Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Jewish man leaves $2M to French mountain town that hid him from Nazis By Philissa Cramer (JTA) — A man who died in December reportedly left a significant gift for the French town that shielded his family and thousands of others from the Nazis during World War II. Eric Schwam, who died at 90 on Dec. 25, 2020, willed his estate to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, the mountain town where his Jewish family hid for two years, according to CNN. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France is one of only two locales honored collectively by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust mus...
(JNS) - With a mask resting below his mouth, which just took in its third or fourth cigarette of the last hour, Palestinian reformer and businessman Asharf Jabari said he hasn't received the COVID vaccine yet. And that's not because he's not interested in it or because Israel hasn't provided any supply to the Palestinian Authority, as some news outlets are wont to report. "They [the Palestinian Authority] want it, but they're waiting for the vaccine from Russia," Jabari said in Hebrew, just one...
(JTA) — In an annual survey of British Jewish adults, two-thirds said Jews have a future in the United Kingdom — the highest level of confidence since 2015. And the portion of British Jews who said they felt “unwelcome” in the United Kingdom fell from 53 percent last year to 18 percent in 2020. The “Antisemitism Barometer” survey, conducted in November and December by King’s College London for the Campaign Against Antisemitism watchdog group, shows that British Jews are “back from the brink” following the replacement as the head of Labour of...
Israel’s military head has ordered plans for possible hit on Iranian nuclear sites (JNS) — Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi said he has ordered the preparation of plans to attack Iran’s nuclear sites in order to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Iran can decide that it wants to advance to a bomb, either covertly or in a provocative way. In light of this basic analysis, I have ordered the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to the existing ones. We are studying these plans,...
(JTA) — At the opening of his trial in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher made several uncharacteristically friendly statements about Jews — a people he had devoted his professional life to demonize. Streicher, editor in chief of the Der Sturmer anti-Semitic weekly, claimed that he’d always viewed German Jews as legitimate compatriots and long supported Zionism. “So the Jewish question was for me solved in Germany, but I believed that another international solution will come, that we should meet with Zionists, listen to their demands,” he said on A...
(JTA) — A Moroccan institution has with official government backing signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the second such agreement in the Arab Middle East. The agreement signed Friday by El Mehdi Boudra, the president of Association Mimouna, and Elan Carr, the State Department’s envoy to combat anti-Semitism, signals the far-reaching ambition of the Trump Administration’s Abraham Accords, to normalize among Arabs the acceptance of not just Israel, but of Zionism. The Memorandum of Understa...
Twitter did not suspend Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader By Ben Sales (JTA) — On Friday, reports surfaced that Twitter had appeared to suspend an account belonging to Iran’s vehemently anti-Israel supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But @khamenei_site wasn’t the authoritarian leader’s real account. The reason for the suspension was that the account had tweeted a photo calling for “revenge” against former President Donald Trump. Along with a photo showing Trump golfing beneath the shadow of a military airplane, the tweet read “R...
The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center in partnership with the Jewish Federation and the Roth Family JCC will present, via Zoom, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration featuring Holocaust survivor Ralph Preiss on Jan. 24, 3 p.m. - 4:30 p.m., in observance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and remember the innocent six million Jews and millions of other people who fell victims to Nazi persecution. Tribute will be paid to the millions of lives lost,...
United Nations Relief and Works Agency Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini admitted in a series of tweets that “inappropriate” material was indeed distributed to over 300,000 students in UNRWA’s care. IMPACT-se released a report containing the first-ever audit of UNRWA-produced educational materials. The report uncovered extremist content, which does not comply with UN standards or UNRWA’s own stated principles. The report found the UNRWA-produced material contained content that encouraged violence, glorified jihad and martyrdom, erased...
BERLIN (JTA) — The head of Austria’s Jewish community has apologized for COVID-19 vaccine doses that were administered to community members, including himself, who were not meant to receive them. In a letter to the community released Monday, Oskar Deutsch said it was a “mistake” to have included nonpriority individuals in the vaccinations administered on Dec. 30 at the Maimonides Center, the Jewish community’s senior home. It “should not have happened,” Deutsch said. “I myself was invited to receive an inoculation and didn’t refuse. That was...
Israel will OK over 800 new settlement homes during the week of Biden’s inauguration By Gabe Friedman (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he will advance plans to build over 800 new settlement homes next week, days before Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States. The move is likely to rile Biden, who like most past U.S. presidents opposes new settlement construction. “We’re here to stay. We’re continuing to build the Land of Israel!” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook. Tal Menashe, where an Israeli...
(JTA) — Rabbi Moshe Azman, a prominent Ukrainian cleric with ties to several Trump associates at the heart of last year’s Ukrainegate scandal, endorsed Wednesday’s violent attempt to prevent the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election win, comparing the clashes to his own country’s recent pro-democracy revolution. Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, Azman, a Hasidic rabbi who is one of several figures claiming to be the chief rabbi of Ukraine, posted on Facebook that the “Maidan has begun in the USA,...
