Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 711 - 735 of 1222
(JNS) — Punitive measures imposed by Israel on the Palestinian Authority will “promptly lead to its collapse,” P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday. Israel’s Security Cabinet last week approved the measures in response to what it described as the P.A.’s ongoing “political and legal war” against the Jewish state. They came a week after the U.N. General Assembly, at the urging of the P.A., passed a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupati...
(JTA) — A prize established to honor a single inspiring Jew with a lifetime of achievements has been awarded this year to a nameless group whose work is ongoing: Jewish activists in war-ravaged Ukraine. The Genesis Prize Foundation said the war in Ukraine required a change in the approach it has taken since creating the prize, known by some as the “Jewish Nobel,” a decade ago. “Recognizing the extraordinary nature of events dominating the past 11 months, The Genesis Prize Selection Committee has decided to depart from the usual custom of awar...
(JTA) – As Israel’s new right-wing government continued to signal that it would push through measures to cripple the judiciary and clamp down on public dissent and news operations, thousands of citizens took to the streets in protest and one prominent opposition figure warned of imminent “civil war.” A reported 10,000 demonstrators gathered Saturday night in Tel Aviv to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government, which contains several ministers who are openly hostile to Arabs and Palestinians, LGBTQ peo...
(JTA) - The genealogy website MyHeritage posted 1.7 million Israeli immigration records online this week, making accessible a trove of ship and plane passenger lists stored in bound tomes at the Israel State Archives. The records cover arrivals to the country for about 60 years starting in 1919. They include details such as the name of immigrants, country of origin, birth year, date of arrival, destination city and the name of the vessel they arrived on. MyHeritage is billing the records as the...
(JNS) - Concerned Israeli parents are complaining that their children aren't learning even the basics of Judaism in the country's public schools. Activists say the issue goes beyond a failure to teach, claiming that there's a concerted effort to replace Jewish content with progressive material, financed largely by foreign actors. Still in its early stages, the movement echoes the fight against "wokeism" in the United States, where parents battle school boards over what they see as left-wing...
(JNS) — Seven months ago, following years of aggressive cancer treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma, Ayelet Rosenberg, 35, gave birth to her fourth child, Yishai, making history as the first woman in the world to give birth to four children through cryopreservation of her eggs. The successful treatment was made possible by the innovative work of the Fertility Preservation Center at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan. The experimental method performed by Prof. Dror Meirow, head of the center, i...
(JNS) - Hundreds of Jews aged 18 to 30 from the former Soviet Union, eager to join Masa Israel Journey's two-to-12-month study, service and career development programs, have been unable to do so for lack of funding. Taking up the challenge, the Jewish Agency for Israel announced that it raised an impressive $3 million in 24 hours. The money will be used in order to accept hundreds of Masa Israel applicants who were placed on a waiting list pending budgetary approval. The Jewish Agency turned to...
(JNS) - Israel's thirty-seventh government was sworn in on Thursday, the culmination of a weeks-long political process following the victory of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-religious bloc in the Nov. 1 national elections. Netanyahu, Israel's longest-ever serving leader, takes the reins for his sixth term in the Prime Minister's Office, to which he returns following a year-and-a-half hiatus. His Likud Party will lead a 64-member coalition in the 120-seat Knesset, that comprises the R...
As Benjamin Netanyahu made his dramatic return as Israel’s prime minister for a sixth term, Yair Lapid left the plenary hall without shaking his successor’s hand as per the custom. After being sworn-in, Netanyahu, who was interrupted by heckling, took the podium and chastized the Lapid-led opposition for lamenting “the end of democracy.” “This new government is determined to restore governance, peace, and personal security to the citizens of Israel.” “I hear the opposition eulogizing ‘the end of democracy.’ Members of the opposition, losing the...
(JNS) - An ancient Jerusalem pool that was used by millions of Jewish pilgrims during the time of the Second Temple two millennia ago as a ritual bath before ascending the Temple Mount, and revered by Christians as the site where Jesus cured a blind man, will be fully excavated and then opened to the public, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. The Pool of Siloam, located in the southern portion of the City of David, the ancient epicenter of Jerusalem, and just outside the Old...
(JNS) - Israel inducted a historic right-wing government Thursday, led by three-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu's return to power and the formation of a strong right-wing government is a tremendous achievement for a nation that has increasingly turned towards the right-wing values of strong security and protecting the Jewish character of the state. The 64-member Likud-led coalition, joined by Netanyahu's loyal right-wing and religious allies, puts to bed years of electoral...
(JNS) - Some 70,000 people from 95 different countries immigrated to Israel in 2022 with the assistance of the Jewish Agency for Israel, in cooperation with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. It was the most olim in 23 years and a dramatic increase from 2021, when about 28,600 immigrants arrived in the country. Jewish Agency data for the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2022, shows that 37,364 olim arrived from Russia; 14,680 from Ukraine; 3,500 from North America, with assistance from...
