Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - The six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli forces in a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza overnight Saturday were shot multiple times at close range just days before their discovery, Israel's Health Ministry said on Sunday. According to examinations conducted by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, the captives were murdered 48 to 72 hours before the autopsies, which would place their deaths at some point between Thursday and Friday morning. That the captives were shot...
By (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for not freeing hostages as Israel woke up to the shattering news that Hamas terrorists murdered six captives who were on the verge of being rescued. Some of those killed had been slated for release under a failed deal in July, an anonymous Israeli official told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. Netanyahu’s apology, delivered Sunday to the parents of one of the six, Alex Lubnov, was a first for the prime minister who until now has said that accountability should come after Hamas is...
(JNS) — Where is the Air Force? This was the tragic question that did not have to be repeated yesterday. Those like this reporter who remember Oct. 7 minute by minute cannot forget how, from the moment of the opening missile barrage, everyone’s eyes fixed desperately on the sky, looking for the Israeli fighter planes. We expected them to finally flush out the terrorists, destroy the missile launchers, bomb the hundreds of invaders in the south and then those in Gaza, and cover the army’s retaliation. It didn’t happen. The desolation of the sil...
(JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday called for “the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” after the IDF overnight on Aug. 27 launched a large-scale anti-terror operation in Judea and Samaria. “This is a war in every respect and we must win it,” Katz tweeted. “The IDF is working intensively starting tonight in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures that have been established there,” he said. Iran is working “to establish an ea...
(JNS) — A new campaign by the Samaria Regional Council blames Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza for Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of some 1,200 people, primarily civilians, in the Jewish state. As part of the effort, financed by friends of Samaria in Israel and abroad, the council put up billboards in Tel Aviv and other cities that read, “The reason—the result.” The ad shows a picture of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, followed by a photo of the Oct. 7 attacks. “Oslo and the ‘disengagement’ brought this disaster upon us. Gush Kat...
(JNS) - A circle of yellow flags, symbolic of the hostages who remain captive in Gaza, greet you as you enter Kibbutz Nir Am-a painful reminder of that Black Sabbath of Oct. 7. Every so often, the dull boom of combat in the neighboring Strip punctuates the air. The cacophony of war continues. Nir Am is in the northwestern Negev, close to Sderot. The closest point of the kibbutz is less than a mile from the Gaza border. On Oct. 7, as Hamas-led terrorists invaded the communities of the "Gaza...
(JTA) — Israeli troops have rescued an Israeli hostage from southern Gaza, the military announced Tuesday. the eighth captive held by Hamas to be brought back alive by Israeli forces since Oct. 7. Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, 52, a Bedouin Israeli and father of 11 from the southern city of Rahat, worked as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen on the Gaza border and was captured by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 attack. He was one of several Israeli Arabs to be taken hostage. Al-Qadi was rescued Tuesday morning by Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit fro...
(JNS) - Qaid Farhan Alkadi, who was rescued from Gaza by Israeli forces on Aug. 27, after 326 days in Hamas captivity, has begun to share details regarding the brutal conditions he experienced since his abduction on Oct. 7. "He spoke about the darkness, not being able to see. But, thank God, he's back with us, alive-it made us all rejoice," Alkadi's cousin Fayez al-Sana told the New York Times after visiting him in hospital. Ata Abu Medigm, the former mayor of Rahat, told Ynet that Alkadi was...
(JNS) — The following is the transcript, translated from Hebrew, of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation on Aug. 27 with Farhan al-Qadi, who was rescued after being held hostage in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Farhan, hello to you my friend. Welcome back!” Farhan al-Qadi: “Hello, welcome. Hello Bibi, Abu [father of] Yair!” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Farhan, I am so happy to speak with you.” Farhan al-Qadi: “I am also happy. I have been waiti...
(JTA) - Hersh Goldberg-Polin's mother looked almost as the world has gotten to know her when she took the podium at her son's funeral in Jerusalem. Rachel Goldberg-Polin had her hair pulled back neatly and was wearing a crisp white shirt, the trademark piece of masking tape marking the number of days since her son and 250 others were taken hostage on Oct. 7 affixed to its breast. But the shirt was ripped, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of rending one's clothing upon learning of the death...
(JNS) — Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashaal called for a return to suicide terror attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria. During a video address to a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Mashaal said, “Resistance operations in the West Bank are escalating despite the harsh conditions,” according to CNN Arabic. “We want to return to martyrdom operations. This is a situation that can only be addressed by open conflict. They are fighting us with open conflict, and we are confronting them with open conflict,” he continued. “The enemy has opened...
(JNS) — Israel’s United Nations Ambassador Danny Danon on Thursday morning responded to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a halt to IDF activity in Judea and Samaria. “Since Oct. 7, Iran has been working vigorously to introduce into Judea and Samaria sophisticated explosive devices that are intended to detonate in the centers of Israeli cities,” Danon tweeted. “The State of Israel cannot sit idly by and wait for the spectacle of buses and cafes exploding in city centers. The activity of the IDF forces in Judea and Samaria is...
