Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israeli health, military and government officials have been preparing for what a release of hostages from Gaza would look like since Oct. 7. But on Friday, as the first round of hostages were released at the start of a ceasefire brokered with Hamas, some admitted just how difficult that preparation has been. “We had to write these guidelines without any theoretical or practical knowledge in the world of a situation where children are being held captive by a terrorist organization,” said Sarit Sarfatti, a government offic...
(JNS) — Israel is making sure that none of the Palestinian prisoners it may release as part of a potential exchange with Hamas are connected to the terrorist group, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The newspaper reported that an internationally-brokered agreement for a temporary pause in fighting in Gaza and prisoner exchange is close to being realized. Hamas holds some 240 Israelis hostages in Gaza, who were captured during the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of the northwestern Negev. According to Egyptian officials, the pro...
(JNS) — The White House says it won’t support Israel’s plan to expand its operations into the south of the Gaza Strip unless it shows it will protect the Palestinian civilians there. In a Tuesday press call, U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said the United States won’t support Israel “moving forward with operations in the south absent a clearly articulated plan for how they’re going to protect the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people” there. “There’s an obligation for them to factor that into their planning,” Kirby...
(JNS) — The seaside Zikim base in southern Israel borders one of the kibbutzim destroyed by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre. Tanks, armored vehicles and excavation equipment that unearths terror tunnels roar past, heading for the Gaza Strip. Intense looking boys in uniform go to and fro in apparent chaos. But it is not chaos, it is Israel’s ongoing series of military operations against Hamas. The paratroopers we meet are finally having a drink. Yesterday, they managed to eat and take a shower after nine days in the Strip, during which the...
(JNS) — Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel is working to revoke the Israeli residency status of individuals affiliated with the Hamas terrorist organization. Specifically, Arbel began the process to revoke the status of Jerusalem residents Maged Juaba and Rashid Rashek for carrying out “actions to promote and support” terrorism against Israel as part of their membership in the terrorist organizations Hamas and Shabab al-Aqsa. The minister said his action was in accordance with section 11A of the Law on Entry into Israel, which conce...
(JNS) — Israel will resume its war against Hamas following the conclusion of the ceasefire agreement reached with the terrorist group early Wednesday, according to a government statement. “The government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza,” the statement read. In his remarks at the start of Tuesday’s all-night Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya...
(JNS) — Some 100 young Jewish men and women from around the world have decided to make aliyah and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces as Israel wages war against the Hamas terrorist organization. In a month, they will put on their uniforms. Meanwhile, they are completing a preparatory course run by the Defense Ministry’s Defense and Society Department. The course is taking place at an immigrant absorption center in Karmiel, in the Galilee—an area where strikes by the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group are a daily occurrence and the threa...
(JNS) — Israel will have “overall security responsibility” for the Gaza Strip after defeating Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. “I think Israel for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” Netanyahu told ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir. The military is conducting a war against Hamas in Gaza wit...
(JNS) - Nine months old. The smiling red-haired baby had recently started to crawl after rocking on all fours. Kfir Bibas lived with his parents and 4-year-old brother in a kibbutz in southern Israel. On Oct. 7, their lives were changed forever as the family-mom Shiri, dad Yarden, and the two kids-was abducted by Hamas to Gaza when the Islamist terrorists overran the area and went on a murderous rampage. At nine months old, Kfir is the youngest of the roughly 240 hostages-including 32...
(JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that the non-Jewish widows of the children and grandchildren of Jews may emigrate to Israel under its Law of Return. The 4-3 ruling this week was an example of the court’s role in determining Israeli policy, a capacity that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had sought for months to diminish prior to the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas on Oct. 7. Critics of the judicial overhaul contended that sapping the judiciary of its power endangered Israeli democracy. The ruling is...
(JNS) — U.S. officials have quietly suggested ways Israel could reduce civilian casualties in its campaign to eradicate Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including using smaller munitions. During his second Middle East visit in less than a month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday about “concrete steps that can and should be taken” to minimize civilian deaths. Blinken didn’t go into detail about what those steps would be. State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller also wouldn...
(JNS) — Israel Air Force fighter jets struck the home of Hamas politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip overnight Nov. 15 as Israeli forces continued their operations in the enclave. The residence “was used as terrorist infrastructure and often served as a meeting point for Hamas’s senior leaders to direct terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers,” the army said. Haniyeh resides in Qatar, where he has an office under the protection of the Gulf country’s government. Haniyeh is worth an estimated $4 billion and has homes...
(JNS) - Israeli forces continue to battle Hamas terrorists deep inside the Palestinian enclave. A humanitarian corridor for Gazan The IDF on Tuesday again opened a humanitarian corridor for Gazan civilians to evacuate to the safe zone south across the Wadi Gaza. It is the fourth consecutive day that Israeli troops have facilitated the movement of Gazans from the north, despite coming under attack by Hamas terrorists. Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces' Arabic-language spokesman,...
