Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The Wilfrid Israel Memorial was never intended to be an interpretive memorial for the Gaza War. Yet, for some, it has become just that, the first De-Facto Gaza Memorial in Israel. The Gaza War — an unwanted, terrible war that necessitated Jews to rush into the fire to save Jews. The Wilfrid Israel Memorial, adjacent to the ancient Levite City of Tel Yokneam, was conceived and funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. It is the creative work of noted Jerusalem artist Sam Philipe. Yad Vashem has refused to honor Jews who ri...
(JNS) - Iris Haim on Wednesday told the Israeli soldiers who accidentally killed her son in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 15 that she doesn't blame them for the tragedy. "I wanted to tell you that I love you very much and I know that what happened is not your fault, it is the fault of no one except Hamas, may their names and memory be erased from the earth," she said in an audio message which has been distributed on social media. Her 28-year-old son, Yotam, along with Alon Shamriz and Samer Fouad Talalka, had escaped from a building where they were...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces soldiers have recovered the body of hostage Elia Toledano, the IDF announced on Friday morning. The body of the 28-year-old Toledano was identified by medical and rabbinical officials as well as the Israel Police. The IDF did not indicate how or when he died. Hours later, the military announced that forces operating in Gaza retrieved the bodies of two more Israeli hostages: Cpl. Nik Beizer, 19, and Sgt. Ron Sherman, 19. Toledano was taken captive at the Supernova music festival at Kibbutz Reim. More than 360 p...
(JNS) — The city of Sderot is located less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Some 90 percent of the town’s 30,000 residents fled on Oct. 7 after Hamas invaded southern Israel. My wife’s cousin Ilan is currently stationed with his IDF infantry unit in what was until recently a Sderot elementary school. The happy, high-pitched yelping of children has been replaced by the metallic sounds of assault rifles being taken apart, cleaned and reassembled by soldiers. We were visiting Ilan’s family in Nahariya, Israel’s northernmost coastal city, whe...
(JNS) — Israeli ground, air and naval forces struck more than 300 targets in the Gaza Strip over the past day, causing heavy Hamas casualties and destroying terror infrastructure, the Israel Defense Forces reported on Wednesday morning. Paratroopers from the 55th Brigade raided a Hamas “military” headquarters in the terror group’s stronghold of Khan Yunis in the southern Strip, according to the military. During the search, many weapons were found as well as ammunition and explosive charges, including 20 mortar shells. Also in Khan Yunis, soldie...
(JNS) — Two months after his parents and two sisters were brutally murdered in their home by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, Ariel Zohar celebrated his bar mitzvah on Thursday. The tefillin (phylacteries used for Jewish rituals) that the bar mitzvah boy placed around his arm and on his forehead were given to him by his Holocaust-survivor grandfather, who got it from his late father. Despite the charred home, it stayed intact and was recovered by first responders. Ariel, who turned 13 about three weeks after t...
(JNS) — Israel’s Socioeconomic Cabinet on Sunday evening voted to recommend not reintroducing tens and thousands of Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria into the country’s pre-1967 lines. The measure was reportedly opposed by almost all 15 members of the Socioeconomic Cabinet, which is smaller than the full government but includes the finance and economy ministers. Only Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter and Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur abstained, according to Ynet. The decision will now be put to a vote in the Security Cabinet, which...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces is urging Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to help topple Hamas rule, with flyers dropped in the coastal enclave promising up to $400,000 for information on the whereabouts of Yahya Sinwar and other terror leaders. “Hamas’s end is near. For your future. Anyone who can present information that could help us arrest the individuals who brought destruction and ruins to the Gaza Strip will be rewarded,” read the pamphlets, photos of which were shared on social media. Gazans are offered $400,000 for informa...
(JNS) - I've been in Europe for a month and a half now, and as beautiful as autumn is, it's also cold and wet. I only returned to Israel for a few days, to visit everyone and collect items from home. After two days of traffic jams in the center, I hopped over to Kibbutz Nir Oz for the first time since that day. On that awful Shabbat, Oct. 7, Hamas hordes broke through the Gaza border fence and attacked the sleeping Israel communities opposite the Gaza Strip. They murdered scores of Nir Oz residents, burned homes and abducted residents. About...
(JNS) - A pair of eyeglasses. In 66 days, that is the only trace found of the 70-year-old American-Canadian teacher who was shot by Hamas terrorists when out for a walk with her husband on the grounds of their southern Israel kibbutz the morning of Oct. 7. Judi Weinstein Haggai is currently the oldest woman among those kidnapped by Hamas that day whose fate is unknown. In all, more than two months after the attack, 117 people are still being held by Hamas-along with the bodies of 20 people believed to have been killed in captivity. As fellow...
(JNS) - Is it OK to eat? Can we look out the window? Is it alright to leave the room? These were among the questions that scores of traumatized Israeli children held hostage for over 50 days by Hamas in Gaza asked doctors and social workers during their first days of freedom and recuperation earlier this month. Slowly, the children began to regain their trust. A half-smile; an immediately granted after midnight request for schnitzel and mashed potatoes. After some days, they were released from the hospital as doctors worked to help these child...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces struck several terror sites in Lebanon on Tuesday in response to ongoing rocket-fire at the Jewish state. The military said that two launches were detected, to which it responded by shelling the source of the fire. The rockets landed in open fields, causing no injuries or damage. Later on Tuesday, IDF air defenses intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” that had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, causing sirens to blare in the Western Galilee. The military said it also shot down several more projecti...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that there is no way the Palestinian Authority would be allowed to rule the Gaza Strip in a post-Hamas world during a stormy discussion on Monday in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. “Oslo was the mother of all sins. The difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is only that Hamas wants to destroy us here and now, and the P.A. wants to do it in stages,” the prime minister said. “We cooperate with them against Hamas when it serves their interest and ours up...
