Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1152 - 1176 of 1203
(JNS)—An estimated 34,000 immigrants moved to Israel in 2019—the largest number per year in the past decade, according to numbers published by the Jewish Agency. The data includes those who immigrated during the period of January-November 2019 and the number of immigrants expected for December 2019. Through the end of November 2019, more than 32,600 immigrants arrived in Israel from around the world, an increase of 18 percent from the same period last year. The Jewish Agency data showed that more than 255,000 new immigrants moved to Israel in... Full story
JERUSALEM, Israel—Experts at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, an Israeli foreign affairs and defense think tank with close ties to the Israeli security establishment, believe that in 2020 Iran will escalate its enrichment of uranium and intensify brazen IRGC and Qods force operations against Western and Israeli targets. Israel, they say, must be ready to tackle Iran on its own and fight a pre-emptive warfare with Hizballah. On the other hand, Tehran could agree in the latter half of 2020 to talks with the U.S. on the n... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A haredi Orthodox mother of five may have to give up her dream of running in the marathon at the 2020 Olympics after the race was scheduled for a Saturday. “I felt like I was punched in the stomach this morning,” Beatie Deutsch, 29, wrote late last week in a post on Facebook. According to the post, when Deutsch first decided to pursue her Olympic goal nearly a year ago, the first thing she did was check to make sure she would be able to participate. She was relieved to learn that the marathon was set for the last Sunday of th... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel will hold an unprecedented third election in less than a year after lawmakers failed to form a government coalition by Wednesday night. The date of the next election is set for March 2. Elections are usually set for 90 days after the dissolution of the Knesset, but as that would have put them on the Jewish holiday of Purim in 2020, legislators set the date a few days earlier. The government’s fall comes after both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party head Benny Gantz were each unable to form a gov... Full story
(JNS)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday that he will resign from all of his ministerial posts by January. He currently holds the health, welfare, agriculture and Diaspora affairs portfolios. Three weeks ago, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced that Netanyahu’s indictment for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three corruption inquiries. Following that announcement, The Movement for Quality Government, an Israeli nonprofit and leading public petitioner to Israel’s Supreme Court, launched a pet... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Genesis Prize Foundation has announced that Natan Sharansky, a Jewish refusenik, prolific leader in the Soviet Jewry emigration movement and former Israeli politician, will be awarded the 2020 Genesis Prize. The Genesis Prize, dubbed the “Jewish Nobel,” was started in 2013 and is financed through a permanent $100 million endowment. The annual award honors “extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity and commitment to Jewish values.” Sharansky was selected to honor “hi... Full story
(JNS)—The last act of Israel’s short-lived 22nd Knesset was to set the date for new elections on March 2, a decision ultimately approved around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday. The bill passed with 94 lawmakers voting in favor and none opposed. It also granted parties tens of millions more shekels to spend on their campaigns—$124,000 per Knesset member and $200,000 per party—in its first and only piece of legislation. The figures represent a 30 percent increase over the funding for the previous election. Legislators explained that the smaller parties... Full story
(JTA)—The United Nations General Assembly passed five resolutions against Israel, but for the first time, 13 countries switched their positions and voted against a pro-Palestine measure. The five resolutions passed Tuesday are among 20 against Israel that the international body will vote on during the 74th session of the General Assembly. By contrast, it will consider resolutions about six other countries—one each on Iran, Syria, North Korea, Crimea, Myanmar and the United States (for its embargo on Cuba), the nongovernmental organization UN Wa... Full story
(JNS)—Right on schedule, by Chanukah, natural gas from Israel’s Leviathan offshore field will begin to flow to shore. The turn-around in Israel’s energy situation over the past two decades is simply stunning. Just 15 years ago, Israel met 100 percent of its energy needs with imported oil and coal. Today, the vast majority of Israel’s electricity is produced from its own natural-gas fields. With the Leviathan reserves coming online, projections are that within a few years, 85 percent of Israel’s electricity will be supplied from its own gas fiel... Full story
(JNS)—The announcement last month by U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo that Israeli settlements are not illegal was either warmly welcomed or hotly rejected, depending on how you interpret international law. Indeed, recently 107 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Pompeo expressing “strong disagreement” with the State Department’s new policy and urged Pompeo to “reverse this policy decision immediately.” Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS that Pompeo did a great service for Israel and for truth by stating tha... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—It’s the perennial anomaly of Jewish voter surveys: Vast majorities feel an attachment to Israel, but relatively few are thinking about the Jewish state when they cast their vote. On the day of last year’s midterm congressional elections, J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, asked Jewish voters to name their two most important issues. Just 4 percent chose Israel. The same survey found that 65 percent said they were somewhat or very emotionally attached to Israel. The J Street survey is not an outlier. The A... Full story
By Michele Chabin TEL AVIV-The Genesis Prize Foundation and 2019 Genesis Prize laureate Robert Kraft have launched a competition that will award grants to Israeli organizations on the front lines of the war against anti-Semitism and efforts to delegitimize Israel. Kraft, the Jewish businessman, philanthropist and NFL team owner who received this year's $1 million Genesis Prize, previously had announced he would use the prize money to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism. This week, the... Full story
