Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israel controls approximately 60% of the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. He added that he has instructed the Israel Defense Forces to expand that figure to 70% as part of its ongoing campaign against Hamas. Speaking at the Jordan Valley Conference, Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to increase pressure on the terrorist organization nearly three years after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “Israel controls 60 percent of the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister said. “My directi...
(JNS) - "Obviously, the first thing you want to do is try to understand what she went through. I still don't know half of it. When she's older, I might be able to ask her." For Tom Hand, father of former Hamas hostage Emily Hand, the questions surrounding his daughter's 50 days in captivity remain largely unanswered. Yet nearly three years after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, he says the 11-year-old has shown remarkable resilience as she rebuilds her life and prepares to return home. On the...
(JNS) — Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei threatened the United States and Israel, calling on Muslims worldwide to chant for the destruction of the two nations during the upcoming Hajj pilgrimage. “In various parts of Iran and the world, and continuing well beyond these blessed days, ‘Death to America” and ‘Death to Israel’ shall become the common chants of the Islamic ummah [nation],” Khamenei said in a written statement issued on the occasion of the Hajj and published in English by the semi-official ISNA news agency. The ayatollah cal...
By Gloria Green In response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack from Gaza, Israel created a new intelligence task force called NILI — Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker, Hebrew for The Eternal One of Israel Does Not Lie — involving Shin Bet internal security, military intelligence, and Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. Its mission was, and continues to be, to track down and kill or capture those responsible for the massacre — from direct attackers to senior planners — while also preventing future attacks. More than a century earlier,...
(JNS) — During a visit with Defense Minister Israel Katz to the IDF’s 96th Division along Israel’s eastern border on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel’s enemies are seeking to infiltrate the country. “We take into account that our enemies want to invade the State of Israel, and therefore we rely on you,” Netanyahu told commanders and soldiers stationed in the area. Netanyahu and Katz toured one of the upgraded “water-line outposts” along the Jordan frontier and received briefings from IDF officers on effort...
(JNS) — “All I wanted was to dance. I went dancing and almost didn’t come home to my son,” Rita Yedid told JNS on Monday. On Oct. 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists stormed the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on the Gaza border, Yedid hid in a ticket-booth caravan with her sister Eden; her husband, Guy; and three other partygoers. Guy was shot and wounded while shielding her from Hamas gunfire. Around 11:30 a.m., a terrorist looked through the caravan window, threatened the group and stole their phones and money. All six were rescued l...
IDF strikes 100-plus Hezbollah sites in Southern Lebanon By JNS Staff (JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces overnight on Monday struck more than 100 Hezbollah sites and terrorist operatives in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley and across the country’s south. In several strikes in the Beqaa Valley, the IDF targeted Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites, including a weapons storage facility, the military stated on Tuesday. One operation in the Beqaa Valley town of Machghara consisted of several strikes carried out within seconds. The aerial assault was s...
By Andrew Bernard (JNS) — Sex therapist Maureen Galindo lost her bid to be the Democratic nominee in the primary runoff on Tuesday for Texas’s 35th Congressional district after she was denounced by leaders of her own party for making incendiary comments about Jews. The Associated Press called the race for Johnny Garcia, a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy, after polls closed. At press time, Garcia had about 62 percent of the vote to Galindo’s 38 percent with 74 percent of votes counted. The race to represent the 35th district, which include...
Last week we marked the anniversary of Israel's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and with it, bringing thousands of Lebanese Christians to Israel. This is the story of a young man who was a child then. "G" was born into a Maronite Christian family in South Lebanon, part of a community that traces its roots to the ancient Phoenicians. His early childhood unfolded in a quiet Christian village just 15 kilometers from the Israeli border, surrounded by rolling hills, farmland, and deeply...
(JNS) - The creation of a new Jewish Federation in the Maryland state capital was inspired, in part, by the death of Sarah Milgrim, who was murdered along with her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky a year ago Thursday, when the two Israeli embassy staffers left an American Jewish Committee event about a mile from the White House. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of her and mourn her loss, while also recognizing that it could happen to any Jew at any time anywhere at this point," Jenni...
(JNS) - Six men assaulted an Israeli man in London on early on Monday morning after hearing him speak Hebrew on the phone, he told police and the media. The Israeli, Shalev Ben Yakar, 22, also complained to police about the beating that he said the six men gave him outside the Solomon Hotel in Golders Green, The Jewish Chronicle of London reported on Monday. "[They caught me] completely off guard. I was not ready. I saw [them] coming [toward] me, and I had a suspicious feeling [about them], but...
On Sunday, May 17, 2026, 7th-grade students from the Shevet Agam Chapter of Israeli Scouts volunteered at Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando's Pearlman Food Pantry as part of their Bar/Bat Mitzvah Year Program, an experience designed to cultivate leadership, responsibility, and meaningful community engagement. The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Year Program guides students through a series of missions centered around the different circles of their lives - from their immediate family and close...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces jammed the radios of the Turkish-led Gaza flotilla and broadcast Britney Spears’ “Oops! … I Did It Again,” a source familiar with the matter confirmed to JNS on Tuesday. Flotilla organizers told Reuters that Israeli Navy commandos on Monday boarded 39 vessels in the eastern Mediterranean, some 250 nautical miles (463 km) from the Gaza Strip, and arrested those aboard, including 44 Turkish nationals. Israel’s Foreign Ministry shared video footage showing the activists celebrating and hugging aboard an IDF ship...