(JNS) — Iran announced on Saturday that it intends to enrich uranium up to 20 percent at its underground nuclear facility at Fordow, in accordance with a law passed in November by the Iranian parliament. “We are like soldiers, and our fingers are on the triggers. The commander should command, and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce [20 percent enriched uranium] as soon as possible,” said Atomic Energy Organization of Iran director Ali Akbar Salehi, according to the AP. The Iranian legislation consists of nine articles, among which...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The World Health Organization has leveled strong criticism at China for refusing entry to a team seeking to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a rare rebuke, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said two scientists on the agency’s team had already left their home countries for Wuhan when they were told that Chinese officials had not granted the necessary permissions for them to enter the country. The arrangements had been jointly agreed with China in advance, reported CNN. “I am very disap...
France gives $10M to Palestinian group that promotes Israel boycott By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — The French government has allocated about $10 million to a Palestinian organization that is a leading promoter of the boycott Israel movement. Promoting that boycott has been found illegal in France in several high-profile cases. The French Development Agency, or AFD, which focuses on “on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance,” last year gave an 8 million Euro grant to the NGO Development Center, or NDC,...
(JTA) - As one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, Eva Clarke has spent years telling the story of how her mother, weighing just 68 pounds, gave birth to her inside a concentration camp just a month before it was liberated. But this past spring, as COVID-19 shut down public life, Clarke's visits to schools and community centers in the United Kingdom "came to a screeching halt, indefinitely," she recalls. Earlier this month, she got a fresh audience when an RV pulled into her driveway in...
(JNS) - A graphic on Fox News last week showed "Palestine" as a country, despite it not being an independent nation. The graphic appeared during the Dec. 23 broadcast of "America's Newsroom" during a segment about U.S. President Donald Trump complaining about foreign aid in the legislative package Congress passed this week that included $1.4 trillion to fund the government and around $900 billion in COVID relief. Fox News did not respond to a request for comment. A similar error occurred in...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Saudi authorities have been removing anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist content from the country’s textbooks for the coming school year, a report by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education has found. The report came amid growing speculation of a potential rapprochement between the Jewish state and the Arab Gulf power. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, normalized ties with Israel in September in a deal brokered by the United States. Washi...
(JNS) — Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan reflected on 2020 and how “Israel’s future looks brighter than ever” in his address on Sunday night at the Zionist Organization of America’s Virtual Superstar Gala. Erdan, also Israel’s incoming ambassador to the United States, received the ZOA’s Woo Kai–Sheng Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Diplomacy. In his acceptance speech, he said that while this past year “supplied a fair amount of hate, it also delivered a fair amount of peace.” He noted that the signing of the Ab...
MYSORE, India (JTA) - From the flashing outdoor lights that deck out Park Street, to the bustling pop-up Christmas market at the central rotunda of the sprawling New Market, Christmas has always been a celebratory affair in Kolkata. While this year celebrations are toned down due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the damaging after-effects of Cyclone Amphan that hit the city in May, Isaac Nahoum, a Jewish baker who has seen business tumble from more than 300 customers a day to a mere...
Pakistani court orders release of 4 men acquitted of Daniel Pearl murder By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — A court in Pakistan on Thursday ordered the immediate release of four men who had been jailed there since 2002 for the murder of the Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl. The Sindh High Court in Karachi ordered the release of the men, who had been acquitted of the murder, calling their detainment “illegal,” the Dawn newspaper reported. They had been involved in Pearl’s kidnapping, the court found, but not in his murder. The court did not ide...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Tuesday, Dec. 22, Christians United for Israel, the nation’s largest pro-Israel organization, announced that the group had crossed the 10-million-member threshold. “When we set out to create this organization, I could never have predicted we would see such success. But our members don’t just stop at joining the organization, they reach out to their friends and church families, they make their voices heard in our nation’s capital and they are having a tangible positive impact in support of Israel,” said CUFI founder and...
Palestinians urge Biden and Israel to return to the negotiating table By Gabe Friedman (JTA) — In a stark contrast from the last few years of the Trump administration, the Palestinian foreign minister said Saturday that the Palestinian Authority is ready to restart the process of negotiating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Israel and the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden. “We are ready for cooperation and dealing with the new U.S. administration, and we are expecting that it would re-draw its...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Trailblazing change, Morocco on Sunday announced that its schools will soon begin teaching Jewish history and culture as part of the official curriculum—a first in the region and in the North African country, where Islam is the state religion. It follows King Mohammed VI of Morocco’s decision to normalize relations with the Jewish state in yet another historic peace deal brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and announced last week. The move has had “the impact of a tsunami,” Serge Berdugo, se...
(MEMRI via JNS) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said last week that by exiting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, the United States gave up its rights but not its obligations. In an interview with Iranian journalist Mehdi Nasiri that was uploaded to the Arman Media YouTube channel on Dec. 9, Zarif said, "America is still obligated to lift its sanctions, and to refrain from creating obstacles because it has remained a member of the United Nations since leaving the...
