Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israeli ministers on Saturday night called on the government to annex Judea and Samaria, after the U.N. General Assembly voted to adopt the so-called New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, which outlines the implementation of a two-state solution and the path towards recognition of a Palestinian state. “The fact that a diplomatic attack on Israel is met with Israeli silence—is unacceptable and cannot continue,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense...
Behind Kibbutz Nir Oz, on a small rise overlooking the fields toward Gaza, stands a new memorial. At 14 feet tall, the Lion of Judah sits with its mouth agape, teeth bared, eyes dark with anger and pain. One massive paw rests upon a dedicatory stanchion. This Lion is the work of Jerusalem artist Sam Philipe, a fifth-generation Jewish sculptor. The project was conceived and funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation in collaboration with the Nir Oz community. Philipe and I...
(JNS) - "We said there will be no Palestinian state - indeed there will be no Palestinian state. This place is ours," declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rousing applause at the festive signing of an "umbrella agreement" between the government and Ma'ale Adumim at the Judean city's Cultural Center on Thursday evening. The umbrella agreement commits the government to finance the construction of two new neighborhoods and the expansion of a third in a city that hasn't seen a new n...
(JNS) — Elizabeth Tsurkov landed in Israel Wednesday, a day after the Israeli-born graduate student was released from two years of captivity in Iraq. “The head of the Mossad thanks his Cypriot counterpart for the assistance in facilitating Elizabeth’s humanitarian transfer through Cyprus to Israel. The cooperation between the two countries once again proves itself,” read a joint statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Tsurkov, 38, an Isra...
By JNS Staff (JNS) — Israel’s Defense Ministry has agreed to transfer the cannon that shelled the Altalena, the Irgun cargo ship that the newly created Israel Defense Forces shelled off the Tel Aviv beach in 1948, to the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, Hebrew media reported on Wednesday. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz authorized the transfer after Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu requested that the “holy cannon” be relocated from the IDF’s Glilot military base in Ramat Hasharon to Begin’s national memorial in Jerusalem. The weapon was...
(JNS) — After last year’s public service was canceled over fear of altercations, gender-separated Yom Kippur prayers will be held in a Tel Aviv public space in October. The Tel Aviv Municipality on Thursday issued the Rosh Yehudi NGO a permit to hold prayers in Meir Park, located in the center of the metropolis, Ynet reported on Thursday. Rosh Yehudi (“Jewish Head” in Hebrew) tries to spread Orthodox Judaism in Tel Aviv, an attempt that has been met in the past with antagonism in the predominantly secular city. Prayers in Meir Park will be...
(JNS)- Six Israelis were murdered and a dozen more wounded in a mass-shooting attack by Palestinian terrorists in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot on Monday morning. The slain victims were identified as Yosef David, 43, from Jerusalem; Sarah Mendelson, 60, from Jerusalem; Israel Mentzer, 28, from Jerusalem; Levi Yitzhak Pash, 57, from Tel Zion; Yaakov Pinto, 25, from Jerusalem; and Mordechai Steintzeg, 79, from Jerusalem. The Magen David Adom emergency medical response group...
At this very moment, young Jews from around the world are making aliyah for a year of service and enlistment in the IDF: On Sept. 9, 2025, a dedication ceremony was held for the new home for lone soldiers at the Hannaton Educational Center in the Galilee. Present were the approximately 30 young men and women from North America, who have made the bold decision to move to Israel via the Garin Tzabar program of the Israeli Scouts Movement and become the first cohort to move into the home. Here lone soldiers will share a campus with their Israeli p...
By (JNS) — Israel is fighting a “fierce war against terrorism on several fronts,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday during a visit to the site of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem that claimed the lives of six people earlier in the day. “I want to extend condolences to the families of the victims and to the wounded,” said Netanyahu. Six people were murdered and a dozen more wounded in a shooting in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot on Monday morning. Two terrorists were killed at the scene by an Israel Defense Forces so...
(JNS)- It wasn't lost on Ofir Sofer, the Israeli aliyah and integration minister, how unusual it was for someone of his prominence to fly to another country solely to board a charter return flight full of new immigrants. "Flights like this-a big group of olim that come in one day to Israel is a strong message that is conveyed to our people that is not just happening today. It's happened since Oct. 7," Sofer told JNS aboard the first Nefesh B'Nefesh charter flight since the terrorist attacks in...
(JNS) - The largest dam in ancient Israel, uncovered just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem, has been dated back to the time of the biblical kings, some 2,800 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday. The monumental dam, which runs about 12 meters high, more than 8 meters wide and 21 meters long, was excavated over the last two years in the history-rich ancient City of David. A new study carried out jointly with the Weizmann Institute of Science concludes that the...
(JNS) - The train from Jerusalem to Herzliya hums steadily along the tracks. It's full, as usual, for this time of day in the middle of the week. Voices mingle with the whir of the wheels. A mixture of languages - Hebrew, English, Russian - meld with universal sighs of weary commuters wishing to reach their destination before sundown. Suddenly, a minyan (public prayer quorum) of 10 men rises, almost simultaneously. One stands, calling out the afternoon prayer, his Yemenite accent ringing clear...