(JTA) –Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he had successfully formed a new government coalition after more than five weeks of negotiations. There are some asterisks: Netanyahu hasn’t officially signed any coalition deals yet with other parties (he has until 48 hours before the new government is seated Jan. 2 to do so), and some of his expected new partners are first demanding new legislation that has been delayed until after coalition talks. But Netanyahu seems confident that he has formed a coalition that will grant him a c...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday rejected criticism that his coalition will pursue a right-wing extremist agenda. During a Knesset plenum, Netanyahu said, "Everyone will live in accordance with their own faith. This will not become a nation of religious law. It will be a country in which we tend to all citizens of Israel, without exception." "We were elected to lead in our way, the way of the nationalist-right and the way of the liberal-right, and that's...
(JNS) — The group stood in prayer for the State of Israel. An American evangelical bishop took the stage to lead in the singing of Israel’s national anthem at the culmination of a gala opening evening at a Jerusalem banquet hall. It certainly was not your standard international conference or foreign press association gathering in Israel. Welcome to the 2022 Christian Media Summit in the Holy Land. At a time of rising global antisemitism and deep divisions among Israelis spilling out into growing tensions with Diaspora Jewry over the makeup of...
(JTA) — On the cusp of forming a new government, incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his inclusion of far-right groups in his coalition amid domestic and global criticism of his alliances with extremist figures. “They’re joining me, I’m not joining them,” Netanyahu said in an NPR interview Thursday during the final stretch of his coalition talks, which are currently set for a Dec. 21 deadline. “I’ll have two hands firmly on the steering wheel. I won’t let anybody do anything to LGBT [people] or to deny our Arab citize...
(JTA) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, the right-wing Israeli politician called a “pyromaniac” by his critics because of his penchant for inflaming his country’s deep tensions, will head Israel’s police forces, under the terms of a deal inked with Benjamin Netanyahu early Friday. The deal would expand the ministry of internal security, the old name of the cabinet position in charge of the police, into the ministry of national security and would also give Ben-Gvir authority over border police in Palestinian territories, according to the terms reported...
(JNS) — With pomp and circumstance and some of his trademark disarming humor, former U.S. President Bill Clinton was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Haifa in New York City on Monday night. The degree was bestowed upon Clinton for his longtime commitment to the State of Israel, for promoting coexistence in the Middle East and for the Clinton Global Initiative’s involvement in social and economic sustainability. Clinton’s friend New York University President Emeritus John Sexton also received an honorary doctorate, with the e...
(Boynton Beach, Florida/Netanya, Israel, JNS Wire) - Though there are numerous streets in Israel named November 29, there has never been in Israel or the world a historical memorial for the most famous event in the birthing of the modern state of Israel. On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations voted, by a 71 percent majority, to partition the strife-riven British Mandate for Palestine into two entities, one Jewish and one Arab. As the 75th anniversary of the U.N. vote neared, legitimate historical...
(JNS) — Even before taking power, Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself on the defensive over his prospective coalition’s “fringe elements.” During an NBC interview on Sunday, Netanyahu felt obliged to declare, “I’m going to safeguard Israeli democracy.” However, legal analysts told JNS the danger to democracy may come from another corner, namely the actions of outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who called on local authorities to flout the incoming government’s directives. In a Dec. 1 open letter, Lapid urged Israeli municipalities...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Force's Paran territorial defense brigade is in charge of defending 170 kilometers of the Israeli-Egyptian border and large sections of the Negev desert. As such, dealing with the constant efforts of narcotics smugglers from both Egypt and Israel to push drugs across the border is an inevitable part of its duties. The brigade includes two co-ed infantry battalions that specialize in protecting the Egyptian border against terrorism and drug smuggling-the Caracal...
(JNS) - A new sculpture commemorating the life of writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was dedicated on Thursday at a moving ceremony on the Mt. Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The extraordinary sculpture, situated in a campus garden area, was created by French artist and sculptor Denis Chetboune. Among his numerous accomplishments, Wiesel authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a...
(JTA) — In a supermarket here, Ohad David made a beeline for the most expensive olive oil in the store. He took three bottles of the award-winning Midnight Coratina brand, which goes for about $3 per ounce. It has “medium potency, green fruitiness and a green-leaf, grassy bouquet,” according to its description on the website of Ptora, the boutique olive oil factory that makes it. But David, a 40-year-old insurance agent and father of five, did not buy the oil for its taste. Like thousands of Ort...
(JTA) - Two bombs rocked bus stops at crowded entrances to Jerusalem early Wednesday morning, killing a teenager and sending about 20 people to the hospital, some in serious condition. The fatality was a 16-year-old yeshiva student named Aryeh Shtsupak from Har Nof, a largely Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. He may have held Canadian and American citizenship, according to local media reports. The attacks represented the first time in years that terrorists used bombs in a deadly assault...
(JNS) - Apparently in Israel, the fifth time is the charm. After repeated attempts by the opposition, by defectors from his own right-wing bloc, by the prosecution and the Supreme Court to prevent embattled former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ruling, the electorate finally ended Israel's protracted political deadlock by voting overwhelmingly in favor of Netanyahu and his natural-and loyal-right-wing allies. With 87.6 percent of the paper ballots counted, Netanyahu's bloc is likely to...
