Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday accused Israel of seeking to carry out “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, while hailing the refusal by Arab nations to accept Palestinian war refugees. “The intention might be for the Palestinians to leave Gaza, for others to occupy it,” Guterres told The Guardian, speaking on the sidelines of the COP16 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia. “But there has been—and I pay tribute to the courage and the resilience of the Palestinian people and to the determinat...
(JNS) — Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Monday over a decision to place portable bomb shelters, known in Hebrew as miguniot, in Judea and Samaria towns that have not been formally recognized by Jerusalem. According to Baharav-Miara, the government’s decision to provide Israeli citizens in unrecognized outposts throughout Judea and Samaria with shelters was illegal, as it was made by members of the Cabinet without requesting professional advice from the security estab...
(JNS) — Former Hamas captive Erez Kalderon celebrated his bar mitzvah in Kiryat Gat, southeast of Ashkelon, on Thursday, after marking his 12th birthday in the Gaza Strip. Hamas terrorists kidnapped Kalderon, along with his father, Ofer, and 16-year-old sister, Sahar, from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Erez and Sahar were among 105 hostages released last November as part of a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Ofer, now 53, remains a captive in Gaza. “It was very dif...
(JNS) — President Isaac Herzog announced on Monday the award of the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor to eight Jewish and non-Jewish leaders from around the world, in recognition of their long-standing contributions to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Against the background of the ongoing war, the president chose these leaders for their unwavering commitment to Israel and their exceptional support of the Jewish people over decades of endeavors, particularly since the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. The Israeli Presidential Medal of H...
(JTA) - WASHINGTON - Israel said it hit military targets in Iran in retaliation for that country's missile barrage on Oct. 1, apparently heeding Biden administration pleas to avoid oil fields or Iran's nuclear program because of fears of escalation into an all-out war. "In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel – right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran," Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army s...
(JNS) — A survivor of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, Nova music festival massacre, Shirel Golan, took her own life on Oct. 20, her 22nd birthday. She was found lifeless in the yard of her home in Moshav Porat in central Israel. The exact cause of death was not made public. She was set to have visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron with her family. According to family members, despite suffering from post-trauma, the state failed to provide Shirel with mental health services. “She said she received no assis...
(JNS) — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, wrote to her 15 million social media followers on Sunday night that the Jewish state has to act quickly to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip. “The U.N. reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly two weeks,” Harris wrote. “Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.” The vice president...
(JNS) — The elimination of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s top military-terrorist and political chief and the architect of the Oct. 7 invasion marks a major turning point in the battle to degrade the Iranian-backed jihadist network surrounding Israel. IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari explained on Thursday that Sinwar had been attempting to flee from house to house, moving between structures in Rafah. Hagari noted that Sinwar “was in flight,” and at one point, after the entourage protecting him had been fired upon by the IDF and split up, Sinwar...
(JNS) — Israeli airstrikes targeted Hezbollah financial sites across Lebanon overnight Sunday, including in Beirut. According to the Israel Defense Forces, dozens of facilities and sites used by the Iranian proxy to fund its terrorist activities against the Jewish state were attacked. “These funds, which Hezbollah used for terror activities, were stored by the Al-Qard al-Hassan Association, which directly funds Hezbollah’s terror activities, including the purchase of weapons and payments to operatives in Hezbollah’s military wing,” the IDF s...
(JTA) - As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have shot up to new highs, Israeli soldiers anticipating being deployed to the north are increasingly turning for help to the civilian donation efforts that have kept them stocked in Gaza. Adi Vaxman, who heads the U.S.-based donation effort called Operation Israel, fields requests from individual soldiers and says demand has spiked in tandem with security developments involving Hezbollah. "With the situation up north, the demand has tripled in...
(JTA) — Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadliest attack on Israel in its history, was killed in a shootout with Israeli forces, Israeli officials reportedly have said. Kan, Israel’s government-run radio network, quoted senior official sources as saying that DNA testing confirmed that the Hamas chief was one of three terrorists killed in a shootout Thursday, Oct. 17, with Israeli forces in Rafah, the city on the Gaza-Egypt border. Israeli officials would not confirm the report to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The army had earlier said that...
(JNS) — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, wrote to her 15 million social media followers on Sunday night that the Jewish state has to act quickly to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip. “The U.N. reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly two weeks,” Harris wrote. “Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.” The vice president...
(JTA) — For months, the United States has signaled that Yahya Sinwar was the biggest impediment to a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war, with the Hamas leader unwilling to consider any scenarios that would require his group to cede control over the Palestinian territory. But does that mean his death, announced on Oct. 17, means the war could soon come to an end? President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris say they think it should. But both Israel and Hamas have signaled that they plan to keep fighting. “Yahya Sinwar, the lea...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - The IDF spokesperson unveiled new details and footage from the death in Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip, of Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and the chief architect of the Oct. 7 massacre. In a video, captured by an Israeli drone, shows Sinwar sitting on a couch inside a destroyed building. Upon noticing the drone hovering above him, Sinwar, who had lost a hand from earlier gunfire, throws a piece of wood at the drone in an effort to knock it down. (The video can be...