(JNS) — Israel’s parliament on Thursday approved a 25.9 billion shekel ($7 billion) supplementary wartime budget for 2023. The amendment to the 484 billion shekel ($132 billion) 2023 state budget approved last May passed its final vote in the Knesset plenum with 58 lawmakers in favor and 44 opposed. Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel of the ruling Likud Party was absent from the vote and Likud Knesset member Yuli Edelstein abstained after initially voting yes. National Unity Party members led by War Cabinet minister Benny Gantz did not vot...
(JNS) — Leaders of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria on Monday expressed outrage over the lack of funding for their security, claiming the Israeli government has failed to allocate “a single shekel” to protect the 500,000-plus citizens living in the area since Hamas launched its war against the Jewish state on Oct. 7. During a heated debate in the Knesset Finance Committee, the heads of the Binyamin Regional Council, Gush Etzion Regional Council, Samaria Regional Council, Mount Hebron Regional Council and Beit El Council lashed out at op...
(JNS) — More than 260,000 Israelis have applied for gun permits in the past six weeks, according to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Speaking on Monday at a faction meeting of his Otzma Yehudit Party, Ben-Gvir said the applicants were normal people who simply wanted to protect themselves and their families. “My policy within the office is to allow as many people as possible to receive weapons, and as [to bring in] many people as possible to handle their applications,” he said. “In a very short period, the Firearms Licensi...
Yariv Hagbi, a farmer whose family has been growing produce in the area of southern Israel near Gaza for generations, spent part of Oct. 7 fighting terrorists who broke into his family home in the town of Yakhini. That Saturday, his brother, Yizhar Hagbi, and several other relatives were killed. Since then, the entire community of Yakhini has been displaced, but Hagbi stayed behind because he's determined to save the family farm - despite all the grief, shock and devastation. "At a certain point, you have to get back to life," Hagbi said. A...
(JNS) — The number of violent incidents committed by Israeli Jews against Arab residents of Judea and Samaria continues to drop, according to a leaked Israel Defense Forces memo published on Monday, two weeks after Israel Police data suggested a similar trend. The confidential document was prepared by IDF Central Command, which is responsible for Judea and Samaria, and was first reported by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Monday. In the first week of October, the military recorded 32 incidents of nationalist crime, including four gra...
(JNS) — Israeli lawmakers on Monday voted in favor of a 1.15 billion shekel ($308 million) proposal to fund the recently created Tekuma Authority, which will be responsible for rebuilding, developing and strengthening the Gaza border communities devastated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border massacre. The Tekuma funds, redirected from the 2023 state budget, are to be used for “emergency assistance to communities near the Gaza Strip, assistance to the cities of Ofakim and Ashkelon, and local authorities absorbing evacuated populations,” the Knesset...
(JTA) — Israel is investigating Hamas’ claim that its youngest hostages, brothers Kfir and Ariel Bibas, are dead, along with their mother Shiri. The Bibas family became an early face of the hostage crisis after Hamas released a video showing Shiri holding her sons while being taken captive. Kfir, who is 10 months old, has become a symbol of the campaign for the hostages’ release. His brother Ariel is 4. Although most of the child hostages have been freed under the agreement with Israel, the Bibas family was not among those who have been retur...
(JNS) - The evacuees are slowly returning to Ofakim, 17 miles from the Gaza border. Shops are reopening and quiet has returned to the streets. But a short visit makes it clear that the town, which lost 52 of its residents in the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southwestern Israel. will never be the same again. The unemployed people, who had worked in the now-ruined factories of southwestern Israel, are strapped for cash. People who have seen the harsh sights of war have lost the sparkle in their eyes. The home of Rachel Edri, grandmother who saved...
(JNS) - For Sderot resident Danny Eisenman, the story of Oct. 7 began with helping some tourists change a flat tire. The tourists were passing through Sderot on their way to the Dead Sea and Eisenman was out walking his dog that morning. Once the tire was changed, the tourists fussed over the dog, pleasantries were exchanged, selfies were taken and everyone was on his way. A mere five minutes later, he was home when the air raid sirens sounded. "I remember when the sirens started and they didn't stop, I understood that something was wrong. Then...
(JTA) — On the day Israel was attacked, one of Hannah Asnafi’s first-graders from the southern Israeli community of Kfar Maimon hid for hours in a cramped attic. Now, seven weeks later, the child has joined Asnafi and the rest of his class in a makeshift school housed at Israel’s Holocaust museum, which has opened its doors to evacuees from the south as part of a widespread repurposing of available space across central Israel. The symbolism of educating children whose experiences echo famous stories from the Holocaust isn’t lost on anyone...
(JNS) — “I was six years old when I was captured by terrorists during the Entebbe hostage crisis, and Emilia Aloni, who was just released, is the same age. I can’t get her out of my head,” Shay Gross told JNS. Aloni, 5, was freed from Hamas captivity on Friday, along with her mother Danielle, as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian terror group took captive some 240 people during its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded. Gross was among 246 civilia...
(JTA) — Hamas released another 10 Israeli hostages, nine women and a 17-year-old girl, on the first day of a two-day extension of a ceasefire, one the Biden Administration hopes to further extend as it seeks to expand humanitarian relief for Palestinians in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. The hostages released Tuesday bring the total of Israeli hostages released to 61. Also released were two Thais, bringing the total number of foreigners released to 20. They are among an estimated 240 hostages taken when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel from G...
