Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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WASHINGTON — The leadership of Christians United for Israel, the nation’s largest pro-Israel organization, issued the following statements concerning the Hamas attack on Israel. “The scenes we are witnessing today in Israel are heart-wrenching. Our prayers are with the people of Israel as they expel the invaders and work to save their countrymen. In the coming days, we’ll no doubt hear from those who wish to draw a moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli military. Make no mistake, anyone who would seek to undermine Israel’s response...
(JTA) — On a visit to Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged American support for the country as it ramps up its war on Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. Israel is reportedly preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza, its first in nearly a decade, five days after hundreds of Hamas terrorists stormed Israeli towns and killed more than 1,300 people, wounding thousands and taking more than 100 captive. Israel has formed an emergency unity government to carry out the war, which will be led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin N...
(JNS) - "Stars of David, they took your life, they could not take your pride," sang U2 lead singer Bono. The Irish band was performing at the Las Vegas Sphere, and Bono dedicated the song "Pride" to "those beautiful kids at that music festival," speaking and singing about the hundreds of dead, missing and captured participants in the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re'im close to the border with Gaza. At least 260 of the 3,000 festival participants were murdered by Hamas terrorists on...
(JNS) - Israel's National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz paid a visit to Washington, D.C., this week for meetings with top Biden administration officials, the opposition politician revealed on Thursday. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Gantz confirmed he met with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Wednesday, while Hebrew press reported that he also sat down with other senior officials. "In the meeting [with Sullivan], we discussed advancing the vital security interests of the...
(JTA) — Argentina is launching an airlift to evacuate its citizens from Israel, four days after Hamas attacked Israel, killing and wounding thousands of people and spurring a war that could be long-lasting. The Foreign Ministry opened a hotline on Saturday, the day of the attack, for Argentinian citizens to request repatriation. Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said on Tuesday that more than 713 requests had been received. Now, the “Safe Return” program will allow up to 625 people to leave the country. A military Hercules airplane and a Boein...
(JTA) — Political leaders from around the globe have condemned Hamas’ sweeping attack on Israel and pledged their support for Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following earlier conversations between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi. The United States “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. There is neve...
Pro-Hamas activists call to ‘gas the Jews’ at Sydney protest (JNS) — Hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters on Monday chanted “gas the Jews” at an anti-Israel rally in Australia. The mob outside the Sydney Opera House also chanted “F*** the Jews” and “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is Great,” as they waved Palestinian flags. The Sydney rally came a day after the Democratic Socialists of America held a similar “pro-Palestine” rally in New York City’s Times Square. Several hundred protesters attended, chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine wil...
(JNS) — The Israeli Defence Forces launched a study this week to analyze the security implications of a normalization deal between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study is being administered by a number of IDF branches, including intelligence, strategic planning, the Iran department and the air force. It seeks to clearly outline the advantages of the deal, including possible opportunities for partnership, along with the security risks of potential concessions that may be required of Israel to secure such an agreement. The f...
Randi Weingarten, teachers’ union leader, joins J Street board By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) — J Street announced that Randi Weingarten, a teachers’ union leader who has become a prominent voice in national debates over COVID-19 and education, is joining its board. The liberal Israel lobby’s announcement on Wednesday said Weingarten would be joined by John Yarmuth, a retired Jewish Democratic congressman from Kentucky; Cary Sherman, a former top recording industry executive; and Jon Greenwald, a veteran diplomat. J Street also announc...
(JNS) - Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) began a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia on Wednesday with a moment of silence for Taylor Force, the 28-year-old West Point graduate and U.S. Army veteran who was killed in 2016 while on a graduate-school trip to Israel. "His death was a deranged and inhumane action," said Wilson, who chairs the subcommittee, which is part of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The congressman also slammed the Palestinian...
(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu used his address to the United Nations to tout the prospect of a diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to broach a topic that he has previously downplayed: Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Israeli prime minister also used the end of his 25-minute speech to herald the benefits — and warn of the dangers — of artificial intelligence, largely reprising what he told tech mogul Elon Musk in a live streamed conversation earlier in the week. And he did not mention one burning issue that has preoccupied Israe...
(JTA) — Leaning into his latest controversies, Elon Musk is planning to join a bevy of Jewish men for a live chat. The conversation will focus on “X, anti-Semitism, and the future of free speech,” according to conservative pundit and social media personality Ben Shapiro, who announced Wednesday that Musk would join him on his “Daily Wire” podcast. Also participating in the conversation, Shapiro said, are Rabbi Ari Lamm, an Orthodox scholar and podcaster; former Israeli politician and Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky; an unnamed represent...
