Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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House bill introduced to counter worldwide money-laundering by Hezbollah (JNS) — A bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to counter money laundering by the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) introduced “The Hezbollah Money Laundering Prevention Act of 2020” on Sept. 30, based upon recommendations made by the Republican Study Committee’s National Security Strategy. If enacted, it would put a stop to Hezbollah’s money-laundering activities throughout the world, especially in Lebanon a...
(JTA) — A coalition of Jewish groups including the likes of Hadassah and B’nai B’rith International has temporarily blocked a plan by Orthodox and right-wing parties to take over top positions throughout the World Zionist Congress, the Jewish National Fund and other crucial groups that spend $1 billion annually on international Jewish causes. Under the plan reported this week in Israeli media, the Likud and Orthodox parties of the World Zionist Congress would have reserved for themselves top positions at these groups, including the Jewis...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - A Bahraini institute has signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and delegitimization of Israel. The memorandum of understanding, signed Thursday in Washington, D.C., marks the first time an Arab country has embraced a key Trump administration agenda item, to get countries to include anti-Zionism and some forms of harsh criticism of Israel in their definitions of anti-Semitism. It comes as the Trump administration has in recent...
(JTA) — French Jewish groups have called on their supporters to join a rally Sunday in memory of the schoolteacher murdered Friday after facing criticism for showing caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to his students. The rally in memory of Samuel Paty, who was decapitated outside the school where he worked by an 18-year-old refugee from Chechnya who appeared to have been motivated by videos on social media, is focused on safeguarding freedom of expression. But the Jewish groups say it should also call attention to the threat of I...
(JTA) - On my trips to Bahrain, almost nobody knew I was Jewish. I was a strange enough creature as it was: young, female and civilian, traveling with a mostly male, mostly military delegation; low ranking, but representing the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the top-ranked organization in the delegation. Its ranking was so far above the people in the field that one of my friends at the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain said that getting a call from me was like getting a call from Mt. Olympus. I was...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) Arab states have stopped giving money to the Palestinian Authority due to U.S. pressure, Deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri said on Friday. Arouri’s comments were aired by Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV as a rocket, fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, landed in an open field in Israel. “There are Arab countries that froze their commitments to the Palestinian people, whether via the P.A. or PLO, because of an American decision. To be clear, an American decision. They came to our brothers in the P.A. and told them: ‘We...
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Jews’ share of the population of Europe is as low now as it was 1,000 years ago and is declining even further, according to a landmark new demographic study. The study published Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research found 1.3 million people who describe themselves as Jewish in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Russia. That figure has declined by nearly 60 percent since 1970, when there were 3.2 million Jews in the same area, wrote the report’s authors, Daniel Staetsky and Sergi...
Jewish Journal of Los Angeles ceases print edition By Tom Tugend LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, the largest American Jewish weekly west of New York, has ceased print production as of its Oct. 16 issue and become an online-only publication. In an announcement to staff, readers and advertisers, publisher and editor-in-chief David Suissa said he hopes the print version of the paper will return once synagogues open again. As a free community paper, the Journal has been distributed primarily through the area’s network of far...
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — The Jewish owner of a large Argentine hypermarket chain has started selling kosher meat for far less than competitors this month, claiming that the country’s kosher supervision industry has artificially driven up costs for consumers. Roberto Goldfarb, the founder and CEO of Diarco, first announced his intentions in a call in May with El Lazo, a Jewish youth center associated with the Chabad Lubavitch movement. On the call he called the kosher supervision industry a “mafia” that cons buyers and charges more than necessary “w...
(Israel21c via JNS) Food security is emerging as a key area in which the United Arab Emirates is eager for Israeli expertise, investors in each country tell ISRAEL21c. The Gulf states import more than 90 percent of their food. This has long been a concern, but the issue intensified when pandemic-related transportation stoppages disrupted supply for several months. The UAE now has a food security minister and Food Security Council. The Abraham Accords announced between Israel and the UAE on Aug....
(JTA) — Facebook announced that it will now ban any posts that deny or distort the Holocaust, a landmark change from its previous policy. For years, Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had defended Holocaust denial as a misguided but legitimate form of expression. In 2018, regarding Holocaust denial, he said, “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.” That approach garnered widespread outcry from scholars and anti-Semitism watchdogs. On Monday, Zuckerberg wrote...
(JNS) — A Jewish American economist was one of two winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in economics for studying how auctions work, announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday. Paul Milgrom, along with American economist Robert Wilson, won the prestigious annual prize “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats,” announced the academy. Both professors at Stanford University, they “have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods a...
(JNS) — World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder met with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, announced a Palestinian minister. In a Twitter post, P.A. Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh disclosed the information, though provided no specifics. The billionaire philanthropist and former U.S. ambassador to Austria went to the West Bank for what the WJC said was “a private visit at Abbas’s invitation to discuss a range of issues regarding Palestine and the Middle East.” A friend of U.S. President Donald Trump,...
