Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - A bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Israeli officials celebrated Independence Day on Tuesday at a small event hosted by the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was on hand to welcome the visitors-the first official congressional delegation to travel to a foreign country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Since COVID required the number of attendees to remain low, the program was also livestreamed by the embassy....
By (JNS) — Days before the start of the annual Tour de France, cycling’s most prestigious race, the Israeli national team’s star rider and four-time winner of the event, Chris Froome, was enthusiastic and optimistic. Froome has been working hard to return to his previous level of performance following the severe injuries he sustained in a 2019 crash that occurred while he was previewing the time trial course at the 2019 Critérium du Dauphiné. He suffered a double femur fracture to his right leg, multiple additional fractures and a collaps...
(JNS) - Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid flew to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday in a historic first official visit by an Israeli minister to the Gulf State. "What we are doing here today isn't the end of the road, it's the beginning. From here, from this place, we are setting out on the road," Lapid said at a ceremony inaugurating Israel's Embassy in Abu Dhabi. "Israel wants peace with its neighbors. With all its neighbors," the foreign minister said. "We aren't going anywhere. The...
(JNS) — “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.” At least this is what U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli President Reuven Rivlin during his visit to the White House on Monday. Biden also reportedly said Israel has the right to decide how to proceed with Iran. This message was meant to assuage Israel’s fears over the U.S. approach to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But Iran’s recent announcement that it has started enriching uranium at 60 percent, and Tehran’s continued use of proxies to spread terror and instabi...
(JTA) — Vladimir Putin clearly likes to talk about Jews and Israel. This time he suggested that Israel offered a good model for his designs on Ukraine. The Russian president’s previous remarks about Jews include the joke he told at a panel on energy in 2017, about a smartass Israeli soldier who was quizzed by his commander on how to engage multiple enemies. The soldier’s advice: Send more troops. In 2019, hearing about the financial challenges of a rabbi in Crimea, Putin joked: “So the Jews have problems with finances!” Then he told the rabbi...
Phoenix Children’s Hospital fires doctor after she accused Israel of ‘cannibalism’ on social media By Ben Sales (JTA) — A Palestinian-American pediatric radiologist has been fired from her position at Phoenix Children’s Hospital after her social media post accusing Israel of “cannibalism” was called out by an antisemitism watchdog. On Monday, the Twitter account @StopAntisemites shared a screenshot of a May 26 Facebook post by Dr. Fidaa Wishah, in which Wishah wrote “We will expose the #massacre and #genocide you Zionists are proud of.” “We...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling on Egyptian and international mediators to pressure Israel to "lift the blockade on Gaza, finalize the rehabilitation matter, and stop the provocations in Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan." The terrorist groups also called on Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem and within the Green Line to "prepare for a security escalation." "The resistance won't stand idly by in the...
(JTA) - Standing poolside in Barcelona, Eden Blecher and Shelly Bobritsky beamed with pride and satisfaction as they struggled to catch their breath. The two athletes from Israel on Sunday had just clinched the fourth slot in the Women Duet category of the Artistic Swimming Qualification Tournament in that city in Spain, assuring their participation in the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. But the commentator who narrated the tournament for TV3, the state broadcaster of Catalonia, the separatist Spanish...
(JNS) — Over the past few decades, evangelical Christians have emerged as one of Israel’s core bases of support both in the United States and many other countries as well. However, growing trends of secularization and liberal ideology, as well as the erosion of a pro-Israel theology, are threatening to undermine this support, particularly among young evangelicals. A recent poll, commissioned by University of North Carolina at Pembroke Professors Mordechai Inbari and Kirill Bumin, shows a sharp drop in support for Israel among the younger set ha...
German publishing boss tells workers to find new jobs if they oppose Israeli flag By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) — Here’s the advice from a top publishing executive in Germany to employees who complained about his decision to fly the Israeli flag on the business’ headquarters: Find another place to work. “I think, and I’m being very frank with you, a person who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after antisemitic demonstrations, should look for a new job,” Mathias Doepfner, the chairman of Axel Springer, said in a c...
(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...
