Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — During the attacks and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Elchanan Kalmanson, his brother Menachem Kalmanson and their nephew, Itiel, drove toward the Gaza Strip under heavy rocket fire, ready to defend their country with their lives. Arriving at Kibbutz Be’eri, they started evacuating houses, hoping to save whoever they could inside, unfortunately discovering that in many instances, there was no one left to save. On Oct. 8, the second day of their rescue mission, they were ambushed by ter...
(JNS) - A rare and unique First Temple-era stone inscribed with a name in paleo-Hebrew script has been uncovered near Jerusalem's Temple Mount, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday. The ancient black stone seal was unearthed in an excavation by the Temple Mount's southern wall. It is believed to date back 2,700 years and was used by a senior official in the Kingdom of Judah's administration, the state-run archaeological body said. "The seal, made of black stone, is one of the...
(JNS) — The current circumstances in the Galilee and the Golan “will not continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He called for a “change in the balance of forces on our northern border,” amid daily attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon, while pledging to do “whatever is necessary” to return evacuated residents safely to their homes. Netanyahu spoke days after he ordered the military to prepare for a broad campaign in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed terrorist army. His instru...
(JNS) — An order issued by the Israel Defense Forces this month drastically expands the authority of civilian security guards in Judea and Samaria, allowing them to conduct searches at entrances to Jewish communities even on individuals who do not arouse suspicion. IDF Central Command head Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth signed the order earlier this month but it only became public this week. Saying that his action is “necessary for the security of the region, good governance and public order,” Bluth amended IDF Order No. 432, which defines the role of ci...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asserted on Monday that the Hamas terror group is no longer capable of maintaining an organized fighting force in the Gaza Strip after more than 11 months of war. “Hamas as a military formation no longer exists. Hamas is engaged in guerrilla warfare and we are still fighting Hamas terrorists and pursuing Hamas leadership,” he told foreign journalists at his office at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, according to AFP‘s account. The remarks were released for publication on Tuesday...
(JNS) - For hundreds of years, a mosaic lay hidden in Megiddo in northern Israel until, in 2005, it was found and preserved as a local prison sought to expand. The mosaic recently made the trip, in nearly a dozen pieces, across the ocean to Washington, D.C., where it is on exhibit at the Museum of the Bible. At an opening reception for the exhibit on Sunday afternoon, Carlos Campo, CEO of the museum, said that the mosaic, which dates to around the year 230, like an Impressionist show that...
(JNS) — The Israeli government will finance Jewish educational tours on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount for the first time, “to strengthen and stabilize the Old City,” Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported on Monday night. According to the report, the Prime Minister’s Office and the National Security Council approved the Heritage Ministry’s plan to provide state-funded guided tours of the holiest site in Judaism. A total of 2 million shekels ($543,338) will be allocated for the program from the budget of the office of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliy...
(JNS) — The Israel Innovation Authority announced on Wednesday a $9.5 million fund aimed at encouraging high-tech companies to expand into Israel’s war-battered northern and southern regions. This funding, part of the “Leap to High-Tech” program, will support companies in opening new branches and hiring local talent, fostering economic growth and reducing disparities across the country. The program is being launched in collaboration with the Ministry of the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience, the Ministry for Social Equality and the Tek...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and senior advisers met in the White House Situation Room on Sept. 2, a U.S. federal holiday, to discuss “next steps in the ongoing effort to secure the release of hostages, including continuing consultations with co-mediators Qatar and Egypt,” per a White House readout. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA director Bill Burns, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, also took part...
(JNS) — Asked by a reporter if he has plans to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Joe Biden said “eventually.” Asked if it would happen this week or next, the U.S. president said “eventually,” per the White House pool report. Earlier on Sept. 2, Biden said that Netanyahu wasn’t doing enough to free the hostages. The Israeli prime minister responded to a similar question from a reporter during a speech, in which he said that “I was asked whether I am not doing enough to the release of hostages. Well, I want...
(JNS) — An international organization of Islamic scholars and faith leaders has issued a blistering condemnation of the murder by Hamas of six Israeli hostages last week in Gaza. The Iraqi-based Global Imams Council called the executions, carried out in a tunnel under Rafah in southern Israel, “barbaric” and “a violation all principles of humanity, religious teachings, and international law.” In a statement on its website, the organization said, “The targeting and brutalization of civilians, especially those who are defenseless and held agains...
(JNS) — The Jerusalem District Court issued a provisional order on Wednesday allowing a group of Israeli families who have lost members to terrorism to seize 160 million shekels ($43 million) in Palestinian Authority funds frozen by Jerusalem pending proceedings against the P.A., according to Ynet. If the families win the lawsuit, the funds will be distributed among the dozens of plaintiffs, amounting to 10 million shekels ($2.7 million) per family. The 210 million-shekel claim was filed in early July by dozens of Israeli families whose r...
(JTA) — As Israeli Paralympic rower Shahar Milfelder won her first career medal on Sunday, she was thinking about the families of the six newly confirmed dead hostages. “We had in mind to give pride to the country,” Milfelder said, according to the Israeli news site Mako. “I cried in the morning from the hard news and now I cry from the good news and send the biggest hug I can to the families of the abducted and to all the citizens of the State of Israel.” Milfelder and her rowing partner,...