(JNS) — Former Hamas hostage Keith Siegel told the Haredi radio station Kol Barama on Wednesday that his faith was strengthened during the almost 500 days he spent in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. “As a boy, Judaism did not speak to me, but in captivity, I reconnected,” Siegel said in the interview, two days after he joined a special prayer service at the Western Wall late on Monday night for the release of the remaining 50 hostages still in Gaza after 690 days. “Every day, I said ‘Shema Yisrael’ and I recited a blessing over the food. S...
(JNS) — Israel is set to carry out the world’s first ever implant of a lab-grown spinal cord using a patient’s own cells, in a medical breakthrough offering a potential cure for paralysis, Tel Aviv University announced on Wednesday. The groundbreaking surgery, which is expected to be carried out in the coming months, marks a milestone in regenerative science, with the goal of enabling the patient to walk again within a year. The university said that the Israeli Ministry of Health has given...
(JNS) - A gold coin dating back about 2,200 years has been uncovered just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem, shedding new light on the development of the city after the destruction of the first ancient Jewish Temple, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. The small denomination quarter-drachma, made of pure gold (99.3 percent), and dated to 246–241 BCE, was minted for Queen Berenice II during the reign of her husband, Ptolemy III, the state-run archaeological body s...
Israel has approved a long-delayed settlement project that would build 3,400 housing units for Jews in Judea and Samaria, in a move that both its backers and its many critics say would undercut Palestinian ambitions to control the region. The E1 project would expand Jewish settlements on a stretch of land east of Jerusalem, effectively bisecting Judea and Samaria and limiting Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem from growing, Proposed decades ago, but never finalized, the plan was abruptly moved forward this month by Israel’s far-right f...
(JNS) — A significant drop in the level of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) was recorded on Sunday following an extreme heatwave that swept through Israel last week, bringing it closer to the lower red line, Hebrew media reported. “The Sea of Galilee has lost several centimeters since the start of the severe heatwave last week,” Kinneret Department Manager at the Water Authority Firas Telhami said, according to Ynet. “The evaporation rate, especially in the last two days of the peak of the heatwav...
(JNS) — Students from 24 U.S. universities toured Israel last week as part of a program which according to its organizers would use firsthand testimonies to help counter misinformation about Israel. The students attend universities including UCLA, Duke, UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. On their 10-day visit, the participants of the Hasbara Fellowships and IsraelAmbassadors.com delegation met politicians, visited the grounds of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, met with a former h...
(JNS) — One morning in July, on a pathway atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, eight barefoot men lay spread-eagled, faces pressed to the ground, as four police officers stood by and watched. Just two years ago, this act — part of a mitzvah, a religious commandment known as Hishtachavaya — would have led to immediate ejection. For decades, authorities restricted Jewish prayer at the site, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the remains of the last Jewish Temple, making it one of the most sensitive and contested religious spaces on earth. Often d...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized nationwide anti-government demonstrations on Sunday, saying at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting that the results are the opposite of what they claim to want. “Those who today call for ending the war without defeating Hamas are not only hardening Hamas’s position and distancing the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of Oct. 7 will repeat themselves, and that we will be forced to fight a never-ending war,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, to advance the r...
(JNS) — More than 85,000 passengers were traveling through Ben-Gurion International Airport on 500 international flights on Thursday, the highest single-day figure since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Israel Airports Authority. The numbers highlight both the resurgence of the Israeli aviation sector and the reemergence of Tel Aviv as a travel hub, even before all leading international carriers have resumed flights to Israel. Some 43,700 travelers were departing Israel on Thursday, while o...
(JNS) — In video footage screened for the first time at a rally in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, Hamas hostage Matan Zangauker appealed to family and friends to increase their efforts to secure his release. “To all my acquaintances, all my friends, go out and make noise as only you know how, and with God’s help we will see each other soon,” he said. Zangauker, who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, said that he missed his mother, sister and girlfriend, adding that “God willing” they would be re...
(JNS) — In a quiet room at Israel’s soon-to-be inaugurated October 7 Museum, Mosab Hassan Yousef—the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef who is known as “The Green Prince”—looked at the evidence of Hamas’s atrocities and spoke the truth that too many still refuse to hear: “Hamas is not just at war with Israel. It is at war with Jews, Christians and the very foundations of civilization itself.” Yousef knows this from the inside. Raised in a home steeped in Hamas ideology, he was taught from childhood that Jews must be killed, Christians...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Millions of Israelis were expected to participate in a nationwide strike on Sunday for the return of the remaining 50 hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, who have endured 681 days in appalling conditions. Major corporations, institutions, businesses and government authorities have confirmed they will permit employees to participate. During a 7:10 a.m. press conference, hostages' families issued urgent appeals for public participation in street demonstrations and work...
Israel’s security cabinet has endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand fighting in Gaza, despite warnings from military leaders and others that doing so would put soldiers and hostages at risk. The plan approved early Friday morning does not specify that Israel will “occupy” Gaza, as Netanyahu said shortly before entering the marathon meeting that he intended to do. Instead, it focuses on Gaza City, the largest area within Gaza where the Israeli army does not already operate on the ground. The IDF says it has conquer...
