Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israeli leaders are considering the idea of exiling Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar in exchange for the release of all hostages held by the terrorist group and an end to its governance of the territory. Six Israeli officials and senior advisers confirmed to NBC News on Feb. 8 that Jerusalem would be willing to allow the exit from Gaza of the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre. Sinwar is believed to be hiding in the vast tunnel systems underneath Khan Yunis and Rafah, surrounded by hostages used as human shields. In addition to S...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces soldiers operating in the heart of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza discovered a large tunnel, one where Hamas had held a around a dozen hostages, the military revealed on Wednesday. Troops from the IDF’s 98th Division, working alongside combat engineers from the elite Yahalom unit, located the approximately 1,000-yard-long tunnel while exploring an underground labyrinth composed of numerous branches. On Jan. 21, the IDF announced that the 98th Division unearthed and destroyed a nearby tunnel branch of similar size. The...
(JNS) - During a fundraising trip to New York City on Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden encountered protesters brandishing "Genocide Joe" placards who disrupted traffic and at one point stalled his motorcade. Biden attended a meeting of nearly 20 business leaders at the home of Larry Linden, who previously worked as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he warned that former President Donald Trump would "undo everything we've done" and "we can't let that happen." The president reportedly also...
(JNS) - Mosab Hassan Yousef, also known as "The Green Prince," the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, has joined Israel's public diplomacy campaign amid Israel's war against the terror group. Yousef, who rejected terrorism and went to work helping fight against it, arrived in Israel and toured the areas of the Oct. 7 massacre in the Western Negev. Referring to Hamas's Charter calling for the genocide of Jews, he said, "The people that wrote the Hamas Covenant are a bunch of...
Palestinian terrorists in northern Samaria opened fire on Tuesday on the northern community of Kibbutz Meirav, located inside pre-1967 Israel. There were no injuries in the attack, but one home was damaged when a bullet penetrated a window. Israeli forces in the area returned fire, and troops launched a manhunt for the terrorists. “They fired a burst. One bullet hit our house,” kibbutz resident Oren Henig told JNS. Henig, who is director of the Liba Center, a group seeking to strengthen the Jewish identity of the state, has been serving for...
Jared Genser, a Washington, D.C.-based international human rights lawyer, has extracted hostages and political prisoners from some of the world's worst dictatorships - usually in one-off deals following years of negotiation and on a rare occasion involving large sums of money. But he's concerned that piecemeal dealmaking with rogue actors encourages more kidnappings. So, Genser is proposing a new multilateral approach to fighting hostage-taking by nations like Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela,...
(JNS) - Friends, family and supporters gathered on Feb. 7 at the Nahum Gutman Museum of Art in Tel Aviv to mark what would have been Shani Louk's 23rd birthday with an exhibition of work that runs through Feb. 21. On Oct. 7, Louk became a symbol of Hamas's unfolding atrocities as terrorists paraded her lifeless body on a pickup truck through the streets of Gaza, with crowds cheering and spitting on her lifeless body. "We wanted to keep Shani's memory alive through her passion for dancing and...
(JNS) — Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built. Asked on Wednesday whether, given the United Nations’ sizable presence in Gaza via a variety of agencies, there had been any indication to the global body that tunnels were being constructed underground, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “No is clearl...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Wednesday at his office in Jerusalem with Argentine President Javier Milei, who has promised to move his country’s embassy to the capital and designate Hamas a terrorist group. “I’m delighted to welcome you, President Milei, and your delegation, to Israel. You’re a great friend of the Jewish state. We are delighted with your decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move your diplomatic post there, and also, of course, an embassy,” began Netanyahu. “We share the desire for...
By Judy Lash Balint (JNS) — Palestinian children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says. “In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.” The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the...
(JNS) — An Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza will take place in three stages over several weeks, sources in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah claim. Parallel to this, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas is said to be preparing certain reforms under U.S. pressure that he hopes would allow him to return to power in Gaza. The emerging ceasefire agreement will occur in three phases, according to the high-ranking sources and reports in the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel. The basic formula is the release of one Israeli hostage for 30 i...
New Title VI probes of Harvard, UMich, New School, USF, Indiana (JNS) — The U.S. Department of Education announced five new investigations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Law. Harvard University, the University of Michigan, The New School (New York City), Indiana University-Bloomington, the Butler School District 53 (Illinois) and the University of South Florida are all being probed for violations “for discrimination involving shared ancestry.” Campus Reform said it filed the complaint against Indiana, a public university. The Educa...
