Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Palestinian Authority is circulating a draft resolution asking the United Nations General Assembly to urge Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria and remove some 500,000 Israeli citizens living in the territory within six months. According to a report by Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday, the resolution, which cites a July 19 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is expected to be brought to a vote next week. The 79th Session of the U.N. General Assembly was scheduled to open on Sept. 10. In add...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — In a poignant testimony, 12-year-old Erez Kalderon, kidnapped from his home in Nir Oz during the Oct. 7 onslaught, has shared his harrowing story of captivity in the Gaza Strip. Erez, whose father, Ofer Kalderon, remains in Hamas captivity, bravely opened up about his traumatic experience, saying, “It’s difficult for me to speak on camera, but if this reaches my dad—it’s worth everything.” Erez recounted the terrifying moments when attackers breached their home: “They simply broke the handle and entered. My dad quickl...
UNSC to convene for first talks on Gaza hostages since Oct. 7 (JNS) — The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to discuss the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following an “urgent request” by Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon. According to the envoy, it will mark the first time since the Oct. 7 attack that the Security Council has convened for an official deliberation on the issue. Hamas currently holds 101 hostages, including 97 of the 251 captured on Oct. 7. “It is a disgrace that it has taken the...
(JNS) — Some 120 protesters gathered near the Columbia University campus on Tuesday evening to call on U.S. universities to ban people from protesting on their campuses with face coverings masking their identities. Columbia was one of many sites of anti-Israel encampments that spread across campuses. In April, school’s president Minouche Shafik, who has since resigned, called police to campus to remove anti-Israel vandals who occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, largely dropped charges again...
(JNS) — The Israel Police has criticized the country’s State Attorney for having failed to produce indictments against Hamas leaders, after the U.S. Department of Justice announced such indictments on Sept. 3, Kan News reported on Tuesday, Sept. 4. “The indictment filed in the United States is based, among other things, on evidence compiled in Israel and given to the American investigators, while 11 months have passed and [in Israel] there are no indictments,” a source in the police’s special crimes unit, Lahav 433, told the Israeli public br...
(JTA) — The family of an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor in Virginia has sued Boar’s Head, claiming that listeria from the meat company’s products is responsible for his death. The filing is the first wrongful death lawsuit to stem from the Boar’s Head listeria outbreak. So far, more than 50 people have fallen ill in connection with the outbreak and nine have died, including Günter “Garshon” Morgenstein, who survived the Holocaust as a child. “We’re all still in shock, for all of the things you know that he’s seen and been through in his lif...
(JNS) - Israeli Cabinet ministers on Sunday night were presented with video footage of the tunnel in Rafah where the six murdered hostages were held, footage they described as "stomach-churning" and "horrific." IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi showed the visual documentation from southern Gaza at the request of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Ministers did not see the hostage's corpses but rather the inhumane conditions in which their Hamas captors forced them to live. The bodies of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Almog...
(JNS) - Members of the Gvura Forum converged on the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Monday to protest against a general strike called by the Histadrut labor federation following the IDF's recovery over the weekend of six hostages' bodies from the Gaza Strip. "We call on the prime minister not to give up to [Hamas terror chief Yahya] Sinwar and instead to keep up military pressure to achieve total victory," Yehoshua Shani, a member of the forum whose son IDF Capt. Ori Shani was killed in action at Kissufim on Oct. 7, told JNS. "Our...
(JNS) - The six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli forces in a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza overnight Saturday were shot multiple times at close range just days before their discovery, Israel's Health Ministry said on Sunday. According to examinations conducted by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, the captives were murdered 48 to 72 hours before the autopsies, which would place their deaths at some point between Thursday and Friday morning. That the captives were shot at short range suggests that they were executed by...
By (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for not freeing hostages as Israel woke up to the shattering news that Hamas terrorists murdered six captives who were on the verge of being rescued. Some of those killed had been slated for release under a failed deal in July, an anonymous Israeli official told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. Netanyahu’s apology, delivered Sunday to the parents of one of the six, Alex Lubnov, was a first for the prime minister who until now has said that accountability should come after Hamas is...
(JNS) - The U.S. Postal Service has announced a "Hanukkah Forever" stamp to commemorate the eight-day Jewish "Festival of Lights." Designed by Antonio Alcalá, it features a ocean-blue background, white hanukkiah and nine floating yellow lights. USPS says the design uses "irregular lines to suggest a more human presence." A first day of issue dedication ceremony will take place on Sept. 19, to be led by Michael Gordon, USPS government liaison director, at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Music and...
Chabad of South Orlando is hosting a Mega Challah Bake for the safety of families and soldiers in Israel and the return of the hostages. The event will be held Thursday, Sept. 12, at The Castle Hotel, 8602 Universal Blvd., Orlando. Doors open at 5 p.m. and the program begins at 6 p.m. and ends at 9:10 p.m. The cost is $36 online or $45 at the door. To register, visit JewishOrlando.com/megachallahbake. Registration closes on Sept. 10....
(JNS) — Where is the Air Force? This was the tragic question that did not have to be repeated yesterday. Those like this reporter who remember Oct. 7 minute by minute cannot forget how, from the moment of the opening missile barrage, everyone’s eyes fixed desperately on the sky, looking for the Israeli fighter planes. We expected them to finally flush out the terrorists, destroy the missile launchers, bomb the hundreds of invaders in the south and then those in Gaza, and cover the army’s retaliation. It didn’t happen. The desolation of the sil...
