Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces located four kites over the weekend that crossed the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip. One of the kites was identified on Friday in the area of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, adjacent to the northern Gaza Strip. The other three were found the following morning, the IDF said. “No suspicious items were found on the kites,” the military noted, adding that at no stage did they pose a danger to the public. Terrorists in Gaza have used incendiary kites in the past to start fires in the northwestern Negev, resulting in se...
(JNS) — Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to adopt a “zero-tolerance” policy toward kites and balloons launched from Gaza into communities in the Negev. “If the launches continue — powerful actions will be taken to put an end to the phenomenon,” Katz said. “A balloon and kite shall be treated the same as a drone — with or without explosives.” He said Israel would not allow its security zone inside the Gaza border to be bypassed. Netanyahu and Kat...
Where I live in the Judean mountains, Jewish Israeli communities exist alongside Palestinian Arab communities. Visually in some places, we coexist so close to one another it's as if clutching your own hands together as your fingers would be intertwined between one another. Driving where I live in the Judean mountains, as in Judea of Judea and Samaria, it's common to see red signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, warning Israelis that it is both illegal and unsafe for them to enter areas under...
(JNS) - KIBBUTZ NA'AN, Israel-The personal wartime diary, assiduously written by the young mother, detailed the infant's early development, from his first smile to his weight and even a curl of his hair. It was Jacqueline Meents-Lenstra's first experience of parenthood. Still, the baby whose milestones she so meticulously recorded was, in fact, not her own, even as the diary itself tells the story of her devotion to the child. It was 1943 in Nazi-occupied Holland, and the Jewish baby boy, Efraim...
(JNS) - The sound of construction in Kibbutz Yiftah travels across the border with Lebanon and echoes among the ruins of the Shi'ite village of Blida, which Hezbollah used as a stronghold before Israel destroyed much of it. "Blida is gone, and we are building new homes for new families who want to move here. That's the story this image tells," Annat Zisovich-Charrit, the head of civilian security at Kibbutz Yiftah and a mother of two, told JNS earlier this month near a construction site where...
(JNS) — A group of American travel agents visited Israel this week in a push for postwar tourism following a period of regional turbulence that reduced travel to the Holy Land. The weeklong trip, sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, comes as the number of visitors from the United States began to pick up this summer, just ahead of next month’s much-anticipated return to Tel Aviv by two major US legacy carriers. “People do want to come; it’s just the fear factor of ‘Oh my God, it’s the Middle East,’” said Sima Pagash, a Los Angeles tra...
(JNS) - For Oklahoma native Hayden Jones, antisemitism and visceral hate struck him head-on when, while walking from the House of Representatives to the Senate at the U.S. Capitol, he was spat on for wearing a yellow ribbon in solidarity with the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. The 22-year-old had grown up in a strongly pro-Israel home and later studied at a private Christian university in Tulsa and so had been largely sheltered from the surge of often violent demonstrations that...
Part Five of a series explaining Israel’s political system before Israelis go to the polls One of the most common complaints heard about Israeli politics is that small parties have too much power. To many Americans, that criticism seems obvious. How can a party with six or seven seats in a 120-member Knesset exercise significant influence over a government? The answer lies in coalition politics. As we discussed previously, Israeli governments require the support of at least 61 members of the Knesset. Because no party comes close to winning 6...
(JNS) - An Israel Defense Forces officer has borne the news of the finding of the burial site of fallen soldier Shlomo Haimson, killed nearly 78 years ago, to his daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where they currently live, the military said in a statement on Wednesday. Haimson, who was born in Romania in 1930, was deported to Cyprus after British Mandate troops seized the immigrant ship carrying him to the Land of Israel. He decided to immigrate to...
(JNS) — Nefesh B’Nefesh celebrated on Sunday the arrival of its 100,000th immigrant to Israel from the U.S. and Canada in a special occasion marked at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, attended by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer and Nefesh B’Nefesh co-founders Rabbi Yehoshua Fass and Tony Gelbart. The milestone was marked by the immigration of Jeffrey and Atara Douglas, who arrived from New York to Jerusalem with their three children: Nathaniel, 10, Hallie, 9, and Emilia, 6, Nefesh B’Nefes...
(JNS) — Lior Auvgang, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre in southern Israel on Oct, 7, 2023, and former combat paramedic in the Israel Defense Forces, shared his story of survival, loss and resilience with about 70 UJA-Federation of New York young leaders on Wednesday in Manhattan. “I feel like I’m a modern Holocaust survivor,” Auvgang told JNS. “God gave me the ability to stand in front of people and talk and tell my story, so I feel like it’s bigger than me.” He told attendees of the event that he arrived at the festival with...
(JNS) - The remains of Theodor Herzl's paternal grandparents are in the process of being brought to Israel from Serbia, and are due for burial on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Aug. 5 in an official state ceremony, the World Zionist Organization announced on Wednesday. Israel's senior leadership and leading public officials are expected to attend, including President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the Executive of the WZO. Herzl is the visionary founder of modern Zio...