(JNS) — Israeli Minister of Transport and Road Safety Miri Regev on Monday convened an initial discussion regarding the recent hantavirus outbreak, her office told JNS. Regev instructed her ministry to prepare measures aimed at preventing the virus from spreading into the Jewish state through border crossings or airports, according to the statement. A special team headed by ministry Director-General Moshe Ben-Zaken will coordinate with the Health Ministry on the issue. “At the moment there is no concern, but we are preparing all systems in adv...
(JNS) — Israel officially handed over to Argentina the rotating chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on May 13, amid the worst burst of global antisemitism since the Holocaust. The symbolic ceremony held at the United Nations in Geneva took place two months after Argentina, on March 18, became the first South American country to assume leadership of the organization, which seeks to promote Holocaust education and awareness worldwide. IHRA Chair Marcelo Mindlin, president of the Holocaust Museum of Argentina since 2...
(JNS) — Canadian border authorities interrogated and refused to let into the country the director of the Muslim Association of Britain, who had denied the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacres in Israel. Immigration officials in Montreal had questioned Anas Altikriti, a dual citizen of the U.K. and Iraq, at Montreal’s main airport for 11 hours before escorting him to a London-bound airplane, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported on Wednesday. Altikriti had planned to speak at a Muslim Association of Canada convention in Toronto on May 16-18, the r...
(JNS) — Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, referred to J Street as a “cancer within the Jewish community” on Monday. Speaking at a National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism meeting at Museum of the Bible in Washington, Leiter said that “the worst thing about J Street is it’s duplicitous.” “How can you be pro-Israel and advocate for an arms embargo on a state that’s fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies?” the ambassador said. J Street, a liberal Jewish organization that bills itself as “the political home for...
(JNS)— Israel participated at the Special Operations Forces Week 2026 exhibition in Tampa, Fla., last week, dispatching 11 Israeli defense companies to the event. The three-day exhibition that started on May 19 brought the international Special Operations community together and was supported by the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Global SOF Foundation. The Israeli pavilion showcased advanced capabilities in five key areas: counter-drone and UAV defense systems, cyber and situational a...
(JNS) — Elected Democrats denounced a candidate for a House seat in Texas this week over her calls to imprison and castrate Zionists and raised questions about her funding from a newly-formed super PAC with possible Republican ties. Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist who led the first round of the Democratic primary in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, has drawn scrutiny for her social media posts about Jews and calling to turn immigration detention centers into prisons for Zionists. “She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison...
(JNS) — George Deek, Israel’s newly appointed special envoy to the Christian world, said Wednesday that Christians in the Jewish state “are not just surviving — we are thriving.” In a video message posted to X, Deek, an Arab-Israeli diplomat from a “Christian family that has lived in this land for centuries,” said his role was to strengthen ties with Christian communities worldwide. “My mission is simple, to speak the truth, to listen carefully, and to deepen friendship between Israel and Christian communities everywhere,” Deek said. “In Is...
(JNS) - No Israeli athlete had assumed the podium at the Olympic games before Yael Arad won a silver medal in judo at the 1992 summer games in Barcelona. More than 30 years and 20 Israeli medals later, the legendary judoka, who is now president of Israel's Olympic Committee, is traveling across the United States to raise support for Israeli athletes ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. "We feel that Israeli athletes are doing much more than sports," Arad, 59, told JNS on a visit to New York. She...
(JNS) - The Israel parade on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue this year is slated to have a Muslim group marching alongside Jewish organizations in what is believed to be a first time in the parade's 61-year history. It will also be the first time in memory that New York City's mayor will not participate in the parade, which shows support for the Jewish state. The annual event, scheduled this year for May 31, typically has thousands of participants, with groups marching from Jewish day schools,...
(JNS) - To mark Jerusalem Day, (which was erev May 14-15), Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund unveils rare historical documentation from its archives, depicting the city between the 1930s and the 1950s, before the establishment of the State of Israel. Scenes of Jerusalem during the British Mandate and in the early years of the State of Israel are captured through the camera lens just a few years before its independence. The photos present an exceptional mosaic of a multifaceted city,...
Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza at the U.S.-backed Board of Peace, told the United Nations Security Council to “use every means at its disposal” to pressure Hamas to disarm. Amid concern that the stalled effort to get the terror group to lay down its arms will leave Gaza’s recovery paralyzed, Mladenov, a former U.N. envoy for the Middle East peace process, addressed the Security Council on Thursday. “There is no recovery in Gaza,” he said. Mladenov briefed the council on the board’s first report on the state of affairs in...
Elon Musk praises Israeli innovation as ‘number one in the world’ By JNS Staff (JNS) — Elon Musk, considered to be the richest person on the planet, has lauded Israeli innovation as “number one” in the world. “I’m a huge admirer of the innovation coming out of Israel,” Musk said Monday in video remarks at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit at Expo Tel Aviv. “I think it is objectively true that Israel punches high above its weight for population.” The owner of Tesla and SpaceX added, “My hat is off to Israel for just how much inc...