(JNS) - Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in an interview that aired on Wednesday shot down reports that U.S.-led talks over normalization with Israel had been suspended. In an hour-long interview with Fox News' chief political correspondent Bret Baier-MBS's first ever interview completely in English and the first with a major American network since 2019-the crown prince said that peace with the Jewish state was "getting closer every day." Asked what it would take for Riyadh to join...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As of November, Israelis will be able to enter the United States without a visa, a major change that Israel has long sought and that will ease travel for hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program, which now includes 41 countries, means that Israelis traveling to the United States will no longer have to go through a months-long visa application process that carried the threat of denial. It also means that Palestinian-Americans living in the West Bank and Gaza will be able to enter Isr...
Israeli forces evacuate Samaria outpost; Four arrested (JNS) — Members of Israel’s coalition expressed anger on Wednesday after Israeli security forces evacuated a Jewish outpost erected near the community of Ma’ale Michmash in Samaria. Four Jews were arrested during the evacuation. Dozens of police and Civil Administration inspectors cleared out residential structures and an animal pen built on the hill. The outpost, Givat Sde Yonatan, established a few months ago in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, sits on private Palestinian land....
(JNS) — In a television program this past July, Palestinian cleric Mahmoud al-Habbash asserted that Jews follow Satanism and “have left the path of humanity.” Indeed, he claimed, Jews are Satan himself. In an earlier broadcast, Habbash had called Jews “creatures that Allah created in the form of humans. They are cursed descendants of apes and pigs.” These gems and more have been documented by Palestinian Media Watch. Habbash also denies that Jews have any historical connection to the Land of Israel. He maintains, “There was no First Templ...
(JTA) - Germany has banned a neo-Nazi group after raiding the homes of its leaders across the country, in a move the government said "sends a clear signal against racism and antisemitism." The Hammerskins, a local spinoff of a group founded in the United States in the late 1980s, are accused of promoting criminal activities and of opposing the German constitution. According to a recent report from Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the group was the only the only re...
By Jackie Hajdenberg (JTA) — More than 80 years after one of Germany’s most prominent synagogues was destroyed on Kristallnacht, the Jewish community of Hamburg has taken ownership of the building’s site and is set to begin rebuilding it. The site of the Bornplatz Synagogue, a neo-Romanesque building dedicated in 1906 that had a 1,200-seat sanctuary and was once the largest synagogue in northern Germany, was officially handed over to leaders of the city’s Jewish community on Wednesday. At the ceremony marking that restitution, officia...
(JTA) — After months of icy relations, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met face to face for the first time since Netanyahu’s return to office late last year — with both appearing eager to convey that the U.S.-Israel alliance remains on solid footing despite their disagreements. The two leaders have been at odds for the better part of a year over a range of issues, from Netanyahu’s effort to weaken the Israeli court system to his far-right governing partners to the Biden administration’s attempts to reenter a...
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed Saudi-Israeli relations with George Stephanopoulos in New York on Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “When it comes to possible normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, this would be a transformative event,” Blinken said. “We’ve had decades of turmoil, decades of conflict in the Middle East. To bring these two countries together in particular would have a powerful effect in stabilizing the region, in integrating the region, in bringing people together, not having them at...
GPS interference leads to change in landing route for Tel Aviv-bound planes (JNS) — Passenger planes headed to Ben-Gurion Airport have recently had to take alternative routes due to a severe attack on Israel that prevents it from navigating aircraft using GPS. The alternate route—over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria—is longer than the one that allows for landing over Tel Aviv directly at Ben-Gurion Airport. In recent months, Israel has been the target of incessant attacks by unknown elements, apparently from abroad, that inter...
(JTA) – Stan Polovets, an oil industry executive who used his wealth and connections to help establish one of the most prestigious awards in the Jewish world, has been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman he took out on a date. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe 1, made the allegations in a civil lawsuit filed against Polovets, the CEO of the Genesis Prize Foundation, in Manhattan last week. She is demanding financial compensation whose amount would be determined in court. S...
(JTA) - The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City's former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc. The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country's first Jewish president, too. Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the l...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, according to Axios. It will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two men since Netanyahu returned to power nearly nine months ago. Three U.S. officials confirmed to the news site that the two leaders will not meet at the White House and that an internal debate occurred in Biden’s political circle regarding whether they should meet at the Oval Office or at U.N. headquarters, wit...
(JTA) – A prominent member of an American neo-Nazi group has been extradited to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Robert Wilson is accused of being behind a February incident in which a message was laser-projected onto the house where Anne Frank hid during the Holocaust. The message read “inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to a widely-debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Frank’s famous diary is a forgery because it was origina...
