Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday night that it was investigating a claim made by Hamas that a hostage was executed and two others wounded in separate incidents in Gaza. Al Qassam Brigades spokesman Hudayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout, known by the alias Abu Obeida, published a statement on Telegram on Monday claiming that one Israeli male captive had been executed and two female abductees seriously wounded by their Hamas captors. “In two separate incidents, two [Hamas] soldiers assigned to guard enemy prisoners fired at a Zio...
(JNS) - Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that the current negotiations could be Israel's last chance to secure the return the remaining hostages captured by Hamas on Oct. 7. Speaking ahead of meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv, Blinken said, "This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security." "I'm here as part of an intensive diplomatic effor...
(JTA) - Hundreds of mourners gathered in Rishon Lezion, Israel, Tuesday night for the funeral of Jordan Cooper, 26, an American-born "lone soldier" who had died the day before from a severe allergic reaction. His parents, Marla Covin Cooper and Ross Cooper, younger brother Ethan and grandfather Jerry were visiting him in Israel when he died, and ahead of his funeral a request went out to the public saying that they were inviting members of the public to "come and accompany him on his final...
(JNS) — U.S., Egyptian and Qatari leaders released a statement on Thursday calling jointly for an immediate conclusion to talks between Israel and Hamas about a ceasefire and hostage release agreement. “It is time to bring immediate relief both to the long-suffering people of Gaza as well as the long-suffering hostages and their families,” the three stated. “The time has come to conclude the ceasefire and hostages and detainees release deal.” The statement, signed by U.S. President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari E...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage. “I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened,” he told Time Magazine during an hourlong interview this week in Jerusalem. The interview, which Time published in full, was Netanyahu’s first major one with any news organization since Oct. 7. Eric Cortellessa, Time’s national political correspondent, interviewed the prime minister shortly after his visit to...
(JNS) — “Hezbollah and Iran have taken you, the residents of Lebanon, as their hostages.” This was the message Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant sent to the Land of the Cedars on Thursday. Gallant, a former IDF major-general, published the message in Arabic, saying, “Hezbollah and Iran have taken you as hostages for their narrow interests. If Hezbollah does not cease its aggression in the north, Israel will enter into a harsh war.” The minister in his missive called the 2006 Second Lebanon War an “adventure” that Hezbollah undertook. Be...
(JNS) - A medical opinion submitted in the case of the Hamas terrorist who was allegedly raped at the Israel Defense Forces' Sde Teiman detention center suggests that the IDF reservists suspected of attacking him could be innocent, Israel's Channel 14 News broadcaster reported on Thursday. The expert opinion-written by Professor Alon Pikarsky, director of general surgery at Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Medical Center and a board-certified general surgeon specializing in colorectal...
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. via JNS) — On May 15, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces announced that a Hezbollah drone had hit the Israeli Air Force facility that operated the “Sky Dew” High Availability Aerostat System. This strike was unusual in that it took place far from the Israel-Lebanon front. It drew Israel’s attention, and not only because it represented a gradual escalation in the reaction equation. The fact that the aircraft accurately hit its target was not, in itself, the worst aspect of the incident. Hezboll...
(JNS) — With the assassinations of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Mohammed Deif in Gaza, along with Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, coupled with a major strike on the Houthis’ oil refineries in Yemen, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has clearly decided to escalate towards actually winning the war against Iran and its terror proxies. The timing is important. First, Israel has largely completed its intensive operations in Gaza, severely diminishing Hamas’s capacities and punishing the Palestinians living there for supportin...
(JNS) — The Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon resumed its attacks on northern Israel late Thursday night, firing a large volley of rockets at civilian communities in the Jewish state’s Western Galilee. The rocket assault ended a 48-hour lull that followed Tuesday’s Israeli airstrike in Beirut in which Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s No. 2, was killed. Air-raid sirens were activated in Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra, Hanita, Shlomi, Matzuva, Liman, Betzet, Shlomi, Snir and the Achziv Miluot industrial zone, according to the Israel Defense...
(JNS) - MAJDAL SHAMS, Israel - The pictures of 12 smiling children line the shattered gate of a soccer field, above wreaths of flowers. The blackened remains of bicycles lie next to the bomb shelter the boys and girls were rushing to after a siren went off during their weekend game in this windswept Druze village in the Golan Heights. "Donated with love for the safety of the People of Israel," reads a sign on the shelter, pockmarked by the shrapnel from the Iranian-made Hezbollah rocket that...
(JNS) — A massive quarry dating to the Second Temple period has been uncovered in Jerusalem, offering a new glimpse into the capital’s ancient past, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday. The quarry, which was unearthed in the city’s present-day Har Hotzvim industrial park several weeks ago, is one of the largest ever found in Jerusalem, the state-run archaeological body said. Two stone vessels, impervious to ritual defilement according to Jewish law, were uncovered at the s...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 29 rejected Hamas’s charge earlier in the day that Jerusalem is preventing a ceasefire agreement with new conditions and demands. “The Hamas leadership is preventing an agreement,” he said according to a statement from his office. “Israel neither changed, nor added any condition to, the [ceasefire] outline. On the contrary, as of now it is Hamas which has demanded 29 changes and has not responded to the original outline,” the statement continued. “Israel stands on its principles ac...