(JNS) - Israeli soldiers prayed at a sixth-century synagogue in Gaza on Tuesday for the first time in decades. In recent days troops entered Gaza City, where the headquarters of Hamas is located, as they pursue their mission to dismantle the terrorist organization after the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,400 persons in Israel, nearly all civilians. There is a synagogue in the Rimal neighborhood built in 508 C.E., during the Byzantine period. A mosaic featuring King David with a lyre and his name...
(JNS) — Israel forces captured a Hamas stronghold in western Jabaliya after 10 hours of fighting, the IDF said on Thursday. Troops from the 933rd Nahal Infantry Brigade battled Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists both above and below ground at the site in northern Gaza, known as Outpost 17. “The troops completed the takeover of the outpost after 10 hours of fighting, during which they eliminated terrorists, captured many weapons and uncovered terrorist tunnel shafts, including a shaft located near a kindergarten and leading to an...
(JNS) — Judea and Samaria leaders sharply criticized the Biden administration on Monday following a report that it had barred a shipment of rifles from going to Israeli civilian volunteer defense forces. The New York Times reported on Sunday that U.S. State Department officials had received “assurances” from Jerusalem that 24,000 M-16 rifles to be purchased from the United States by Israel would only go to uniformed police officers. Many Israeli towns and villages, particularly in Judea and Samaria, have armed volunteer defense forces, calle...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces is intensifying its maneuvers in Gaza City against Hamas, military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated on Nov. 6, adding that the growing number of Hamas terrorists and field commanders being eliminated is creating pressure on the terrorist army that rules the enclave. Addressing IDF efforts to demolish the underground terror tunnel network dubbed "the metro," Hagari said that Hamas, which deliberately places tunnel shafts under hospitals, mosques, schools...
(JNS) — As rockets from Gaza continue to rain down across Israel following the carnage of the Hamas attack on the western Negev that began on Oct. 7, and foreign nations including the United States consider further evacuations of their citizens, many new immigrants to the Jewish state are for the first time facing the harsh reality of living at war. Dov Lipman, former member of the Knesset and CEO of the Yad L’Olim NGO, shed light on how traumatic the last few weeks have been for olim in Israel. He made aliyah from the U.S. in 2004. “Ke...
(JNS) — “This is a second Holocaust for me,” said survivor Ruth Haran, 87, who is reliving a childhood nightmare. Twice now, she has made it out alive from the inferno. But the death, the destruction and the fear have all returned and come full circle for the great-grandmother, eight decades after the Holocaust. Her son and two other family members were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israeli communities in southern Israel. Seven other members of her family, including her daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, aged 3 and 8, we...
(JNS) — Menachem Levy says he is “used to death.” A member of Tel Aviv’s chevra kadisha (“sacred society”), he is among a relatively small number of experts in Israel responsible for preparing tens of thousands of bodies each year for Jewish burial. Yet, he says, nothing he has ever seen prepared him for the jarring scenes he encountered in Israel’s south, where he joined with volunteers, led by ZAKA, in collecting the bodies and body parts of victims of Hamas brutality for burial. “Ther...
(JNS) — In an apparent attempt to reassure Gaza City residents after Israeli tanks were seen on Monday on Salah al-Din street, the city’s main highway, Hamas announced that “a number of tanks reached an agricultural area and escaped from the place under the fire of the resistance.” However, the Israel Defense Force’s pressure on northern Gaza continues. The army is still advising residents to move to the south as it continues to strikes Hamas positions and strongholds. In contrast to the initial days of fighting, Palestinian rescue services wer...
This story was produced as part of the JTA Teen Journalism Fellowship program. (JTA) - After her husband left abruptly to join his army unit, Meytal Blumenthal Gordon realized she still hadn't disassembled her sukkah, the temporary structure the family put up during the Sukkot holiday at their home in Jerusalem. She wasn't physically capable of doing so alone. "Two sweet boys, teenagers, came and they took down the sukkah and helped me organize it," Blumenthal Gordon said. "We actually had a...
(JNS) - The messages kept coming in to Kibbutz Holit's emergency WhatsApp group. "Save us, save us," "Where is the army?" "They are trying to burn down the houses" and "There's gunfire." A 7-year-old girl reported that she was hiding in a closet; a 15-year-old reported that his parents were killed and that he was shot in the stomach; a woman reported that she was suffocating from the smoke in the safe room of her burning house. And a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor huddled in the safe room of his...
(JTA) — Israeli forces rescued an Israeli soldier from the Gaza Strip, the first such successful operation since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, and the first since the terror group assumed control of the territory in 2007. “Last night, our forces liberated Pvt. Ori Megidish from Hamas captivity,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday in a statement. “Ori was abducted on the black morning of October 7th. Welcome home Ori! I commend the [Shin Bet security service] and the IDF for thi...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces’ ground forces made significant gains in northern Gaza on Oct. 31, as Israeli Air Force fighter jets, acting on Shin Bet intelligence, launched a large-scale strike on Hamas’s Jabaliya Battalion and killed its commander, along with a large number of other terrorists, the military stated. IDF troops commanded by the Givati Brigade operated in a Hamas military stronghold in the northern Gaza Strip and killed approximately 50 terrorists, while in parallel, ground troops in Gaza are continuing counterterrorism activ...
