Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
Israelis flocked to the polls Tuesday for the country’s fifth general election since April 2019, voting to determine the makeup of the 25th Knesset. Turnout levels were high throughout the morning and early afternoon, surpassing those in every election over the past two decades. Most of Israel’s 12,495 polling stations opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday, with some locations opening only at 8 a.m. By 10 in the morning, 15.9 percent of Israel’s 6,788,804 eligible voters had cast their ballots, with 1,076,076 votes reported, the highest voter turnout rate...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to concede this week’s election as most of the votes were counted by the end of Thursday. “The State of Israel is above any political consideration. I wish Netanyahu luck for the sake of the people of Israel and the State of Israel,” Lapid wrote in a statement. Netanyahu, meantime, has launched the negotiating process to form the next government with the far-right Religious Zionist party and haredi Orthodox parties. With a total of 64 seats,...
(JNS) — Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu will attempt to form a governing coalition in just two weeks, by Nov. 15, the date of the swearing-in of the new Knesset, Israeli media reported on Wednesday. Netanyahu’s move reflects his confidence that he will easily form a government, as he would normally be given 28 days to build a coalition with the possibility of a 14-day extension. He will assign loyalists to key positions, Channel 11 reported. Names that have been floated are Ron Dermer, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., as the new h...
(JNS) — Following an extended period of wrangling, the investment firm Morningstar reached an agreement on Monday with pro-Israel organizations to alter its methodology in rating the risk it assigns to companies doing business in and with Israel. Morningstar and its subsidiary Sustainalytics have been accused by critics of utilizing anti-Israel sources and weighing them disproportionately in assigning Environmental, Social and Governance risk ratings to companies as guidance for socially-minded investors. The ratings, which assigned a higher ri...
(JNS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog appealed to American Jewry to respect Israel’s election results, in a Monday address to the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly held in Chicago. “The results may or may not be to your liking, but the vote of the Israeli people should be respected,” Herzog said via live video feed from the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. “I say to each and every one of you that the firm, vital connection between the State of Israel and North American Jewry will not, and should not, be compromised,...
(JTA) - An $18 million museum dedicated to the legacy of Albert Einstein will be built in Jerusalem. The Israeli government approved a plan Sunday to establish a new home for Einstein's extensive materials, including some 85,000 documents, on the campus of the Hebrew University, which Einstein helped found a century ago. It's the largest collection of papers and objects related to Einstein in the world and includes his Nobel Prize and the original notes he produced while developing the general t...
(JTA) — After years of negotiation and military posturing, Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered agreement that establishes maritime boundaries between the countries, allowing each to explore for fossil fuels unthreatened by the prospect of an attack. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, heading into an election next Tuesday and under fire from his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the deal concedes too much, cast the deal as a historic breakthrough. “This is a diplomatic achievement,” Lapid said at the start of the C...
(JNS) — The recently struck Lebanon-Israel maritime border agreement may prove beneficial economically, but it will not benefit Israel’s security, analysts said during a policy webinar organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America on Thursday. Their take suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid overstated the benefits of the deal. “I think economically it’s a good deal. Strategically, we might face many problems as a consequence of this,” said IDF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, former Israeli national security...
(JNS) - Meet the Israeli elections candidates: 1. Benjamin Netanyahu - Likud Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister and now head of the opposition, will attempt to win his sixth term as premier. He is credited with transforming Israel's heavily regulated economy into a capitalist, high-tech powerhouse. The most recent polls suggest that this time he will have enough Knesset seats to form a government. In the recent string of four rapid-fire elections, his right-wing bloc...
(JNS Wire) - On Oct. 24 at 1 p.m. at the beautiful, lakeside Shamir Park located in Ma'ale Adumim, a growing city outside of nearby Jerusalem, the district's newest tourist and interpretive cultural attraction, the "Tree of Life," will be dedicated by Mayor Benny Kashriel. The public is invited to attend the ceremony and share in the programmed events and experiences. The enormous sculpted knurled olive tree is modeled on a 500-year-old olive tree trunk retrieved near the Garden of Gethsemane. T...
(JTA) — Israel’s government has approved an historic maritime accord with Lebanon, as both countries are under pressure to get the agreement signed before October ends and their leaders may change. The Israeli and U.S. governments pushed back against claims that the deal ceded too much to Lebanon. The details of the deal are not yet in place, but Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday at a press conference, hours after his cabinet approved the deal, that Israel had declined two last-minute Lebanese demands. Lebanon had wanted to rem...
Palestinian terrorists have carried out attacks on an hourly basis, according to the data of the Judea and Samaria emergency center, which registered 23 terrorist incidents in the past day. These attacks included shootings, one of which killed Staff Sgt. Ido Baruch near Shavei Shomron, explosives, a lynching attempt at Nebi Salah, rock attacks, and arson. Israel’s security forces continued their counterterrorism operations throughout Judea and Samaria on Tuesday night, including in the villages of Beit Sira, Deir Abu Mashal, Esawiya, and H...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday ordered IDF troops to prepare for “any scenario” on the northern border after a proposed maritime frontier demarcation accord with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon appeared to have hit a dead end. Gantz held a situation assessment attended by the IDF chief of staff and other security officials, and then instructed the military to increase its readiness for offensive and defensive actions should the enemy attack in the northern arena. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid rejected proposed chang...
(JNS) - The remains of two soldiers who fought in Israel's war of independence have been found, 74 years after their deaths. The Israeli Defence Forces announced on Friday that it had identified the remains of Privates Yitzhak Rubinstein and Binyamin Aryeh Eisenberg, who were members of the Palmach-the elite strike force of the pre-state Haganah militia-defending Kibbutz Yad Mordechai from an Egyptian attack in 1948, just days after Israel declared independence. The Egyptians captured the two...
(ISRAEL21c) - When a pregnant woman is worried about possible genetic defects in the child she is carrying, amniocentesis is the gold standard test. But amniocentesis is both invasive - a needle is inserted into the womb to extract amniotic fluid - and dangerous, resulting in miscarriage in as many as one out of every 200 tests performed. Furthermore, amniocentesis can only be done after week 15 of the pregnancy, yet many U.S. states and countries around the world ban abortion by that time,...
(JNS) — The Israeli global crowd-funding venture firm OurCrowd announced this week its launch of a $200 million Global Health Equity Fund. News of the collaboration with the WHO (World Health Organization) Foundation was shared at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York City on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The fund will focus on healthcare solutions with a potentially global impact. “COVID-19 was a wake-up call for me as an investor,” said Jon Medved, founder and CEO of OurCrowd. “The pandemic opened my...
(JTA) - Israel's tourism minister has threatened a "diplomatic war" with travel site Booking.com over the company's decision this week to display a safety warning on any listings in Israeli-controlled territories in the West Bank. A Booking.com spokesperson told the Associated Press on Monday the company would implement the warning as a reaction to recent unrest in the region, which has included Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli military raids in the territory that...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid took to Twitter to express condolences upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, calling her “an extraordinary figure, a unique leader who symbolized devotion and love for her homeland.” “On behalf of the Government of Israel and the citizens of Israel, I send my condolences to the Royal Family and the citizens of the United Kingdom on the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” he wrote. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called the Queen’s death “the end of an era.” “On behalf of the people of Israel, I...
(JTA) — An Israeli soldier very likely fired the gunshot that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May, an analysis released by the Israel Defense Forces Monday concluded. But no one present during the killing, including the soldier considered likely to have fired the fatal shot, will be punished, military officials said, and the army released a statement saying it was still possible that Abu Akleh had been killed by Palestinian gunfire. The official conclusion marked a shift from the Israeli government’s previous pos...
