Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Matt McKeon confirmed on Wednesday that the administration is seeking to reopen the U.S. Consulate for Palestinians in its original location in Jerusalem. McKeon was grilled by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, during his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and asked whether he was involved in planning the reopening of the consulate. McKeon confirmed that he was, telling Zeldin that the administration was contemplating o...
(JNS) — Three-dozen Republican senators introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to block the Biden administration’s plan to reopen the U.S. consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem. Upholding the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Law Act of 2021 was introduced by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and co-sponsored by 34 additional Republicans. It calls on the Biden administration to uphold the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and not reopen the U.S. Consulate to the Palestinians, which was merged into the U.S. embassy when it was relocated to Jerusalem in May...
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visited the Vatican on Thursday where he had a private audience with Pope Francis. A Vatican press release described the talks as “cordial” and called for renewed peace talks towards a two-state solution. “With regard to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, it was stressed that it is absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue in order to achieve a two-state solution, also with the help of more vigorous effort on the part of the international community,” the statement said. ...
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Two Jewish Google employees are playing a key role in a worker petition calling on Google and Amazon to cancel a joint contract to build cloud-based data centers on behalf of the Israeli government. The massive, $1.2 billion contract, dubbed Project Nimbus, was signed in May and is one of Israel’s largest technology infrastructure ventures. Google and Amazon will transfer Israel’s data into six cloud-based storage centers over the next several years. The open letter says the deal viola...
Israeli State Comptroller releases report criticizing climate change preparedness (JNS) — Israeli State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman published a scathing report on Tuesday concerning Israel’s preparations for hazards related to climate change. According to a report by Kan news, Englman’s report, published on the eve of the Glasgow Climate Summit, concluded that Israel has failed to limit its pollution levels and has inadequately planned for the challenges posed by long-term climate change. “Israel is one of the few countries in the world not y...
Noam Chomsky says Scottish university newspaper shouldn’t apologize for article it deemed ‘antisemitic’ By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — Some 500 scholars, including the prominent linguist and Israel critic Noam Chomsky, accused a Scottish university of curbing free speech after a student publication apologized for a 2017 essay it said promoted “an unfounded antisemitic theory.” The essay, published in the University of Glasgow’s eSharp magazine in 2017, was titled “Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK.” It’s author, Jane...
Cedarhurst, New York - One Israel Fund, the premier organization in the United States providing humanitarian support and essential needs for the residents of Judea and Samaria, is delighted to announce the appointment of Jacqueline L. Herman of Englewood, NJ as its new president of the board of trustees. Mrs. Herman has been a dedicated member of the organization's board of trustees for many years, and has worked tirelessly to raise funds for a variety of the organization's important projects...
During her remarks at the United Nations Security Council on Oct. 19, 2021, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the UNSC to reduce its criticism of Israel and adopt "a more balanced approach." But then Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield engaged in the same type of unbalanced criticism of Israel that she complained about. The U.S. Ambassador exaggerated and condemned "violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians and their property,"...
Alta Fixsler, a 2-year-old Jewish girl, taken off life support in UK despite parents’ wishes By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — A 2-year-old Jewish girl died in the United Kingdom Monday after she was taken off life support despite her parents’ objections. Alta Fixsler of Manchester, England, had serious natal complications that made her dependent on life support from birth. When medical authorities at the hospital where she was treated wanted to take her off life support, her parents, both haredi Orthodox Jews, took the medical authorities to court...
(JNS) - On the first of a three-day visit to Washington, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid made his rounds in Congress on Tuesday, highlighting the Israeli government's push for bipartisan support for Israel in the United States. Lapid met with a bipartisan group of U.S. House of Representative members in the early afternoon and held a brief press conference in a Capitol hallway with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Pelosi began by saying that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has always bee...
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Jewish AG, declares candidacy for governor (JTA) — Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general who made national headlines last year pushing back against attempts to reverse Joe Biden’s win in the state, is running for governor of the state. Shapiro, a Democrat who has deep roots in the Jewish community, made the long-expected announcement on Monday, The Associated Press reported. The incumbent governor, Tom Wolf, who cannot run for a third term, said as long ago as 2019 that he favored Shapiro to succeed him....
(JNS) - A new campaign by The Jewish Chronicle calls for a British spy who saved 10,000 Austrian Jews during World War II to be recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. "It is not about how many lives but this man has received no recognition for quite literally saving Austria's Jewish community-I think it is as simple as that," said historian Helen Fry, who wrote about Col. Thomas Joseph Kendrick in the new biography Spymaster. "That is why I think it is important that people know his...