(JTA) — The United States announced sanctions against a nonprofit that has received funding from the Israeli government as well as the civilian security chief of a West Bank settlement. The sanctions are the United States’ latest effort to curb extremism among settlers and come as violence in the West Bank has escalated. The nonprofit, Hashomer Yosh, was founded a decade ago with the stated mission of supporting and protecting farms in Israeli West Bank settlements. In its announcement of sanctions, the State Department accused the non...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday that the major flare-up with Hezbollah earlier this week wasn't "the end of the story." During a tour of the country's northern border, Netanyahu said, "[On Sunday], we foiled a surprise attack by Hezbollah against the State of Israel. We destroyed thousands of intermediate-range rockets that were aimed at the Galilee and the Golan Heights. We thwarted all of the drones that were directed against the State of Israel, at...
(JNS) - Nearly 30,000 new immigrants have arrived in Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre, according to figures released Tuesday by the World Zionist Organization. The wave of aliyah coincides with the nearly 11-month war against Hamas in Gaza and a surge in global antisemitism, including in North America. The war began when thousands of Hamas terrorists infiltrated southern Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Of these, 109 still remain captive in the Strip. "On Oct. 7, a war erupted not against the state of Israel but agai...
(JTA) — Israel bombed hundreds of sites inside Lebanon and Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel early Sunday in a sharp flare of hostilities at Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah has said for weeks that it is planning a significant attack within Israel in response to Israel’s killing in Beirut last month of Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander. Israeli military leaders said they had determined that an attack was imminent and struck against Hezbollah’s rocket launchers in a bid to prevent or blunt the damage. They said that a fleet o...
(JNS) - MAGHAR, Israel - After seven months fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza with his elite military reserve unit, 32-year-old Eyal Ghanam is now heading to the country's volatile northern border for a two-month stint. For Ghanam, a member of Israel's small and strongly patriotic Druze community, military service runs deep in the family; his father's 25-year Israel Defense Forces career saw him rise to become infantry brigade commander of the northern Gaza Strip before Israel's unilateral...
(JNS) - The secrets of the Jewish kitchen dating back two millennia to the time of the Biblical Second Temple are being uncovered in Jerusalem's ancient drainage channel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. Items such as expensive oils, grape seeds and 2,000-year-old eggshells were unearthed during an excavation-outside the Old City walls-in the drainage channel that ran under Jerusalem's main street during the Second Temple period. The ancient drainage channel ran under the...
(JNS) — HAIFA—The rows of hospital beds with adjacent oxygen units line the underground parking lot. Four operating rooms, a maternity ward and a dialysis center are among the facilities that Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus, aka Rambam Medical Center, has set up three levels down in its parking garage. The largest hospital in northern Israel has created the biggest underground hospital in the world, and is gearing up for what could be an all-out war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The three-floor, $140 million Sammy Ofer Fortified Under...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Bullet fragments were discovered in at least some of the corpses of six Israeli hostages retrieved from Khan Yunis in Gaza last week, according to information shared with their families. This finding lends credence to the theory that some hostages were killed by their captors shortly before an aerial assault that preceded Monday’s IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) rescue operation. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called it a “daring and dangerous operation in the Hamas tunnels in Khan Yunis.” Haim Peri, Y...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces recovered the bodies of six hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7 and murdered in captivity from a tunnel in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning. In an operation involving the IDF and Israel Security Agency, the bodies of Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popwell, Yagev Buchstat, Alex Dancyg and Haim Perry were located after over 10 months in captivity. The total number of hostages remaining in the hands of Hamas in Gaza now stands at 109. M...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on Aug. 21during a visit to the Gaza-Egypt border that the IDF has achieved victory over Hamas’s Rafah brigade. “I came here first and foremost to express my appreciation [to the soldiers]. The Rafah brigade was defeated by the IDF’s Division 162,” Gallant said at the Philadelphi Corridor, the 9.7-mile-long buffer zone captured by Israeli forces in May. Since taking control of the area, the IDF has located and destroyed 150 terror tunnels, and Gallant instructed the forces to finish th...
(JNS) - When we discuss Israel's history, we often speak in terms of geography: the partition plan, the 1948 border, the pre-1967 armistice lines, the post-1967 borders and the post-1973 boundaries. Now, we must add the pre- and post-2023 borders. The major difference is that instead of expanding the size of the Jewish state, it has shrunk since Oct. 7 because of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's failure to protect northern Israel. For roughly a decade, he avoided direct confrontation...
(JNS) — An Iranian attack on the Jewish state “could be this week,” but U.S. President Joe Biden “is confident that we have the capability available to us to help defend Israel should it come to that,” John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, told reporters on Monday. The White House shares Israel’s “same concerns and expectations” about the potential timing of Iran’s reaction to the July 31 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a heavily-guarded Tehran guest house complex. Israel has neithe...
(JNS) — The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Defense, notified Congress on Tuesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had approved five potential sales to Israel—collectively worth up to $20.3 billion—of tactical vehicles, mortar and tank cartridges, missiles and F-15 fighter jets. The sale of F-15IA and F-15I+ aircraft “and related equipment” costs up to $18.82 billion, according to the agency. Israel has requested to buy 50 new F-15IA jets, which are made by Boeing, the agency said. “The United Stat...
