Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — France banned 28 Israelis from entering the European country, accusing them of attacking Arabs in Judea and Samaria, its foreign ministry said on Tuesday.‘ One day earlier, the U.K. announced similar measures. The statement did not name the 28 individuals who allegedly carried out acts of violence against Palestinians but urged Israeli authorities to “put an end to it and prosecute its perpetrators. “These measures come at a time when violence perpetrated by settlers against the Palestinian population has been increasing in recent...
(JNS) - The western German city of Aachen, which has awarded an annual Charlemagne Prize for nearly 75 years, has recognized Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt and European Jewry with the 2024 prize, named for the medieval Frankish king. "With this accolade, the Charlemagne Prize Board of Directors wishes to broadcast the message that Jewish life is a natural part of Europe, and that there is no place for antisemitism in Europe," the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen stated. "Jewish life is an...
(JNS) — As word spread about four residents of Judea and Samaria being sanctioned for “settler violence,” some scoffed while others wondered what exactly the four did to deserve the infamy. “I wonder what took them so long,” said Professor Yossi Spiegel of Tel Aviv University’s School of Management, president of the Israeli Economic Association. “The international community considers the settlements illegal, but until now consequences were just a threat. Now they mean business.” However, some are taking action. Marc Zell, an American-Israel...
(JNS) — The Biden administration is preparing to make a major push for Palestinian statehood if a Gaza ceasefire agreement being negotiated in Cairo this week takes effect. According to The Washington Post, the United States and its Arab partners are “rushing” to finalize the plan to establish a Palestinian state—a plan that could be announced in the next few weeks with hopes that a deal to release the remaining 134 hostages held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza in exchange for a six-week pause in fighting takes effect before Ramadan, which begins o...
RJC endorses Rep. August Pfluger of Texas (JNS) — Jewish Coalition has selected its 23rd recommendation of candidates in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate this election cycle. “Although he is only in his second term, Congressman August Pfluger has established himself as an exemplary defender of our national security and the U.S.-Israel alliance,” Norm Coleman, a former Minnesota senator and current RJC national chairman, and CEO Matt Brooks said in a statement. “Last year, when Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal [D-Wash.] smeared Israel...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that Israel “should not proceed” with a military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, without a plan for the more than 1 million civilians currently sheltering in the area. Speaking alongside the visiting Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House, Biden added that there have been “too many” Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza. He appeared to cite statistics from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, despite having criticized those numbers in the pa...
(JNS) — Paris has brought a proposal to Beirut that aims to prevent a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah over the Iranian terrorist proxy’s cross-border attacks from Lebanon. Last week, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné delivered the draft document to top officials in the Lebanese capital including Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Reuters reported on Monday, citing four senior Lebanese and three French officials. Additionally, Jerusalem and Hezbollah were presented with the two-page proposal, underscoring the importance placed...
(JNS) — For the United Nations’ point man on the Middle East, all options are on the table when it comes to the future of Israel and the Palestinians. “I am very sure of one thing: The divide and the distrust that has come out of this conflict has made it necessary to look at the options that we thought were dead,” Tor Wennesland, the U.N. special coordinator on the Middle East peace process, told reporters in a rare press briefing on Wednesday. The Norwegian longtime diplomat said that the “one-state reality” that many critics of Israel deem...
(JTA) — French President Emmanuel Macron presided over a somber ceremony in Paris on Feb. 7 to honor the 42 French nationals murdered during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. France flew relatives of the victims on a special flight to the ceremony, held in pouring rain in the courtyard of Les Invalides, the national memorial where Napoleon is buried. Each victim was represented by a photograph, and three empty chairs were placed to represent the three French nationals who remain hostages in Gaza. The names of each victim appeared on a l...
Jared Genser, a Washington, D.C.-based international human rights lawyer, has extracted hostages and political prisoners from some of the world's worst dictatorships - usually in one-off deals following years of negotiation and on a rare occasion involving large sums of money. But he's concerned that piecemeal dealmaking with rogue actors encourages more kidnappings. So, Genser is proposing a new multilateral approach to fighting hostage-taking by nations like Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela,...
(JNS) — Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built. Asked on Wednesday whether, given the United Nations’ sizable presence in Gaza via a variety of agencies, there had been any indication to the global body that tunnels were being constructed underground, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “No is clearl...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Wednesday at his office in Jerusalem with Argentine President Javier Milei, who has promised to move his country’s embassy to the capital and designate Hamas a terrorist group. “I’m delighted to welcome you, President Milei, and your delegation, to Israel. You’re a great friend of the Jewish state. We are delighted with your decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move your diplomatic post there, and also, of course, an embassy,” began Netanyahu. “We share the desire for...