(JNS) — The Etihad Airways flight carrying a ministerial delegation from the United Arab Emirates landed in Israel at noon on Tuesday, marking the first-ever official visit from the Gulf state, following the Sept. 15 signing of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords at the White House. Welcoming the delegation on the tarmac of Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—accompanied by Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Finance Minister Israel Katz—spoke about the preparation of his speech. “My staff wrote me some li...
(JTA) — A synagogue has opened for the first time in Obninsk, a city near Moscow that was built in 1945 to accommodate the staff of the world’s first nuclear power plant. Around 400 Jews, including some from Moscow seeking to move out of the city, make up the city’s Jewish population, according to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia. The nuclear plant had many Jewish employees and some of their families stayed in the Obninsk area. Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar attended the opening of the synagogue on Thursday. “Or goal is not onl...
(JTA) — New U.S. sanctions on Iran, which target 18 Iranian financial institutions and penalize non-Iranian institutions who deal with them, effectively cut the Middle Eastern country off from the world finance system. The sanctions deprive “the Islamic Republic of Iran of funds to carry out its support for terrorist activities and nuclear extortion that threatens the world,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. The sanctions effectively cut off Iran from world markets because of the preeminence worldwide of the U.S. dolla...
Israeli army opens two coronavirus wards for civilians in Rambam Hospital in Haifa By Marcy Oster (JTA) — The Israel Defense Forces opened two civilian coronavirus wards in an underground parking complex designed to be used for medical purposes during wartime. The opening of the wards at Rambam Hospital in Haifa mark the first time the military has opened medical wards for civilians. The wards, which opened to patients last month, are in a facility constructed after the hospital came under fire during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The w...
(JNS) - A Greek court has deemed the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn as a criminal organization disguised as a political party - a ruling applauded by Jewish groups. The five-and-a-half-year trial resulted in the convictions on Wednesday of 68 people, including 18 former lawmakers. The case, overseen by a three-judge panel, was sparked by the 2013 murder of 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, who was chased down and stabbed to death by a Golden Dawn member. The killer, former truck driver...
(JTA) — Louise Glück, the American granddaughter of Hungarian Jews, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Glück, 77, was awarded “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” the Nobel committee wrote in its announcement. Her collections of poetry — which explore broad and painful topics, such as family life, trauma and aging — include the books “The Wild Iris,” “Meadowlands,” “The Triumph of Achilles” and “Ararat.” For “The Wild Iris” she was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize...
Top Hamas official enters quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 By Neta Bar (Israel Hayom via JNS) — Deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri has contracted COVID-19, the terrorist group confirmed on Thursday. Arouri had entered quarantine and was “doing well,” Hamas said in an official statement. Arouri is believed to have contracted the disease while meeting with Fatah officials in Turkey two weeks ago to discuss ending longtime strife between the rival Palestinian factions, which have recently announced they would join forces. He also...
Congress members join global task force to combat online anti-Semitism By Marcy Oster (JTA) — Several U.S. Congress members are part of a new task force of international lawmakers trying to combat online anti-Semitism. Members of the national legislatures of Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States are part of the panel, according to an announcement from Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., a members of the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Anti-Semitism. The lawmakers decided to ban together since “social med...
(MEMRI via JNS) - The BDS movement is monitoring the activity of Arab companies regarding Israel in the wake of the peace deals signed last month between the Jewish state, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, according to BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti. In a video uploaded to the YouTube channel of the Bahraini Society Against Normalization on Sept. 17, Barghouti singled out First Abu Dhabi Bank, which he said has been in dialogue with Israeli banks Leumi and Hapoalim. "With the help of our...
NEW YORK (JTA) — After an initial first wave that devastated New York City’s Orthodox Jewish communities, the coronavirus is on the rise again. Meanwhile, Israelis are back under lockdown after new infections there reached crisis levels. As we did this spring, we’re tracking the news flowing in from across Jewish communities here. And as always, we want to hear from you. Have questions, tips or insights about how your community is responding to the pandemic more than six months in? Get in touch. Tuesday, Sept. 29 10:34 a.m. Israel’s per cap...
(JNS) — The United States has reimposed United Nations sanctions on Iran, in addition to imposing “new sanctions and export control measures on 27 entities and individuals connected to Iran’s proliferation networks,” according to a statement released by the White House on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the reimposition a step towards “international peace and security.” The United States activated the mechanism last month to enact U.N. snapback sanctions on the regime under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which endor...
(Israel21C via JNS) - Mazal tov to Hannah and Methuselah on their 111 miracle babies! The proud parents are date palms grown from ancient seeds uncovered in archeological excavations in Israel. These dates, recently picked at the Arava Institute at Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel, are a type that hasn't been tasted since the times of Jesus and the Maccabees. "Dr. Elaine Solowey, our director of the Center for Sustainable Agriculture, grew our first ancient date tree, Methuselah, in 2005," expl...