(JNS) — The heads of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus on Feb. 7 pressed Dutch legislators to cut funding to UNRWA altogether, as Israel seeks alternatives for the U.N. body over its ties to Palestinian terrorism. The discussion, at the Dutch House of Representatives, comes amid Israeli calls for UNRWA to be replaced by responsible aid agencies; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the work and functions of UNRWA need to be preserved. “With the recent horrific reports verifying UNRWA employees’ complicity in the Oct. 7...
BERLIN (JTA) — Police in Berlin have arrested a 23-year-old man who allegedly attacked and seriously wounded a Jewish student in a bar on Friday. The Jewish student and his family say the attack was a hate crime. The victim, Lahav Shapira, 30, was hospitalized and underwent surgery for non-life-threatening injuries to his face. He is the grandson of Israeli athletics coach Amitzur Shapira, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972. His older brother, Shahak Shapira, is a prominent comedian and w...
(JNS) - The OneFamily organization on Sunday hosted a unique day retreat for 25 of the most senior officers of the "IDF Casualty Center," providing a short respite and critical support for soldiers with one of the most difficult jobs in the army. The IDF Casualties Center is a unique division of 1,800 people tasked with notifying the families of fallen soldiers. The unit was founded in 1948 but only became active two years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which claimed the lives of thousands of...
(JNS) — Israel will not agree to the “delusional demands” Hamas is making to release the 136 remaining hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on Feb. 7. Bowing to the terrorist organization’s demands will lead to another massacre and a “major disaster” that no Israeli citizen will accept, he emphasized, speaking from his office in Jerusalem. “We are on our way to total victory,” he declared. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory is within reach....
(JNS) — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the so-called progressive “Squad” in Congress and originally from Mogadishu, is facing calls for her resignation after, critics say, she promised to do all she could to prevent a Somaliland deal with Ethiopia over access to the sea. “The language she employed was regrettably unbecoming of both the office she holds and the constituents she represents,” wrote Rhoda Elmi, deputy foreign affairs minister of Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 but which most countries...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A conflict that started on a tiny perimeter of land on Oct. 7 is, less than four months later, reverberating throughout the region, from Lebanon in the north to Morocco in the west, Iran in the east and Yemen in the south. “This is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday at a press conference. “I would argue that we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 19...
GAINESVILLE, Florida — Amid the record levels of antisemitism on college campuses, student leaders at the University of Florida held the fifth-annual Spread Cream Cheese, Not Hate® Bagel Day program on Jan. 31. Started in 2020 by University of Florida Hillel, Spread Cream Cheese, Not Hate® is a program that seeks to proactively combat antisemitism through education, outreach, awareness, and partnership. In connection with National Bagel Day, UF students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and community members are invited to sign the pledge to...
Craig Polejes, Chair of the Shalom Orlando Board of Directors, announced that the Board of Directors of Shalom Orlando has appointed Melissa Youngblood and Rachel Greenspan as the interim co-executive directors. Melissa Youngblood has been an invaluable member of the Shalom Orlando team for the past six years, serving with distinction as the chief education officer of the Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center. In her role, Youngblood has exhibited exceptional leadership, driving forward transformative initiatives and ensuring that...
With only three representatives voting against it, the Florida House of Representatives passed House Bill 187 that defines what antisemitic speech is, and now it moves on to the Senate. Sponsor of the bill, Rep. Mike Gottlieb (D-Plantation), told the Orlando Sentinel the goal is to curb hate speech toward Jews and Israel. The bill includes the definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016 into Florida educational statutes. “We live in a time where people think they can say things and that has no...
(JNS) — Scores of Christian supporters from around the world gathered in Israel’s parliament on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus in a show of solidarity amid the war against Hamas in Gaza. The event, which came on a somber day following the single deadliest attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out three and half months ago underscored the growing force of faith-based diplomacy around the globe. “Over the last 20 years, you have proven in the best possible way what true fr...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday set out the country’s core demands for ending the war against Hamas in Gaza. “The essential goal is, first of all, the elimination of Hamas. To achieve this goal, three things are needed,” Netanyahu told journalists ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv. “The first requirement is the collapse of Hamas’s battalions. To date, we have leveled 17 out of 24 battalions. Most of the remaining battalions are in the southern Gaza Strip and Rafah—we wi...
(JNS) — The Florida Department of Education has distributed $25 million in security funding—of $43 million allocated by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)—to more than 130 Jewish day schools and preschools across the state, the governor’s office announced earlier this week. “During a time of increased antisemitism around the world, Florida will continue to protect the Jewish community,” DeSantis stated on Jan. 30. “Today’s funding will give Florida’s Jewish day schools the tools they need to continue to keep their students safe.” The funding will help s...
(JNS) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 422-2 on Wednesday to deny entry into the United States to non-U.S. citizen members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 6679, the “No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act,” which drew dissenting votes from Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), two leftist members of the so-called “squad.” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) voted “present.” “Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financ...