(JNS) - Hundreds of Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria gathered in protest at intersections throughout the territory on Sept. 3, demanding that the army launch a broad operation against Palestinian terrorism. The rallies, called by the Yesha Council that represents the interests of the 500,000 or so Jews of Judea and Samaria, marked the first time that the group led mass protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government since its inception in December 2022. "The...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Recent events have reportedly triggered a major policy shift in Israel’s approach to Judea and Samaria. Designated a “secondary arena” since the onset of the war with Hamas on Oct. 7, the recent increase in terror attacks in the area have convinced top officials that this stance is no longer tenable. The Israel Defense Forces now considers Judea and Samaria as the country’s most critical front after the Gaza Strip. While this directive is still in its initial stages, with substantial changes on the ground expected...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — In a poignant testimony, 12-year-old Erez Kalderon, kidnapped from his home in Nir Oz during the Oct. 7 onslaught, has shared his harrowing story of captivity in the Gaza Strip. Erez, whose father, Ofer Kalderon, remains in Hamas captivity, bravely opened up about his traumatic experience, saying, “It’s difficult for me to speak on camera, but if this reaches my dad—it’s worth everything.” Erez recounted the terrifying moments when attackers breached their home: “They simply broke the handle and entered. My dad quickl...
(JNS) — The Israel Police has criticized the country’s State Attorney for having failed to produce indictments against Hamas leaders, after the U.S. Department of Justice announced such indictments on Sept. 3, Kan News reported on Tuesday, Sept. 4. “The indictment filed in the United States is based, among other things, on evidence compiled in Israel and given to the American investigators, while 11 months have passed and [in Israel] there are no indictments,” a source in the police’s special crimes unit, Lahav 433, told the Israeli public br...
(JNS) - Members of the Gvura Forum converged on the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Monday to protest against a general strike called by the Histadrut labor federation following the IDF's recovery over the weekend of six hostages' bodies from the Gaza Strip. "We call on the prime minister not to give up to [Hamas terror chief Yahya] Sinwar and instead to keep up military pressure to achieve total victory," Yehoshua Shani, a member of the forum whose son IDF Capt. Ori Shani was killed in...
(JNS) - The six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli forces in a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza overnight Saturday were shot multiple times at close range just days before their discovery, Israel's Health Ministry said on Sunday. According to examinations conducted by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, the captives were murdered 48 to 72 hours before the autopsies, which would place their deaths at some point between Thursday and Friday morning. That the captives were shot...
By (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for not freeing hostages as Israel woke up to the shattering news that Hamas terrorists murdered six captives who were on the verge of being rescued. Some of those killed had been slated for release under a failed deal in July, an anonymous Israeli official told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. Netanyahu’s apology, delivered Sunday to the parents of one of the six, Alex Lubnov, was a first for the prime minister who until now has said that accountability should come after Hamas is...
(JNS) — Where is the Air Force? This was the tragic question that did not have to be repeated yesterday. Those like this reporter who remember Oct. 7 minute by minute cannot forget how, from the moment of the opening missile barrage, everyone’s eyes fixed desperately on the sky, looking for the Israeli fighter planes. We expected them to finally flush out the terrorists, destroy the missile launchers, bomb the hundreds of invaders in the south and then those in Gaza, and cover the army’s retaliation. It didn’t happen. The desolation of the sil...
(JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday called for “the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” after the IDF overnight on Aug. 27 launched a large-scale anti-terror operation in Judea and Samaria. “This is a war in every respect and we must win it,” Katz tweeted. “The IDF is working intensively starting tonight in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures that have been established there,” he said. Iran is working “to establish an ea...
(JNS) — A new campaign by the Samaria Regional Council blames Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza for Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of some 1,200 people, primarily civilians, in the Jewish state. As part of the effort, financed by friends of Samaria in Israel and abroad, the council put up billboards in Tel Aviv and other cities that read, “The reason—the result.” The ad shows a picture of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, followed by a photo of the Oct. 7 attacks. “Oslo and the ‘disengagement’ brought this disaster upon us. Gush Kat...
(JNS) - A circle of yellow flags, symbolic of the hostages who remain captive in Gaza, greet you as you enter Kibbutz Nir Am-a painful reminder of that Black Sabbath of Oct. 7. Every so often, the dull boom of combat in the neighboring Strip punctuates the air. The cacophony of war continues. Nir Am is in the northwestern Negev, close to Sderot. The closest point of the kibbutz is less than a mile from the Gaza border. On Oct. 7, as Hamas-led terrorists invaded the communities of the "Gaza...
(JTA) — Israeli troops have rescued an Israeli hostage from southern Gaza, the military announced Tuesday. the eighth captive held by Hamas to be brought back alive by Israeli forces since Oct. 7. Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, 52, a Bedouin Israeli and father of 11 from the southern city of Rahat, worked as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen on the Gaza border and was captured by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 attack. He was one of several Israeli Arabs to be taken hostage. Al-Qadi was rescued Tuesday morning by Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit fro...
