Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Israel last year had the highest cost of living among the 38 member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Prices in the Jewish state were 38 percent higher than the OECD average, according to the report released by the Paris-based group. Switzerland was a close second at 37 percent above average followed by Iceland at 32 percent, the United States at 25 percent and Australia at 23 percent. However, the monthly data for June of this year showed Israel falling to fourth in the cost of living rankings, w...
(JNS) - Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are lining up to take a driving course that teaches survival skills in the event of a terrorist attack on the road. Courses began a month ago and 10 have been taught so far, with 24 additional communities requesting the course. "In each community, we'll teach it two to three times. We teach 20-to-25 people at a time," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, head of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which sponsors the course. Darshan-Leitner admits it's a litt...
Critics are slamming a New York Times reporter for her religious insensitivity in complaining that she had to stay on the women's side of the Western Wall when covering New York City Mayor Eric Adams' visit to the holy site Tuesday. Emma Fitzsimmons, City Hall bureau chief for the paper, posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, a picture of herself looking over the partition that separates male and female worshipers at the Wall, as per Orthodox Jewish tradition at a prayer site. She...
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The sounds of protest echoed and the ticket scanner malfunctioned as Israel’s transportation minister, Miri Regev, led a dry run for journalists of Tel Aviv’s long-awaited light rail on Aug. 16. The landmark project, which cost nearly $5 billion, promises to reshape the experience of commuting to Tel Aviv, or moving within it, for countless Israelis. The Red Line, whose route runs through Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, through Tel Aviv to Petah Tikva, will officially open to the public on Aug. 18 — eight years after constru...
(JNS) — In the event of a constitutional crisis, the Israel Police will be on the side of “law and justice,” Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said on Wednesday. Speaking during an induction ceremony for the new Lod police chief, Shabtai said, “I would like to make it clear in a way that is not ambiguous—the police have only one compass and that is the law and justice; as long as I am in command of it the law will decide and we will act only according to it.” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who spoke immediately a...
(JNS) — Palestinian terrorists fired on the Shahak Industrial Park in northern Samaria on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said. The IDF reported no casualties but said that the attack had caused material damage. The vehicle used in the attack was located in Palestinian Authority territory and contained ammunition and spent cartridges. Israeli forces were searching the area for the suspected shooters. “The shooting joins the dozens of shooting incidents over the past year which occurred in the bloc of settlements in northern Samaria, and the...
(JNS) — Monday’s murderous terrorist attack on Route 60 in Hebron, in which an Israeli woman was shot dead and a man seriously injured, is just the latest indication of the sad fact that Israel is in the middle of a prolonged security escalation in Judea and Samaria — with no end in sight. The incident comes two days after an Israeli father and son were shot dead in Huwara, an attack that may have helped “inspire” Monday’s shooting. So far in 2023, 34 people (33 Israelis and an Italian tourist) were killed in Palestinian terrorism, and almost...
(JNS) - Monday's murderous terrorist attack on Route 60 in Hebron, in which an Israeli woman was shot dead and a man seriously injured, is just the latest indication of the sad fact that Israel is in the middle of a prolonged security escalation in Judea and Samaria - with no end in sight. The incident comes two days after an Israeli father and son were shot dead in Huwara, an attack that may have helped "inspire" Monday's shooting. So far in 2023, 34 people (33 Israelis and an Italian tourist)...
(JNS) - Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock are spearheading a 670 million shekel ($180 million) initiative with the stated goal of strengthening "civilian resilience" in Jewish communities across Judea and Samaria, local media reported on Wednesday. The "unprecedented" addition to the 2023-2024 budget, parts of which were already agreed upon in the coalition agreement with Smotrich's the Religious Zionism Party, will be formally discussed at the...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confident his government can achieve some form of normalization with Saudi Arabia in the coming months, Netanyahu said in an interview with Bloomberg Television broadcasted on Monday. “I think that we are about to witness a pivot of history,” he told Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua. “First, there is an economic corridor of energy, transport and communications that naturally goes through our geography from Asia through the Arabian Peninsula to Europe. “We are going to realize that,” vowed the pri...
(JNS) — Following a tour on Wednesday of Jewish-owned agricultural sites in Samaria’s Binyamin region, Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter applauded farmers’ role in protecting state lands in Judea and Samaria. “We came here to learn up close about the farms, which I view as the best guardians of Israeli state land in Area C,” the minister said, referring to one of the administrative zones established under the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. Dichter continued: “There are no better guardians than hundreds of sheep, tended by an Israeli she...
(JNS) — Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met on Wednesday with representatives of the nonprofit association Mateh Hama’avak Lema’an Hayeladim (“The Taskforce for Children”), whose goal is to eradicate violence against children in daycare centers and kindergartens. Three representatives of the organization shared personal stories of the abuse their children suffered and how their families have coped with the effects. “We are embarking on a long journey to prevent abuse in kindergartens from birth to ag...
(JNS) — The Palestinian issue will not be an obstacle to normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, according to Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. Jerusalem’s top diplomat made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with Arabic-language online newspaper Elaph, excerpts from which were seen by Ynet. “The current Israeli government will take steps to improve the Palestinian economy,” Cohen stated, amid reports that one of Riyadh’s demands for a U.S.-brokered deal to join the Abraham Accords involves concessions to the Palestinians. “A visit to...
