Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(ISRAEL21c) - Danielle Wolfson's oxygen tank was almost empty as she neared the peak of Mount Everest on May 23. At such a high altitude and low temperature, she knew she could just sit down and await a quick death. She'd stepped over bodies of previous climbers who'd done exactly that. Two things saved this 43-year-old Israeli attorney: Covid and chutzpah. "We Israelis are a little aggressive and very creative," Wolfson told ISRAEL21c after becoming the first female Israeli to reach the top of...
(JNS) - Israel's Foreign Ministry is investigating a report that an Israeli woman had her birthplace changed from "Jerusalem" to "Occupied Palestinian Territories" upon renewing her U.K. passport. Ayelet Balaban, a dual Israeli-British citizen who has held a U.K. passport all her life, said she was shocked upon receiving the new document, according to Israel's Kan. According to Balaban, she sent her old passport to England about two weeks ago and received the new one on Monday. Upon discovering...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday officially announced the nomination of Thomas Nides to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Nides, 60, has held prominent roles in the private and public sectors. From 2010-2013, he served as the State Department’s Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. As part of the Obama administration, Nides played a key role in the administration’s approval of an extension on loan guarantees worth billions of dollars for Israel. He also led the push against Congress’s efforts to defund the U.N...
(JTA) — Parents in Brazil are protesting a school’s teaching of Anne Frank’s famous Holocaust diary, citing what they say is sexual content inappropriate for seventh graders. In a letter sent to the management of the Sao Paulo branch of Escola Mobile, a network of private schools, more than 90 parents complained about Frank’s descriptions of female genitalia and her attraction to women, according to Revista Oeste magazine. The parents were complaining about passages in the latest edition of the official diary of Anne Frank. Her father, who was...
(JTA) – Pro-Palestinian activists were swarming the social media comments sections of Ben & Jerry's to demand the company boycott Israel. In response, Ben & Jerry's appears to have indeed entered a boycott - of social media itself. The international ice cream brand with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales typically posts to its Twitter, Instagram or Facebook pages daily, including about the many progressive social causes that the company supports. But Ben & Jerry's fell silent on May...
Israeli and American Jews know little about each other, new study finds By Shira Hanau (JTA) — American and Israeli Jews don’t know much about one another, according to a study released Monday. Still, both groups expressed an affinity for the other in the poll by the American Jewish Committee. Among American Jews, a total of 40 percent said their knowledge of Israelis was either nonexistent or weak, and another 21 percent ranked their knowledge of Israelis as medium, while 37 percent said they received a “strong” education about Israel....
(JNS) - Mansour Abbas, head of the Israel's Ra'am Party, said on Sunday that he would "reclaim the lands that were expropriated from our people." In a mostly-Arabic speech before the Knesset plenum ahead of the swearing-in of Israel's 36 government, Abbas called the reclamation of those lands a "national cause of the first order." Abbas switched to Hebrew toward the end of the speech to criticize remarks made earlier before the plenum by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who...
Israeli haredi publication blurs face of Labor Party’s female leader (JTA) — A haredi Orthodox publication in Israel published a photo on its website Monday that blurs the face of the Labor Party’s leader, Merav Michaeli. Bechadrei Charedim did not explain its decision on the photo, which was used with a story about Israel’s incoming government, but the reason was likely because Michaeli is a woman. Haredi Orthodox publications have blurred, photoshopped or otherwise excluded photos of women from their pages for years. Most famously in the Uni...
(JNS) - Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, told a group of students and academics in Gaza on Saturday that the terrorist organization has the capability to demolish Tel Aviv and that Israel had only destroyed 3 percent of Gaza's tunnel network last month during "Operation Guardian of the Walls." "God has decreed that we must attack Tel Aviv, and there are other capabilities we have not revealed," said Sinwar, adding that Hamas and its terrorist partners could launch 130 missiles at the city...
(JTA) - Perhaps it's beginners luck: Russian-Israeli tennis player Aslan Karatsev, playing mixed doubles for the first time, has reached the finals of the French Open with partner Elena Vesnina. Maybe not: At the Australian Open in February, Karatsev had an amazing run, reaching the semifinals before losing to the eventual champion, Novak Djokovic. That was his first Grand Slam tournament in singles or doubles. Karatsev and Vesnina now have their sights set on playing mixed doubles at the Tokyo...
(JNS) — Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary film “Babi Yar. Context” has been selected to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July. The 120-minutes long film is based entirely on archival footage uncovered by Loznitsa, which depicts the events leading up to and the aftermath of the Babi Yar massacre in September 1941. In a period of two days, from Sept. 29-30, 33,771 Jewish victims were shot to death by the Nazis and left in a ravine. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Roma, t...
(JNS) — Qatar prides itself on its high level of education and yet its own textbooks clearly do not meet accepted international standards, according to a new report by IMPACT-se, a research institute that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula within the prism of UNESCO-defined standards on peace and tolerance. Its updated report evaluates the current Qatari curriculum in conjunction with the London-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society. Some of the key findings show that hatred towards Jews and clear anti-Semitism remain central themes of t...