(JNS) — Israelis are marking the Hebrew anniversary of the 1929 Hebron Massacre this weekend, commemorating one of the deadliest pogroms of the British Mandate period and the destruction of Hebron’s centuries-old Jewish community. The massacre took place on the 18th of Av, 5689—corresponding to Aug. 24, 1929—and this year the Hebrew date falls from Friday night through Saturday. In a post on X marking the anniversary, Israel’s Foreign Ministry recalled that “67 Jews were murdered by their Arab neighbors in the Hebron Massacre, temporarily...
By (JNS) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with evangelical leaders in the U.S. on Wednesday and thanked them for their “steadfast and unwavering support” for the State of Israel. “We are the descendants of the original Hebrews from the Holy Land, and we are the first part of that Judeo-Christian heritage that is dear to our hearts and has given the world—human civilization—freedom and faith,” Netanyahu said during the Washington, D.C., meeting. “And again, we have to stand up and defend it. It is under attack from the rising wave of...
This week is the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific terror attacks in Israel during what is referred to as the Second Intifada. During the period from late 2000 through the first half of 2005, more than 1000 Israelis were killed and several thousand wounded as a result of countless Palestinian Arab suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, and more. While hardly a week went by without some such terror attack, the Aug. 9, 2001, bombing of the Sbarro pizza restaurant in central Jerusalem...
Ramat Gan, Israel - Florida undergraduate students Zohar Ben Simon of Ponte Vedra Beach and Olivia Kahane of Hollywood are spending their summer conducting research at Bar-Ilan University as participants in the 16th annual Bar-Ilan University-Yeshiva University Summer Science Research Internship Program. They are among 24 students from the United States and the United Kingdom taking part in the seven-week program, which has brought nearly 500 undergraduates to Israel since its inception. Zohar...
Part Three of a series explaining Israel’s political system before Israelis go to the polls Imagine this headline after an American presidential election: “Candidate Wins the Most Votes—but Doesn’t Become President.” Americans would immediately assume something had gone terribly wrong. In Israel, however, that outcome is entirely possible. In fact, it has happened more than once. That is because Israelis do not directly elect their prime minister. Instead, they elect a 120-member Knesset. Only after those election results are known does the...
Part Two of a series explaining Israel’s political system before Israelis go to the polls In the first installment of this series, we learned that Israel is unlike the United States in one fundamental respect: the entire country is a single electoral district. Israelis do not elect members of the Knesset from local constituencies. Instead, they vote for political parties. That naturally raises the next question. If Israelis are voting for parties rather than individual candidates, who decides who actually serves in the Knesset? The answer is t...
(JNS) - By lunchtime on Tel Aviv's Pinsker Street, it is hard to imagine that this was once the scene of one of the most devastating missile strikes of the Iran-Israel war. Cafes are full. Diners sit under the shade of mature trees. Cyclists and scooters weave through the traffic. The neighborhood has regained much of its familiar rhythm. But midway down the block, the illusion ends. Two damaged buildings still stand behind fencing, their broken windows and scarred façades a reminder that,...
(JNS) - Archaeologists excavating Jerusalem's City of David have uncovered massive charred wooden beams believed to have collapsed during the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE, a discovery researchers say offers an extraordinary window into one of the most pivotal moments in Jewish history. The beams were found during excavations at the Givati Parking Lot site, conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University in the City of David, within the Jerusalem Wal...
PHILADELPHIA, PA - From record-breaking performances to championship victories, American athletes shine at the world's largest Jewish sporting event as Maccabi USA delegation concludes historic competition in Israel. After 900 members of the Maccabi USA delegation traveled to Israel for the world's largest Jewish sporting event, athletes from across the United States, including Minnesota, Louisiana, California, Florida and New York, returned home with more than 300 medals across dozens of...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sid Rosenberg, host of 77 WABC radio’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning,” that he was in “tatters” over the sudden death of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). In the Monday interview, Netanyahu expressed shock at Graham’s sudden death, saying he had spoken to the senator only a few days earlier about how best to finish off the surviving remnant of the Islamist regime in Iran, and move to a “broader peace, which he very much believed in and devoted his life to.” The prime minister said Gra...
(JNS) — Israel’s parliament on Monday night gave final approval to a new Basic Law declaring Torah study a foundational value of the Jewish state. The 120-member Knesset passed the Basic Law: Torah Study in its second and third readings by a vote of 63-52. While Israel does not have a formal written constitution, the set of Basic Laws passed since the country’s founding in 1948 have quasi-constitutional status. The legislation, sponsored by lawmakers Yaakov Asher and Moshe Gafni of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, states that...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz renewed his call to establish Nahal outposts in northern Gaza, telling Israel’s Channel 14 television station that the move would help protect communities along the border. “I intend to establish three Nahal outposts, which is also a military entity, in those places that were in northern Gaza,” Katz told the broadcaster during a tour of the Gaza Strip. Nahal is a program within the Israel Defense Forces that combines military service with educational and social welfare projects, often involvi...
(JNS) - Israel's Consumer Price Index has seen a 1.2 percent increase since the beginning of the year, marking the lowest inflation rate in the country in five years, according to data published by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The data, running up to June, showed no change in the CPI rate compared to May. Consumer prices have increased by 1.6 percent over the past 12 months, since June 2025. Notable price declines were recorded in the categories of fresh vegetables and...