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department stated on Tuesday that it “strongly opposes” Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s call for construction of a synagogue on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The proposed Jewish house of worship “on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount” would “would demonstrate blatant disregard for the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said. “The ongoing reckless statements and actions of this minister only sow chaos and exacerbate tensions at a...
(JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday called for “the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” after the IDF overnight on Aug. 27 launched a large-scale anti-terror operation in Judea and Samaria. “This is a war in every respect and we must win it,” Katz tweeted. “The IDF is working intensively starting tonight in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures that have been established there,” he said. Iran is working “to establish an ea...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces launched a large-scale counterterrorism operation in the Jenin and Tulkarem areas of northern Samaria overnight Tuesday, involving hundreds of troops and air support. At least 11 Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry—including two in clashes with IDF troops in Jenin, three in a drone strike in a nearby village and another four in a drone strike in the Far’a camp in Tubas. Israel’s Channel 12 identified two of the fatalities as Kassam Jabarin, 25, and Atsam Belot, 39. Several...
(JNS) — A new campaign by the Samaria Regional Council blames Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza for Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of some 1,200 people, primarily civilians, in the Jewish state. As part of the effort, financed by friends of Samaria in Israel and abroad, the council put up billboards in Tel Aviv and other cities that read, “The reason—the result.” The ad shows a picture of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, followed by a photo of the Oct. 7 attacks. “Oslo and the ‘disengagement’ brought this disaster upon us. Gush Kat...
(JNS) - A circle of yellow flags, symbolic of the hostages who remain captive in Gaza, greet you as you enter Kibbutz Nir Am-a painful reminder of that Black Sabbath of Oct. 7. Every so often, the dull boom of combat in the neighboring Strip punctuates the air. The cacophony of war continues. Nir Am is in the northwestern Negev, close to Sderot. The closest point of the kibbutz is less than a mile from the Gaza border. On Oct. 7, as Hamas-led terrorists invaded the communities of the "Gaza Envelope," Nir Am was one of the few that succeeded in...
(JTA) — Israeli troops have rescued an Israeli hostage from southern Gaza, the military announced Tuesday. the eighth captive held by Hamas to be brought back alive by Israeli forces since Oct. 7. Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, 52, a Bedouin Israeli and father of 11 from the southern city of Rahat, worked as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen on the Gaza border and was captured by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 attack. He was one of several Israeli Arabs to be taken hostage. Al-Qadi was rescued Tuesday morning by Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit fro...
(JNS) - Qaid Farhan Alkadi, who was rescued from Gaza by Israeli forces on Aug. 27, after 326 days in Hamas captivity, has begun to share details regarding the brutal conditions he experienced since his abduction on Oct. 7. "He spoke about the darkness, not being able to see. But, thank God, he's back with us, alive-it made us all rejoice," Alkadi's cousin Fayez al-Sana told the New York Times after visiting him in hospital. Ata Abu Medigm, the former mayor of Rahat, told Ynet that Alkadi was held in near total darkness for months: "He told...
(JNS) — The following is the transcript, translated from Hebrew, of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation on Aug. 27 with Farhan al-Qadi, who was rescued after being held hostage in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Farhan, hello to you my friend. Welcome back!” Farhan al-Qadi: “Hello, welcome. Hello Bibi, Abu [father of] Yair!” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Farhan, I am so happy to speak with you.” Farhan al-Qadi: “I am also happy. I have been waiti...
(JTA) - Hersh Goldberg-Polin's mother looked almost as the world has gotten to know her when she took the podium at her son's funeral in Jerusalem. Rachel Goldberg-Polin had her hair pulled back neatly and was wearing a crisp white shirt, the trademark piece of masking tape marking the number of days since her son and 250 others were taken hostage on Oct. 7 affixed to its breast. But the shirt was ripped, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of rending one's clothing upon learning of the death of a loved one. And she had something new to say....
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - The vibrant Redhead Days Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, known for celebrating auburn-haired individuals worldwide, struck a poignant note this year. Amid the sea of orange locks, participants were urged to remember the Bibas family-Shiri, Yarden and their young sons Ariel and Kfir-who were taken captive from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The event, which ran from Aug. 24-25, drew over 10,000 attendees, was transformed into a platform for raising awareness about the family's plight, with a spotlight on the two redheaded...
(JNS) — Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashaal called for a return to suicide terror attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria. During a video address to a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Mashaal said, “Resistance operations in the West Bank are escalating despite the harsh conditions,” according to CNN Arabic. “We want to return to martyrdom operations. This is a situation that can only be addressed by open conflict. They are fighting us with open conflict, and we are confronting them with open conflict,” he continued. “The enemy has opened...
(JNS) — Israel’s United Nations Ambassador Danny Danon on Thursday morning responded to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a halt to IDF activity in Judea and Samaria. “Since Oct. 7, Iran has been working vigorously to introduce into Judea and Samaria sophisticated explosive devices that are intended to detonate in the centers of Israeli cities,” Danon tweeted. “The State of Israel cannot sit idly by and wait for the spectacle of buses and cafes exploding in city centers. The activity of the IDF forces in Judea and Samaria is...