(JNS) - Several leading Israeli newspapers ran entirely black front page advertisements on Tuesday morning, in response to the passing of key judicial reform legislation the day before. The ads, published by "Israel Hayom," "Haaretz," "Yediot Ahronot" and "Calcalist," were paid for by the Israeli Hi-Tech Protest movement, a group comprising hi-tech employees and business owners. "A black day for Israeli democracy," the organization's ad read, while the word "advertisement" was only printed in...
Over 200,000 supporters of the proposed judicial reform gathered on Sunday evening, before the vote on judicial reform, in Tel Aviv's Kaplan Street, until now the main location for the weekly anti-reform protests on Sunday evening. The demonstration coincided with the reasonableness standard bill's expected second and third readings in the Knesset as well as several anti-reform protests happening in Jerusalem. Several pro-reform protesters blocked Tel Aviv's Ayalon Highway briefly before police...
(JNS) - A 2,000-year-old silver half-shekel bearing the Hebrew inscription "Holy Jerusalem" has been discovered in the Judean desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed on Tuesday. The rare coin, dated to 66/67 C.E., the days of the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, was discovered at the entrance to a cave near Ein Gedi. The find was part of a cave survey operation, now in its sixth year, that the IAA is managing in cooperation with the Israeli Heritage Ministry and an archaeology...
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s government has passed a law restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws, the first piece of a proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary that has led to massive street protests and a growing movement of civil disobedience. The vote, which was boycotted by the opposition in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed 64-0 and is a landmark moment in a conflict that has consumed Israel since the beginning of the year and drawn the attention and criticism of world leaders and a range of Diaspora Jewish or...
(JNS) — All 15 justices of Israel’s Supreme Court will hear the petitions asking them to cancel the “reasonableness law” that the Knesset passed last week, Supreme Court President Esther Hayut announced on Monday. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, three days before the start of the High Holidays. The government will have to file its response to the petitions 10 days earlier. It will be the first time in the court’s 75-year history that a panel of 15 justices will preside over a case. On July 24, all 64 lawmakers in the gover...
(JNS) — If Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, strikes down the “reasonableness law” that the Knesset enacted on Monday it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis, legal experts tell JNS. Several Supreme Court justices visiting Germany, including Court President Esther Hayut, cut their trip short and are returning to Jerusalem to study petitions opposition groups filed against the amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary. “The court has recognized Basic Laws as...
TEL AVIV (JTA) —Israel’s parliament voted on a measure that, advocates on both sides say, will determine the country’s fate — or whether it can even survive. It isn’t a peace deal or an attempt to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What it will do, if passed, is bar the Supreme Court from striking down government decisions it deems “unreasonable.” Behind that somewhat technical language is a struggle over Israel’s soul. It’s an escalating fight that has seen the largest, most sustained protest movement in Israel’s history....
(JNS) — Israel’s Supreme Court has decided to hear petitions against the “reasonableness law” that the Knesset enacted last week, with a court date set for September, according to the NGO Movement for Quality Government in Israel. While scheduling a hearing, the court did not go as far as to issue an emergency injunction against the law, as several of the seven petitioners had requested. “We are ready. We will appear at the Supreme Court to defend Israeli democracy and do everything we can to stop the judicial coup,” the Movement for Quality...
(JNS) — Israeli forces located an explosives workshop in the Jenin refugee camp on Monday containing hundreds of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) as well as mines intended for use against armored vehicles. The fighters also confiscated radios and military equipment and an instruction manual on how to prepare IEDs. A second workshop was also located containing means for preparing explosives. The forces confiscated all weapons. Separately, troops located weapons and explosives stored underground inside a mosque in the city. After a lengthy g...
(JNS) - Surgeons at Hadassah Medical Center-Ein Kerem managed to reattach a boy's head after a horrific accident left him internally decapitated. A car hit Suleiman Hassan, a 12-year-old Arab from the Judea and Samaria region, as he rode his bike, the Jerusalem hospital announced. After he was airlifted to Hadassah's trauma unit, doctors discovered that the ligaments holding the rear base of his skull were seriously damaged, leaving it disconnected from the top vertebrae of his spine. "The...
(JNS) — A petition calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed from office over an alleged conflict of interest will be heard by the High Court of Justice on Sept. 12. Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, agreed last week to hear the petition claiming Netanyahu violated a 2020 agreement to not involve himself in his government’s judicial reform initiative due to his ongoing corruption trial. Leaders of the parties in Netanyahu’s coalition condemned the court’s move, saying in a joint statement that “an...
(JNS) - Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a method to trick cancer cells into self-destructing. The research team, led by professor Dan Peer and PhD student Yasmin Granot Matok, encoded a toxin produced by bacteria into messenger RNA molecules. These mRNA particles were directly delivered to cancer cells, triggering the cells to produce the toxin, which ultimately led to their demise. The findings of their study were recently published in peer-reviewed journal Theranostics....