(JNS) - Israel Defense Forces soldiers have erected a sukkah in the Netzarim Corridor dividing northern and southern Gaaza ahead of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, which starts on Wednesday, Hebrew media reported. It is the first time a sukkah has been built in Gaza since Israel disengaged from the enclave in 2005, forcibly removing some 8,000 Jews from their homes. During the weeklong Sukkot holiday, which this year started at sundown on Oct. 16 and runs through Oct. 23, Jews erect festive...
(JNS) - "Today, Israel is defending itself on seven fronts against the enemies of civilization. We are fighting in Gaza against Hamas, the savages who murdered, raped, beheaded and burned our people on October 7th. We are fighting in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the most heavily armed terror organization in the world, which was planning an even greater massacre than October 7th on our northern border, and that has rocketed Israeli towns and cities for nearly a year. We are fighting against the...
(JNS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday called Iran the “empire of evil” and warned of its efforts to destabilize the Middle East. In an interview with Saudi state TV station Al Arabiya, Herzog said, “Iran is the only country in the world who calls for the eradication of another U.N. member state. Iran offers destruction. We are offering hope.” He called on the peoples of the region to take action. “I call upon the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran, the people of all of the oppressed nations in the region, to rise up and underst...
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant following the “outrageous act of aggression by Iran,” reaffirming that the United States is ready to aid its friends and partners in the region. America is “well-postured to defend U.S. personnel, allies, and partners in the face of threats from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist organizations and is determined to prevent any actor from exploiting tensions or expanding the conflict in the region,” said Austin, according to the U.S. Defense Departmen...
(JNS) — The Jewish state has been fighting for its existence for the past 365 days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, proposing to change the name of the Israel Defense Forces’ multi-front campaign to the “Revival War. “One year ago, at 6:29 a.m., Hamas terrorists launched a murderous surprise attack on the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said at a Cabinet meeting marking one year since the Oct. 7 massacre. “Since that dark day, we have been fighting,” the premier continued. “Since that dark day, we have been under attack on seven...
(JNS) — Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Friday described Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,200 people in Israel as “logical and legal,” and vowed that the Jewish state “will not last long.” During a rare Friday sermon, Khamenei also defended the Islamic Republic’s massive ballistic missile assault on Israel on Tuesday, saying it “was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” and claiming it accorded with international law, as well as Islamic beliefs. “The resistance in the region will not back down with thes...
(JNS) - A readout of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address at the start of the Security Cabinet meeting on Oct. 1 (translated from Hebrew): "Citizens of Israel, at the start of my remarks, I send condolences to the families of those who were murdered in the abhorrent terrorist attack in Jaffa and my best wishes for a quick recovery to the wounded. As in the missile attack, there was also a murderous guiding hand behind this terrorist attack-it came from Tehran. This evening, Iran...
(JTA) - At this point, Gabi Hasin had grown used to fleeing his home ahead of missile fire from Lebanon. A resident of the northern border city of Kiryat Shemona, Hasin has spent the past year on the move, relocating seven times to keep himself and his family out of harm's way. So when he packed his bags and moved south again over the past couple weeks - this time from the northern city of Tiberias to Jerusalem - it was the least of his problems. He's taking sleeping pills for the first time in...
By Etgar Lefkovits (JNS) - An Israeli graffiti artist who was painting murals at the Nova music festival in southern Israel just hours before the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre on Tuesday launched a new exhibition in Jerusalem in memory of its victims. The exhibition, dubbed "Faces of October 7," was inaugurated just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the deadliest single attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and as the war against Hamas in Gaza has expanded to include Hezbollah in Lebanon....
(JNS) — “We have three objectives: returning the hostages, dismantling Hamas and safely bringing back the residents of the north. These three remain our focus, despite the current media attention on the northern front,” said Brig. Gen. Amichai Levin, commander of Hatzerim Air Force Base, in a joint interview with Lt. Col. M., commander of the 69th Squadron, following the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. “The base, the squadron, and the entire IAF continue to operate intensively and significantly in Gaza...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Lebanese citizens to rise up against Hezbollah on Tuesday while warning that the military will not hesitate to strike any infrastructure used by the terror group. “I say to the people of Lebanon: Our war is not with you. Our war is with Hezbollah. Nasrallah is leading you to the edge of the abyss,” Netanuahu after a visit to an undisclosed intelligence base. “I told you to evacuate homes in which there is a missile in the living room and a rocket in the garage,” he said. “Whoever...