(JTA) — The award for best feature film at Israel’s Ophir Awards, the country’s top film honor and its automatic nominee for the foreign film category at the Oscars, went to “Let It Be Morning,” a film about an Arab-Israeli man forced to grapple with his identity as both Palestinian and Israeli. But most of the Palestinian stars of the film skipped the award ceremony Tuesday night, calling out what they described as appropriation of a Palestinian story. “In a normal situation, I would feel happiness and recognition for the prize, but to my dism...
(JNS) - Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid inaugurated the Jewish state's embassy in Bahrain on Thursday, a year after the two countries signed the Abraham Accords to normalize ties. "Bahrain, like Israel, encompasses an ancient history along with extraordinary capabilities of the new technological world. Our opportunities are shared, our threats are shared, and they are not far from here," Lapid said in a joint press conference with his Bahraini counterpart, Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin...
London lawmakers reject plan for high-rise building next to historic synagogue By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — City council members in London voted against a controversial plan to build a high-rise building near an 18th-century synagogue. The plan by developers would have replaced a seven-story building adjacent to the Bevis Marks synagogue in central London with a 48-story tower. The plan was rejected on Tuesday in a vote by a vote of 14-7, the BBC reported. The custodians of the synagogue, which today serves the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish c...
BERLIN (JTA) — Last year, as Rabbi Rebecca Blady approached the first anniversary of the Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, she knew she wanted to commemorate it on her own terms. Blady runs Base Hillel Deutschland, an organization for young Jews in Berlin, and was praying in the Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019 when a gunman attempted to break down the door. The gunman then went on to kill two people nearby, and is now serving a life sentence in prison. Rather than suffice with the state-organized memorial on the a...
(JNS) - "Hands out of your pockets, sir!" barked a U.S. Secret Service agent at a bewildered pedestrian as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett walked down the Fifth Avenue sidewalk in New York City, accompanied by a large entourage of Secret Service and Shin Bet agents, aides and reporters. A long motorcade of Black Secret Service Suburbans and police cars rolled alongside with blue lights flashing, keeping pace with the walkers. It was the eve of Shemini Atzeret, and Bennett had just come...
(JNS)—Demarking a clear distinction between himself and his predecessor, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday morning that one of the most dangerous problems in the world today is political polarization. In his first address as prime minister to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Bennett called polarizations one of two plagues affecting the world at the moment, with the other being the COVID-19 pandemic. “Both the coronavirus and polarization can erode public trust in our institutions. Both can paralyze nations,” he said....
(JTA) — In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett addressed the twin threats of Iran and the coronavirus, in keeping with his quest for a relationship with the international community that is less confrontational than his predecessor’s. Bennett launched his speech Monday morning with a plea to see Israel not as forever entrenched in warfare, but as a contributing member of the international community. Israel, Bennett said at the outset, “is a beacon of democracy, diverse by design, innov...
NEW YORK (JTA) - The first thing Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, facing a room full of the leaders of the American Jewish community: "I wish my mom were here." The son of American immigrants to Israel, Bennett, like his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, speaks a fluent, nearly accentless English, and spent years living in the United States as both a child and an adult. But in other crucial ways, Bennett sounded different from Netanyahu in his first public address to American Jewish...
(JTA) – At a political rally in Berlin in June, a young Jewish gay man wearing a turquoise kippah launched his campaign to represent one of Germany's most ethnically diverse constituencies in parliament. The man, 34-year-old Marcel Yaron Goldhammer, promised to stoke the "embers of unity, justice and freedom" during his announcement speech in front of about 200 people in the southeastern Berlin neighborhood of Neukolln. But he's not running for a liberal party, or one promoting m...
(JNS) — A number of American Jewish organizations slammed a resolution adopted on Wednesday at a high-level meeting at the U.N. General Assembly that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action stemming from a notoriously anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. “The resolution predictably claimed that the DDPA offered ‘a comprehensive United Nations framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intol...
Jewish security organization opens national command center in Chicago By Ben Sales (JTA) — The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, has opened a command center in Chicago to monitor antisemitic threats. The center’s main room is a monitoring room with a 16-foot video screen that shows a map and tally of incident reports and potential threats across the country. It is staffed by some 10 people on a daily basis, but can be operational 24 hours a day, as it was over the High Holidays this mon...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Wrapping up the feel-good-fest that marked the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and four Arabs states, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a shout-out to the big guy who started it all. No, not Donald Trump, but Abraham himself. "Abraham, in our Bible, had the temerity to engage God, to argue with God, to ask why, and maybe more important, to ask why not," Blinken said at the virtual get-together Friday that marked...
(JNS) — Jewish Democratic Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) is introducing legislation that would make a two-state solution official U.S. policy. Named the “Two-State Solution Act,” it states that “only the outcome of a two-state solution can both ensure the state of Israel’s survival as a democratic state and a national home for the Jewish people and fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own,” Politico first reported. It further states that the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, are...
