Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2530 - 2554 of 10919
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department’s point woman on Jew-hatred says there’s a key element to antisemitism differing it from other types of hate. It’s the conspiracy theory. “You can’t really grasp what antisemitism is, even if you care tremendously about it,” unless you understand the element that makes Jew-hatred unique, Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, said in a pre-Shabbat briefing on Friday. “If it’s someone you loathe, you just want to keep them down and keep them out of your life...
(JTA) — In its closing session, Ohio’s legislature passed a law imposing penalties of up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for “zoom-bombing” religious services, a practice that antisemites have used to intimidate Jews. The law, “Increasing Penalties for Disturbing a Religious Service,” passed last week unanimously in the state Senate. It had previously passed in the state House, 95-1. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sought the law after discovering that disrupting a religious service was only considered a “class four misdemeanor,...
(JNS) — A video of U.S. President Joe Biden saying that the nuclear deal with Iran is “dead” but that Washington will not announce as much surfaced on Tuesday, Dec. 20. The footage, which was apparently taken during Biden’s visit to California early last month, shows a woman asking him to declare that the 2015 agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is no longer in effect. “President Biden, could you please announce that the JCPOA is dead?” the Iranian-American woman asks, as the American president approaches...
(JNS) - It is being dubbed the "Christian Birthright." The group of 120 American college students had just crisscrossed Israel on a nine-day journey, visited the requisite sites including a Friday night at the Western Wall, stops in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and must-see places such as the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, before diving into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its diversity of narratives, security and multi-faith briefings, and visits to border areas. At first glance, the boisterous,...
(JNS) - Washington should steadfastly stand by the Jewish state, U.S. Congressman Dr. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said last week. "It is an American interest for Judea and Samaria - indeed all the land of the Bible - to remain a part of Israel. Unification of these biblical lands benefits people of all religions, ensuring religious freedom and access for all. It is not an obstacle to peace but a chance for real peace," said Harris during a visit to the Binyamin region. He vowed to ensure that the U.S....
(JNS) - U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) on Thursday were joined by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in announcing their bipartisan bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Benjamin Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg trials prosecutor. Over the course of his life, Ferencz has advocated for the rule of law and international justice. During World War II, Ferencz served in the U.S. Army and helped collect evidence of...
(JNS) - Some 70,000 people from 95 different countries immigrated to Israel in 2022 with the assistance of the Jewish Agency for Israel, in cooperation with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. It was the most olim in 23 years and a dramatic increase from 2021, when about 28,600 immigrants arrived in the country. Jewish Agency data for the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2022, shows that 37,364 olim arrived from Russia; 14,680 from Ukraine; 3,500 from North America, with assistance from...
(JNS) - The Dec. 18 New York Times crossword puzzle, published on the eve of Chanukah, disturbed readers and elicited online backlash with a design resembling a swastika. Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin tweeted, "Meanwhile, on the first night of Chanukah the anti-Israel New York Slimes issues a crossword puzzle that looks like a swastika. Of course, when pointed out, they claimed it was a coincidence. What a sick and sad history." Brooke Goldstein, the founder of End Jew Hatred and...
(JNS) — In 2018, the Trump administration signed into law the Taylor Force Act to prevent the U.S. government from sending funds to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues to fund terrorism. Now, a new lawsuit supported by victims of terror is seeking to compel the Biden administration to follow suit. Filed by America First Legal, a new firm founded and led by former Trump presidential senior advisor Stephen Miller, the lawsuit identifies the Biden administration funding the P.A. with more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars as a v...
(JTA) –Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he had successfully formed a new government coalition after more than five weeks of negotiations. There are some asterisks: Netanyahu hasn’t officially signed any coalition deals yet with other parties (he has until 48 hours before the new government is seated Jan. 2 to do so), and some of his expected new partners are first demanding new legislation that has been delayed until after coalition talks. But Netanyahu seems confident that he has formed a coalition that will grant him a c...
Secretary at Nazi concentration camp guilty of complicity in over 10,500 killings (JNS) —The former secretary of the Nazi commander of the Stutthof concentration camp was convicted on Tuesday of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people. Irmgard Furchner, 97, who worked as a typist at the camp in the German-annexed Free City of Danzig between 1943 and 1945, received a two-year suspended jail term. While Furchner was a civilian, the judge presiding over the case in northern Germany agreed she was aware of what took place at S...
(JNS) — A Palestinian journalist routinely bashes Israel during the question and answer period at U.S. State Department briefings, and State Department spokespersons rarely correct the record. By allowing anti-Israel bias to penetrate the briefing room unchallenged, the State Department is inviting questions as to whether it shares the same views. On Dec. 6, State Department spokesman Ned Price failed to push back on the accusation by reporter Said Arikat, the Washington Bureau chief for the Jerusalem-based newspaper Al-Quds, that Israel was p...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday rejected criticism that his coalition will pursue a right-wing extremist agenda. During a Knesset plenum, Netanyahu said, "Everyone will live in accordance with their own faith. This will not become a nation of religious law. It will be a country in which we tend to all citizens of Israel, without exception." "We were elected to lead in our way, the way of the nationalist-right and the way of the liberal-right, and that's...