(JNS) — If body language is any indicator, then last week’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not go as well as they intended during their joint press conference. While they openly discussed issues pertaining to Gaza and the Palestinians, it is without a doubt that in their earlier private meeting, they discussed the issue of Iran as well. Blinken’s remarks signal that the scolding and finger-wagging of the Obama administration is back after a four-year hiatus during the Tru...
(JNS) — The National Geographic Society named University of Haifa professor Dr. Aviad Scheinin as one of its “Emerging Explorers” in 2021—one of 15 individuals it described as changing the world “one idea at a time.” In an announcement last week, it said its cohort of storytellers, researchers and conservationists “are conducting innovative work focused on a range of topics such as inventing space technologies, ocean exploration, understanding the past through archaeology and anthropology, species conservation, storytelling and elevating you...
Mayim Bialik makes ‘Jeopardy!’ guest host debut By Gabe Friedman (JTA) — Jewish actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik began her two-week stint as a guest host on “Jeopardy!” Monday night, paying tribute to her “creative and academic family” and the show’s late host Alex Trebek in her opening remarks. Bialik, who has written about her Jewish identity in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and beyond, drew praise on social media after the first night of her run, which goes through June 11. The show is matching the amount won by contestants to...
(JNS) — Kamau Bobb “will no longer be part of our diversity team going forward,” the tech giant Google announced Wednesday, after the surfacing of an antisemitic blog post its Global Lead for Diversity, Strategy and Research wrote in 2007. In a statement obtained by the Jewish Journal, Google said: “We unequivocally condemn the past writings by a member of our diversity team that are causing deep offense and pain to members of our Jewish community and our LGBTQ+ community. These writings are unquestionably hurtful. The author acknowl...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) - In Germany, a man wearing a kippah was beaten on the street. In Austria, a student was harassed on the train for reading a book mentioning Jews in the title. In London, a nurse said she was threatened at her hospital for wearing a Star of David necklace. And in Belgium, an Orthodox Jewish woman was told "Get away, dirty Jewess" by a man with whom she tried to share a park bench. The full dimensions of Europe's current surge in antisemitic activity are not yet clear, but by...
WASHINGTON DC - Hillel International, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, announced today the 20 members of the 2021-2022 Hillel International Student Cabinet. One of those selected is Lana Kolchinsky, Class of 2022, who will serve on the Hillel International Student Cabinet representing Stetson University. "Lana is the two term president of Hillel, incoming student government president, and the first Stetson student selected for the Hillel cabinet," said Sam Friedman, Stetson...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - President Joe Biden will name Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, to be his ambassador to Israel. The Times of Israel first reported the decision. Multiple sources close to the Biden administration confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Nides was the pick for ambassador and would be announced soon. The White House said it had nothing yet to announce. It was down to Nides and Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman who for years has...
(JTA) — The Biden administration increased its assistance to Palestinians by $38.5 million in the wake of the latest Gaza war and pledged to abide by U.S. laws that would keep the money from going to terrorists. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the additional funds that the administration plans to steer to the Palestinians. His statement came a day after Blinken concluded his trip to Israel and the Palestinian areas to discuss sustaining the ceasefire that ended the 11-day rocket exchange this month between Israel and H...
(JNS) — The Irish government has endorsed a parliamentary motion condemning the “de facto annexation” of the West Bank by the Israeli government, becoming the first European Union country to do so. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney supported the motion and condemned what he said was “manifestly unequal” treatment of Palestinians. “The scale, pace and strategic nature of Israel’s actions on settlement expansion and the intent behind it have brought us to a point where we need to be honest about what is actually happening on the ground. … It...
(Detroit Jewish News via JTA) - On his way home for a surprise visit to see family and friends, Jewish journalist Danny Fenster was detained Monday in Myanmar, where he works for a news site in the country's largest city of Yangon. Fenster is among the many journalists who have been detained, imprisoned or expelled from the country since a military coup took control of its government in February. The 37-year-old Detroit native was detained at Yangon International Airport shortly before boarding...
(JNS) - Amid ongoing talks in Vienna regarding a possible U.S. return to the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog warned in an interview published on Tuesday that "you cannot put the genie back in the bottle." International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi told the Financial Times that while most of the measures taken by Iran since the United States unilaterally exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 could...
(JTA) — When actor Mark Ruffalo apologized on Monday for posts that “suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide,’” it wasn’t clear what comments of his own he was speaking about. But he drew attention to a loaded word that has leapt into public discourse in the past two weeks, during and after the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Accusations that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza have flown freely, from seasoned activists to the Palestinian foreign minister to people wading into the Israeli-Palestinian issue for t...
International Christian Embassy donates 15 bomb shelters to Israeli towns (JNS) — Amid the intense rocket barrages of recent days, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem is pressing ahead with orders for 15 new portable bomb shelters—nine to be delivered as soon as possible to vulnerable Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip and the other six to exposed villages along the northern border with Lebanon. Thanks to gifts from concerned Christians worldwide, this will bring to 132 the total number of bomb shelters the ICEJ has donated since...
