Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, stated on Aug. 1 that the Jewish state is guilty of the “mass starvation of innocent civilians” and of inflicting “heartbreaking and inexcusable” trauma on children and families. The word “Hamas” appeared nowhere in her LinkedIn post, titled “Thoughts and updates: standing in solidarity with Palestine.” “As you all know, Teach for Palestine, our network partner operating in the West Bank, is continuing its vital work despite escalating violence, severe restrictions on fundamental freedom...
(JNS) - A night of speeches ended in dance. By design, nearly 2,000 teenage Jewish athletes at the JCC Maccabi Campus Games fulfilled the promise of former hostage Mia Schem, who, upon release from Hamas captivity, declared: "We will dance again." Those words, which Schem inked on her arm with the date Oct. 7, 2023, were referenced by social-media influencer Montana Tucker during her address to attendees of the Opening Ceremonies of the JCC Maccabi Campus Games. "From the Maccabees who fought...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want Israel to govern Gaza permanently, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told JNS, amid reports that Netanyahu is considering a wider military operation in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave. Gottheimer, who was part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to the Jewish state that met with Netanyahu on Wednesday, said that Israel is focused on defeating the terrorist group. “We talked about it as the ultimate goal of ensuring that we crush Hamas, and we can’t have leadership and governa...
(JNS) — Israel’s Security Cabinet was slated to meet Thursday night to decide on the continuation of the war on Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, with one option being a full-fledged occupation of the enclave. The ministers were set to gather at 6 p.m. at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem for the pivotal meeting and a subsequent vote. The session is scheduled to last until 11 p.m. but expected to last longer. A senior official told Ynet on Wednesday afternoon that while the Cabinet was expected to support the proposal to occupy Gaza...
Teacher showed video promoting ‘bias toward Jewish students,’ Bay Area district probe finds (JNS) — The Santa Clara Unified School District determined that one of its teachers violated district policy by showing a video to her class in March 2024 that compared Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza to the Holocaust, according to a document that JNS viewed. The district, which educates about 15,300 students in the San Francisco area, wrote in a July 25 letter to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition Education and Advocacy that the video featured a Holocau...
The 22-nation Arab League has signed onto a declaration that condemns Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and calls on Hamas to disarm. The league includes Qatar and Egypt, which have served as mediators in talks between Israel and Hamas during the subsequent war in Gaza. It also includes Turkey, which has adopted a stance of overt hostility toward Israel during the war. The league joined the entire European Union and 17 other countries in backing the declaration at a United Nations meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia and France. The m...
ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Torah Center, located in Southwest Orlando, filed a federal lawsuit July 31 against Orange County and its Board of County Commissioners after they unfairly denied the synagogue’s application to expand. Early in July, Rabbi Menachem Zev Kramer of OTC addressed the Orange County commissioners asking for special consideration and a waiver of zoning rules to build a 9,300-square-foot expansion plan for its worship center. “This is not just a request about bricks and mortar, this is about space,” Kramer said during the 2...
(JNS) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday evening accused Palestinian terrorists of starving the hostages they have held in the Gaza Strip for 668 days "like the Nazis starved the Jews. "I too was horrified yesterday," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office. "I saw the horrific videos of Rom and Evyatar, our dear sons. I called their families and embraced them on behalf of me and my wife, but also on your behalf. You see them languishing in a dungeon." Lat week, Hamas...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared on Tuesday evening that Israel is “at the closest point to achieving the war’s objectives,” emphasizing the need for victory in both Gaza and Yemen. Katz made the statement during a high-level security assessment with top defense officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and intelligence representatives. The meeting addressed evolving threats across the Middle East, with Katz stressing the importance of continuing operations to return all hostages and defeat Hamas. He also...
(JNS) — One of the last Jews in Yemen immigrated to Israel after her husband died a little over a year ago, Hebrew media reported on Wednesday. Badra Yousef lived in Yemen for years with her partner, Yahya, in the Arhab District north of the capital of Sanaa. “Badra and her husband were Yemeni Jews who loved their homeland and lived there through both good times and bitter ones,” independent Yemeni journalist Ali Ibrahim Al Moshki wrote on his Facebook page, according to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan News. In June, Al Moshki said that th...
\(JTA) — Canada, too, will recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September as long as certain conditions are met, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday. “The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delaying coordinated international action to support peace, security and the dignity of human life,” Carney, a liberal elected in April, said at a press conference, referring to a hunger crisis in Gaza that has grown acute. The move adds Canada to the United Kingdom and France as major world power...
(JNS) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday alongside her father, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, at the start of her working tour of the Jewish state. The Huckabees’ visit to the Western Wall, Judaism’s second-holiest site after the Temple Mount, fell on Tisha b’Av, the Jewish national day of mourning for the destruction of both Temples and other tragedies. They were welcomed by Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Western Wall’s rabbi, who shared with them “an overview of the site’s spiritual and...
