Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman took to the stage on Saturday in Jerusalem to perform a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hit rock song, “Sweet Home Alabama.” American comedian and actor Elon Gold led the ensemble, singing “Sweet Home Yerushalayim” (“Jerusalem” in Hebrew) over the catchy chorus. Huckabee expertly pulled off the song’s funky bass line on electric bass, with Friedman accompanying the group on electric guitar. The performance was shared on X by Eli Beer, president a...
(JNS) — Hamas terrorists must give up their weapons, or “all hell breaks loose,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS on Tuesday. Netanyahu spoke in response to a question on whether Israel’s two-year war against Hamas in Gaza was over. He replied that Israel was giving a chance to the ceasefire agreement forged by U.S. President Donald Trump, which includes “both demilitarization and disarmament,” which are “not the same thing,” the prime minister said. “Well, we agreed to give peace a chance,” Netanyah...
(JNS) - "My life, my life," cried out Einav Zangauker, embracing her son, Matan, for the first time in one of many emotional moments, as the 20 living hostages embraced their joyful families upon their return to Israel after 738 days in Hamas captivity. Hamas kidnapped Matan and his girlfriend Ilana Gritzewsky from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. On Dec. 7, 2024, Hamas published a letter that it said was from Matan. "We are still alive. We want to return safely before we go...
(JNS) — If you hadn’t known anything about the huge crowd that gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square two days before the actual return of the rest of the living hostages, you’d have thought you stumbled into a rally of the Israeli chapter of MAGA. The banners celebrated U.S. President Donald Trump as the godfather of the hostage deal, and Trump’s personal representatives—Steve Witkoff, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—were warmly welcomed. The atmosphere was festive, even ecstatic. These have been two long years, during which massively lon...
(JTA) - Scenes of joyful reunions played out in public and private. All 20 of the Israeli hostages still alive two years after being taken hostage by Hamas have returned to Israel, following an emotional morning that commanded the attention of Jews around the world who had lobbied for their release. Unlike in past hostage releases, Hamas did not stage release "ceremonies," a condition of the deal the group in charge of Gaza made in striking a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal last week. But in...
(JNS) — Eli Sharabi, a former Israeli hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, is being featured on the cover of TIME magazine that hits newsstands on Oct. 27. An excerpt of his memoir, documenting his survival of 491 days of captivity in the Strip, was published online on Oct. 1. “As they dragged me out, I called out to my girls, “I’ll be back.” I had to believe that. But that was the last time I ever saw them. I didn’t know I should have said goodbye, forever,” said the 53-year-old Be’eri reside...
(JNS) — Israel’s Ministry of Religious Services is prepared to receive the remains of “between one and 28” slain hostages as part of the agreement with Hamas in Gaza, director-general Yehudah Avidan said on Sunday. Despite expectations, no one yet knows how many hostages’ bodies will be handed over by the terrorist group before the deadline of 6 a.m. on Monday, Avidan told Kan Reshet Bet radio. A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross will carry out an initial identification process after receiving the bodies, according...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday marked two years since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, pledging that Israel “will prevail” and reaffirming his commitment to achieving all the war’s objectives — the return of hostages, the elimination of Hamas and ensuring that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the Jewish state. In a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu recalled the immense suffering caused by the attacks, in which some 1,200 people were murdered and 251 were abducted into the terror...
(JNS) - Michelle Rukovicin, the most severely wounded survivor of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacres, married her partner on Tuesday night in a ceremony celebrated as a symbol of resilience. The IDF intelligence systems technician, who was critically injured defending Kissufim base from Hamas terrorists and spent three months in a coma, wed her boyfriend of five years, Rinat Kasimov, the partner who remained at her side throughout her grueling recovery. She was struck by seven bullets, wounde...
(JNS) - Several hundred family members, friends, members of Knesset and Israel Defense Forces soldiers gathered at the Oz VeGaon Nature Preserve in Gush Etzion on Sept. 28 for the annual Lion of Zion prize in memory of renowned Israel advocate Ari Fuld, on his seventh yahrzeit. Fuld, 45, who was born in New York and made aliyah in 1994, was murdered by an Arab teenager in a 2018 terrorist stabbing, several days before Yom Kippur, outside a mall near the Gush Etzion Junction. With his last...
25 has come to a close. In Israel, this time of year is evident by the changing landscape, notably the fruits on the trees, the grapes in the vineyards. If there was no calendar to tell us the date, we would still know it was the High Holydays. We feel a need to focus on our recent announcement about the establishment of an ambulance fleet dedicated in memory of Charlie Kirk, z"l. In response to that announcement, we received thoughtful feedback, and we realized we may have unintentionally...
(JNS) — More than 50,000 new immigrants have arrived in Israel since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, according to figures released by the Jewish Agency for Israel ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In addition, through Masa Israel Journey, a Jewish Agency program in partnership with the Israeli government, roughly 20,000 young people from Jewish communities abroad have come to Israel to volunteer and support the country. Tens of thousands of Jews have participated in aliyah fairs held worldwide since Oct. 7, and m...
(JNS) - Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 15 reopened the Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem, a first-century route linking the City of David to the Temple Mount. The Pilgrimage Road, a broad stone route used during the Second Temple period, connected the Pool of Siloam, where pilgrims purified themselves in ritual baths, to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount. Jerusalem "is forever our city," Netanyahu declared at the ceremony in the City of Da...
(JNS)— Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday invoked the memory of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States as he defended Israel’s strike in Qatar targeting Hamas leaders behind the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. “We remember September 11. On that day, Islamist terrorists committed the worst savagery on American soil since the founding of the United States,” Netanyahu said. “We also have a September 11. We remember October 7. On that day, Islamist terrorists committed the worst savagery against the Jewish people since the...
(JNS) — A memorial mural featuring angel wings in a prominent city square in Israel. A sand sculpture on the Tel Aviv beach. An Israeli tank shell inscribed with a commemorative message. Spontaneous Israeli public tributes that have poured in since last week’s assassination in Utah of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, 31, who was admired in Israel for his staunch support of the Jewish state and had a large following across the Atlantic. “If the world is divided into good and evil, the...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed to Jerusalem what his office described as the largest-ever bipartisan delegation of American lawmakers to ever visit the Jewish state. “We value and cherish your support,” Netanyahu told the delegation of some 250 U.S. state legislators gathered at the Foreign Ministry, noting that there was an “active effort” ongoing to erode the ties between the two countries. These efforts are “orchestrated by the same forces that supported Iran,” he continued, accusing China and Qatar of spearheadi...
(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...