By Judy Lash Balint (JNS) — Palestinian children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says. “In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.” The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the...
(JNS) — An Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza will take place in three stages over several weeks, sources in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah claim. Parallel to this, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas is said to be preparing certain reforms under U.S. pressure that he hopes would allow him to return to power in Gaza. The emerging ceasefire agreement will occur in three phases, according to the high-ranking sources and reports in the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel. The basic formula is the release of one Israeli hostage for 30 i...
New Title VI probes of Harvard, UMich, New School, USF, Indiana (JNS) — The U.S. Department of Education announced five new investigations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Law. Harvard University, the University of Michigan, The New School (New York City), Indiana University-Bloomington, the Butler School District 53 (Illinois) and the University of South Florida are all being probed for violations “for discrimination involving shared ancestry.” Campus Reform said it filed the complaint against Indiana, a public university. The Educa...
(JNS) — The heads of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus on Feb. 7 pressed Dutch legislators to cut funding to UNRWA altogether, as Israel seeks alternatives for the U.N. body over its ties to Palestinian terrorism. The discussion, at the Dutch House of Representatives, comes amid Israeli calls for UNRWA to be replaced by responsible aid agencies; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the work and functions of UNRWA need to be preserved. “With the recent horrific reports verifying UNRWA employees’ complicity in the Oct. 7...
BERLIN (JTA) — Police in Berlin have arrested a 23-year-old man who allegedly attacked and seriously wounded a Jewish student in a bar on Friday. The Jewish student and his family say the attack was a hate crime. The victim, Lahav Shapira, 30, was hospitalized and underwent surgery for non-life-threatening injuries to his face. He is the grandson of Israeli athletics coach Amitzur Shapira, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972. His older brother, Shahak Shapira, is a prominent comedian and w...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A conflict that started on a tiny perimeter of land on Oct. 7 is, less than four months later, reverberating throughout the region, from Lebanon in the north to Morocco in the west, Iran in the east and Yemen in the south. “This is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday at a press conference. “I would argue that we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 19...
(JNS) - U.S. President Joe Biden is harming Israel's efforts to demilitarize the Gaza Strip by demanding that Jerusalem scale back its military offensive against the Hamas terror organization, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Channel 12 on Monday. Biden is "to some extent hampering the war effort by this desire to force Israel to engage in I think what he refers to as 'low-intensity combat'... That's sort of the kind of messaging that America has been giving Israel,"...
Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv for first time since Jan. 1 (JNS) — Air-raid sirens blared across Tel Aviv and its suburbs on Monday afternoon, warning of incoming rockets from the Gaza Strip for the first time since Jan. 1. Local reports said at least 10 rockets were fired towards the greater Tel Aviv area, sending millions of civilians racing for shelter. Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades “military” wing confirmed it fired a volley of rockets at the city “in response to the Zionist massacres of civilians.” There were no reports of casualties...
(JNS) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was set to meet on Tuesday with major donors to the embattled U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the United Nations’ Palestinian-only refugee organization. A number of major donor countries announced in recent days the suspension of their contributions to the agency amid revelations that 12 UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. The information was provided to UNRWA by Israel. Nine of the 12 employees had their contracts terminated, while anoth...
(JNS) — A UN Watch report released this week further bolsters the assertions of UNRWA’s critics that the Palestinian aid agency, rife with terrorism supporters, is beyond repair. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, has come under fire after The New York Times broke the story on Sunday that 12 staff members took part in the Oct. 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists rampaged through Israel’s south, murdering some 1,200 persons, mostly civilians. At least 15 countries, including the U.S., have suspended funding to the organ...
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A growing number of countries has suspended funding to the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in the wake of allegations that a number of its staffers were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in Israel. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, protested the cuts, saying that they were accelerating an oncoming famine in the Gaza Strip. The agency was founded to administer relief to Palestinian refugees and their descendants and is the main provider of aid in Gaza, where it emp...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that more than 100 Hamas terrorists had been caught in the previous 36 hours, as the IDF pushes forward in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. “Hamas is collapsing into its own tunnels that it painstakingly dug. Every place it thought would be a trap for IDF soldiers becomes an area where we hit it,” Gallant told soldiers serving in the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit. “In the past day and a half, we have over 100 captives, some of them who came up from underground, in the Khan Yu...
As Gazans passed through the humanitarian corridor from Khan Younis, many were heard yelling “down with Hamas,” potentially signaling growing discontent with the Iran-backed terror group’s command over Gaza. IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced that a humanitarian corridor has been established in a Bedouin area Al-Mawasi to protect Gazan civilians from the IDF military operations in Khan Younis. While tens of thousands were evacuating the area, many were heard yelling slogans against Hamas. “The people want to topple Hamas,” and oth...