(JNS) — A group of 60 French Jewish immigrants arrived in Israel on Tuesday on a flight sponsored by a Jerusalem-based evangelical Christian organization. The move, which comes amid a rise in global antisemitism triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel, highlights the burgeoning ties between the evangelical Christian community around the world and the Jewish state. “This is more than just a flight, it’s prophecy in motion,” said Peter Fast, International CEO of Bridges for Peace. “When Christians from around th...
(JNS) — Hundreds of pro-Israel students met in Washington last week for the Israel Campus Coalition’s national summit. Jacob Baime, the group’s CEO, told JNS that the 21 months since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and subsequent rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on campus marked a “new moment” for students who support the Jewish state. “As horrible as everything has been, as horrific as it’s all been since Oct. 7, there’s the silver lining of a huge surge in Jewish pride and interest in the issue,” Baime said. “This is a...
In recognition of 20 years since the Gaza pullout, JNS is featuring a five-part series of articles reflecting Israel's disengagement, speaking with an array of former Gush Katif residents to find out how they perceive the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Trump plan for the Gaza Strip and the prospect of returning. "The idea is not to go back to Gush Katif but to go back to a type of social, historical, Zionist, Jewish awareness that it's a part of the State of...
By Maayan Hoffman (JNS) - On Oct. 7, 2023, everything changed for David Pinto. The co-founder and CEO of Pinto Winery was vacationing in northern Israel, far from his home in Yerucham in the country's south. But when Hamas brutally infiltrated Israel that morning, Pinto, an IDF officer with the rank of major, was immediately called up to serve in the reserves. It took him a whole day to reach his home, with roads shut down across the country. He gathered his belongings, left his wife and...
As images of starving children in Gaza continue to circulate and the international outcry grows louder, a number of American rabbis used their pulpits this past Shabbat to speak up about the humanitarian crisis, some with sorrow, others with moral urgency, and many with a sense that silence was no longer tenable. The sermons came amid growing pressure on Jewish institutions to reckon with the consequences for Palestinian civilians of Israel’s war against Hamas as it nears the end of its second year. In recent days, more than a thousand r...
(JNS) — Former Washington Wizards basketball player Gilbert Arenas, suspected Israeli organized crime figure Yevgeni Gershman and four others were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly operating illegal high-stakes poker games at a mansion that Arenas owns in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Encino, the U.S. Justice Department said. Arenas, 43, was charged with three counts: conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, operating an illegal gambling business and making false statements to federal investigators. The five others—Yevgeni Ger...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday night that it was continuing its humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip — including airdrops of aid — in coordination with a consortium of Arab and European nations. As part of the ongoing cooperation between Jerusalem, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, France, Germany and Belgium, the IDF “is continuing the series of actions aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip,” according to the military statement. “Over the past few hours, 136 aid packages, containing food for the residents o...
A record number of Senate Democrats, representing a majority of the caucus, voted in favor Wednesday of two resolutions blocking U.S. military sales to Israel. The vote tally, including several senators who had not previously voted against such aid, underscores an apparent decline in support for Israel within the party. The vote comes as Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and amid a humanitarian crisis in the enclave that is drawing widespread condemnation. The resolutions were sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermont I...
President Donald Trump called for Hamas to “surrender” in a post on Truth Social Thursday morning, a day before his Middle East envoy visited Gaza and praised humanitarian efforts there. “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!,” wrote Trump in the post. The president’s post came days after he lamented “real starvation” in Gaza and as a new report, in The Atlantic, suggested that he was growing increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s u...
Harvard announces Ben-Gurion University study abroad program Harvard University announced two new partnerships on Monday that it says “promise to bolster the university’s academic engagement with Israeli institutions and create greater opportunities for students and researchers.” The Ivy League university plans to start offering credit for study abroad at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the spring 2026 semester, and Harvard Medical School will award two- or three-year Kalaniyot postdoctoral fellowships in biomedical research to Israelis....
(JNS) — The Israeli government approved a comprehensive aid package on Monday totaling some NIS 3.2 billion (about $940 million) for residents of southern Israel as part of a national initiative to rebuild communities devastated in the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023. The financial decision includes two main plans: one focused on strengthening and developing the city of Ashkelon, and the other on advancing the broader development of the western Negev region, according to a joint statement from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Min...
(JNS) - Israel recently reassumed administrative control over the Cave of the Patriarchs in the Judean city of Hebron after Palestinian Authority and Islamic officials refused to coordinate on renovations at the holy site, JNS has learned. Jerusalem decided to start a process to transfer authority from the Islamic trust that has managed the site to the Kiryat Arba-Hebron Religious Council to improve infrastructure for Jewish worshippers, Hebron's international spokesperson confirmed to JNS on...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday categorically rejected claims of starvation in the Gaza Strip, dismissing such reports as “a bold-faced lie.” Speaking at a Daystar TV conference in Jerusalem hosted by Pastor Paula White, leader of the White House Faith Office, Netanyahu said, “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.” Israel, he continued, had “enabled humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza. Otherwise, there would be no Gazans.” It is Hamas that ha...