(JNS)-Following Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's announcement that he will formally indict Benjamin Netanyahu in three separate corruption cases, and the prime minister's inability to form a parliamentary majority following two snap elections, calls are rising from within the ruling Likud Party for leadership primaries. Former minister Gideon Sa'ar has called for the party to a primary for party chairman within the next two weeks in order to enable a new party leader an opportunity to form... Full story
(JTA)-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that the United States will no longer consider Israeli Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria to be illegal. Here's an explainer about what the settlements are, how they are viewed in Israel and around the world, and what this announcement might mean. What are the settlements? How many Israelis live there? In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured large swaths of territory from neighboring countries. Israel took the Sinai Peninsula and the... Full story
If you heard about the Palestinian Authority’s premediated “Day of Rage” this week, then it was probably “successful” from the perspective of being yet another hostile activity to protest and incite against Israel’s existence, perhaps drawing made for TV violence in which Palestinian Arab casualties draw higher ratings as Palestinian Arabs arm their young with rocks and Molotov cocktails to instigate violence from Israeli troops. If you didn’t hear about it, the “failure” is a hopeful sign of either the boredom of their people, and/or yo... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Benjamin Netanyahu has been charged in three corruption cases, marking the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister has been indicted. The charges, announced on Nov. 21 by the Justice Ministry and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, include bribery and breach of public trust. Netanyahu has denied all the charges and has called the investigations against him a "witch hunt." He has 30 days to request that the Knesset grant him parliamentary immunity in order to avoid a... Full story
(JNS)—Israel might be headed to a third election after all since Blue and White leader Benny Gantz could not cobble together a coalition government. His efforts followed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also the head of Likud, who was also unable to form a government. Gantz informed Israeli President Reuven Rivlin of the news on Wednesday, following short-lived efforts by the two party heads to attempt a unity government. “I asked of the prime minister, who lost in the electio... Full story
By Laura Ben-David TEKOA, WEST BANK (JTA)-I have lived in Israel for 17 years, and I have lived in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank the entire time. To much of the world, that makes me a settler who lives on illegally occupied land. The international community considers all Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law-including East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria to us Israelis. Some of these areas are places that Jews have lived... Full story
In a trip organized by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, 20 prominent business and philanthropic interfaith leaders—many of whom hadn’t been to Israel before—came to the Negev and visited the main IDF training base, Tze’elim. The visit was hosted by FIDF supporter and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg of Orlando, Florida, as part of a mission trip aimed at giving the guests an inside look into the IDF and show the soldiers their solidarity and appreciation. The list of participants included Daivd Lamm, chairman and CEO of Lamm & Company Partner... Full story
(JNS)-A ceasefire that appeared fragile, and which was punctured twice by rocket fire from Gaza, went into effect on Thursday, Nov. 14, after 50 hours of combat between the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror faction and the Israel Defense Forces. As many as 450 rockets were fired at Israeli cities and towns throughout the escalation, though more than 90 percent of those that were heading into built-up areas were shot out of the sky by Iron Dome air-defense batteries. Some 60... Full story
(JTA)—Fifty-eight Israelis were injured during the wave of rocket attacks fired by terror groups from Gaza this week. Thirty-four Palestinians, most of them reported to be members of Islamic Jihad and other Gaza terror groups, were killed in retaliatory strikes. The attacks cost the Israeli economy $315 million and three homes were directly hit, the consulate general of Israel in New York said in a statement Thursday. After the Israel Defense Forces killed two Palestinian Islamic Jihad senior commanders—Baha Abu al-Ata and Rasmi Abu Mal... Full story
Under normal circumstances, most kids look for excuses to stay home from school, at least once in a while. This week in Israel, 300,000 kids stayed home from school a few days in a row. Under the circumstances, they'd probably rather have been in school. Beginning early Tuesday, Palestinian Arab terrorists fired more than 400 rockets at Israeli communities from Gaza, forcing schools and businesses to close in order to prevent too many people gathering in any one place, despite bomb shelters... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza struck an assisted-living facility in the southern Israel city of Ashkelon on Wednesday afternoon, injuring a woman in her 70s. The resident was injured in the face and arms by flying glass after the rocket crashed through her living unit. The Israeli military said 360 rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza between Tuesday morning—since its targeted killing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad senior commander Baha Abu al-Ata—and about 5 p.m. Wednesday. Two Israelis have been injur... Full story
(JNS, Israel Hayom)—“The new rules of the game are clear—the IDF will operate freely, without any limitation,” Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said on Thursday, a short while after a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad went into effect, ending two days of intense rocket-fire from the Gaza Strip. Bennett, who took up his post as defense minister on Tuesday as rockets fell across central and southern Israel following the targeted killing of PIJ commander Baha Abu al-Ata, singled out residents of the country... Full story
After Israel killed a top commander from the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in a rare targeted strike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the group's leader said that Israel has pushed the group "to go to war." Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a statement saying, "These terrorist crimes are aggression and a declaration of war on the Palestinian people, and the enemy bears for responsibility for them." Additionally, Secretary-General Ziad al-Nakhala of the Palestinian... Full story