(JNS) — Israel’s response to Saturday’s Hezbollah rocket barrage that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights will be “tough,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday during a visit to Majdal Shams. “With Iranian backing, Hezbollah attacked here with an Iranian missile, taking the lives of 12 pure souls. Twelve boys and girls who played soccer here and, sadly, could not make it to a shelter,” the premier said as he placed a wreath at the disaster site on behalf of the government. “We embrace the families who are going through indescr...
(JNS) — The Knesset plenum voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. The resolution, put forward by MK Ze’ev Elkin of the New Hope-National Right party with support from the Yisrael Beiteinu Party and the Land of Israel Caucus, passed by 68 to 9. The Land of Israel Caucus, the mission of which is to strengthen Israeli control of Judea and Samaria, includes members from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition as well as Benny Gantz‘s centrist National Unity P...
(JNS) — Israel’s new “Air Force One,” dubbed Wing of Zion, took off for the U.S. Tuesday on its first official flight, but will have to return to the Jewish state to pick up the prime minister. The double transatlantic round trips on the $200,000 flights come amid a reported tiff between the Prime Minister’s Office and Israel Aerospace Industries over the size of the new plane, which can sit 60 passengers, fewer than the expected entourage of aides, security detail and journalists accompanying the premier. It was not immediately clear why...
(JNS) — Google’s parent company Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz in a deal worth some $23 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If the agreement is inked, it would represent the California tech giant’s biggest-ever buy (scorching the previous record of $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2012). It would also mark a significant achievement for Israel’s high-tech sector. “This is the largest acquisition to ever happen in the Israeli high-tech sector. It’s a sign of the strength of...
(JNS) — Saturday’s assassination attempt on former president and presumptive Republican nominee for the White House Donald Trump “is not only a heinous crime, it is also an attempt to assassinate American democracy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday morning, Netanyahu said that he “would like to send him in my name, in the name of my wife, Sara, in the name of the ministers of the Israeli government and in the name of the entire people of Israel our best wishes fo...
(JNS) - Nearly 350 Hamas terrorists, including 100 members of the terror group's elite Nukhba Force, managed to infiltrate Kibbutz Be'eri in southern Israel on Oct. 7 due to catastrophic failures by the Israel Defense Forces in their readiness and response, according to the first part of the IDF's internal probe of the attacks. "The IDF had difficulty creating a clear picture of what was happening in the kibbutz until the afternoon hours of Oct. 7, even though the yishuv emergency team had an...
(JTA) — As expected, on July 4, 1976, the United States celebrated its bicentennial with a flurry of patriotic pride and hype. The surprise was that the day also brought one of the most miraculous events in Jewish history: Israel’s rescue of 102 hostages being held over 2,500 miles away at an airport in Entebbe, Uganda. A week earlier, on June 27, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a radical West German group hijacked an Air France airliner full of Israeli pas...
(JNS) — The Hamas terror group has agreed to a hostages-for-ceasefire framework and mediators are negotiating the details and implementation, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday night, July 10. The Post‘s David Ignatius said that though the framework is in place, officials warned that a final agreement is unlikely to be imminent as the details of the deal are complex and will take time to work through. One U.S. official suggested that Hamas’s acquiescence to the terms was at least in part prompted by the fact that the terror group is in...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Sunday night outlined Jerusalem's red lines in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations with the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip. "The plan that has been agreed to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war," according to the PMO. The statement also credited Netanyahu with pressuring Hamas into returning to the...
(JNS) — A senior Iranian general on Monday told family members of Hamas terrorists killed in Gaza that the Islamic Republic was prepared to launch another attack on the Jewish state, similar to its massive missile and drone strike in April. “We await an opportunity for ‘True Promise II’ … in which I do not know how many missiles will be fired,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace forces commander Brig.-Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh told the family members, who were visiting Iran. Iran’s next attack, said Hajizadeh, “will lead to a complete v...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the release of the director of a Gaza hospital where Hamas was embedded “a severe mistake and a moral failure” and demanded the establishment of a team to approve future releases. Shifa Hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya was released on Monday morning along with close to 55 other Palestinian prisoners. The hospital was proven to have been used to keep hostages and house weapons and ammunition intended to kill Israelis. Salmiya was arrested in November on suspicion of involvement with Ham...
(JTA) - Early in her senior year in high school in Washington D.C., Elie Ravitz-Basser realized that the Israel-Gaza war would upend her college plans. "I applied to four universities in the United States early in the fall, but everything changed after October 7," she said. "At that point, I decided to attend college only in Israel, surrounded by people who share my Jewish values." Ravitz-Basser is set to start her bachelor's degree this fall in Jerusalem, pursuing a double major in English and...
