal. It's no longer clear if Iran has made...
(JTA) - Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader whose reforms, including allowing massive numbers of Jews to emigrate to Israel, changed his country and the world, died at 91. Russian media said Gorbachev died Tuesday in a Moscow hospital. "Michail Gorbachev has died," Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow's chief rabbi from 1993 until this year, said Tuesday on Twitter. "3 million Soviet Jews owe him their freedom." It was clear when Gorbachev rose to power in 1985 that he would be different from his predecessors as secretary general of the...
(JTA) - For nearly a millennium, 17 Jewish children and adults lost to history at the bottom of a well kept a secret about the genetic markers that distinguish Ashkenazi Jews. In 1190, in Norwich, a riverside city perched near England's eastern coast, crusaders on their way to the Holy Land massacred 17 Jews and threw them down a well. The town was already a locus for antisemitic fervor: In 1144, its people originated the first known blood libel, blaming Jews for the ritual murder of a child. In 2004, construction workers in the town, one of...
(JTA) — A Jewish Google employee who led activism against a major contract with Israel’s government resigned, citing what she said was retaliation. “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Aug. 30 to Medium. “Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away...
(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing “Holocausts” at a press conference after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, and Scholz’s muted initial response is spurring criticism. Abbas used the term in response on Tuesday to a reporter who asked if the Palestinian leader would apologize for the murder 50 years ago of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. An arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization carried out the attack, and the PLO and the Palestinian Authori...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - It has become a kind of mantra in Washington and Jerusalem: Integrate much of the Middle East, including Israel, into a single security system to keep Iran in its place. The issue came up as soon as President Joe Biden landed Wednesday at Ben Gurion airport in Israel for his first visit as president and his 10th since 1973. "We will discuss building a new security and economy architecture with the nations of the Middle East, following the Abraham Accords and the achievements of the Negev Summit," Israeli Prime Minister Yair...