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — The functional headquarters and nerve center of the nation’s most prolific antisemitic propaganda group have moved from California’s Bay Area to Florida. Jon Minadeo Jr., the leader of Goyim TV, announced the move in videos and social media posts this week, explaining that he had grown increasingly isolated in his hometown of Petaluma and saw Florida as fertile ground for the hate group’s activities. The announcement came in a dramatic, Hollywood-style movie trailer replete with drone shots...
(JNS) — From Tampa Bay to Edmonton, a campaign intends to Shine A Light on antisemitism this Hanukkah. “You can’t dispel darkness with darkness. You have to dispel darkness with light,” Adam Teitelbaum, executive director at the Israel Action Network and associate vice president for public affairs at Jewish Federations of North America, told JNS. “The ability to shine a light on the multiple ways in which antisemitism manifests in today’s society is an incredible opportunity for the coordination and collaboration of institutions across not...
When the Covid 19 pandemic prevented The Jewish Pavilion staff and volunteers from entering facility buildings to lead services or to make visitations back in 2020, they decided to deliver holiday goody bags to temporarily replace regular programs. These bags have been a great success and have been sent to over 400 Jewish residents on each holiday, those who reside in independent or assisted living, long-term healthcare or memory-care facilities. For three years running, during Rosh Hashanah,...
(JNS) — The group stood in prayer for the State of Israel. An American evangelical bishop took the stage to lead in the singing of Israel’s national anthem at the culmination of a gala opening evening at a Jerusalem banquet hall. It certainly was not your standard international conference or foreign press association gathering in Israel. Welcome to the 2022 Christian Media Summit in the Holy Land. At a time of rising global antisemitism and deep divisions among Israelis spilling out into growing tensions with Diaspora Jewry over the makeup of...
(JTA) — On the cusp of forming a new government, incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his inclusion of far-right groups in his coalition amid domestic and global criticism of his alliances with extremist figures. “They’re joining me, I’m not joining them,” Netanyahu said in an NPR interview Thursday during the final stretch of his coalition talks, which are currently set for a Dec. 21 deadline. “I’ll have two hands firmly on the steering wheel. I won’t let anybody do anything to LGBT [people] or to deny our Arab citize...
(JNS) — Unilever plc announced on Thursday that its legal battle with the independent board of its wholly-owned autonomous subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s, over the brand’s sale of ice cream in Israel, has been resolved. The Vermont-based ice cream company announced in July 2021 that it would not renew the Israeli franchise agreement for the following year, saying that the sale of its ice cream in Judea and Samaria, commonly called the West Bank, was inconsistent with the brand’s values. This was met with a class-action lawsuit by a U.S. shareho...
(JTA) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, the right-wing Israeli politician called a “pyromaniac” by his critics because of his penchant for inflaming his country’s deep tensions, will head Israel’s police forces, under the terms of a deal inked with Benjamin Netanyahu early Friday. The deal would expand the ministry of internal security, the old name of the cabinet position in charge of the police, into the ministry of national security and would also give Ben-Gvir authority over border police in Palestinian territories, according to the terms reported...
Sometimes, your loved one is going to be discharged from the hospital, and you feel that person is not ready to come home. You can refuse discharge. Every state has a quality innovation network quality Improvement Organization. These government agencies help people with Medicare and Medicaid. See www.tiny.cc/QINmap KEPRO is a beneficiary and family-centered, quality-improvement organization that can help you. Quite simply, this is how it works and I tried it with my mother a few years ago. The hospital gives a discharge order. You refuse the...
(JNS) - Months after her nomination was held up due to prior antisemitic comments, the U.S. Senate confirmed Elizabeth Frawley Bagley to the post of ambassador to Brazil on Wednesday. The nomination has been blocked in June by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a tie, party-line vote. It came after comments by Bagley, a longtime diplomat and Democratic Party donor, were uncovered by The Washington Free Beacon. Bagley's nomination was suddenly discharged by the committee last week. Her...
(New York Jewish Week) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a new “hate and bias prevention unit” to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate. The unit will include public education and outreach efforts, a “rapid response team” to assist communities affected by a bias or hate incident, and regional councils where community members can share concerns, host events and conduct training, among other functions. Hochul’s announcement came during a 90-minute conference held by the Orthodox Union at Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue to discuss...
Bill Harris, a veteran Los Angeles photojournalist, didn’t think much of it when one morning in 2012 he woke up and found a tiny blood spot on the T-shirt he’d slept in. The next morning, he found blood in the same place on his chest — and went straight to his computer. “Online, I could find only three things that would cause a man’s nipple to discharge blood: being an avid runner, which I wasn’t; having a subtropical fungus, which I didn’t; and breast cancer,” he said. “That was a pretty big shock.” Harris, then just a few weeks shy of his 61...
Biden sets up task force to fight antisemitism and Islamophobia By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after Doug Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, chaired a roundtable with Jewish organizational leaders, President Joe Biden has set up an interagency task force to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia. The group’s first task is coming up with a strategy to tackle the rise in antisemitism. “This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antis...
