Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - The Israeli Defense Ministry has approved the purchase of more than 200 armored vehicles for civilian security squads in parts of the country facing increased security risk, including Judea and Samaria, the Gaza envelope and the Lebanon border. The purchase is estimated to be worth around 150 million shekels ($41 million), the ministry announced on Tuesday. The project is "intended to strengthen the resilience of the localities and the standby units" and provide a "quick response during...
(JNS) — The Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has spurred a historic level of Jewish philanthropy, with the largest emergency fund set up when the war broke out alone raising nearly $800 million, the Jewish Federations of North America said on Monday. The surge in donations following the Hamas massacre that triggered the now four-month-old war created a huge surge in interest in giving to the Jewish state as it fights the Islamic terrorist group after years of decline in giving. “In these past months, we have witnessed our community comin...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces is expected to increase troop activity in northern Gaza in the coming weeks following attempts by Hamas to reestablish a foothold there. Israel’s Army Radio reported that the military is planning to carry out extensive raids due to increased activity by the terror group in northern Gaza, which included a rocket barrage on Sunday night that set off air-raid sirens in Ashkelon for the first time in nearly a month. The report also noted a recent gun battle near the coast in northern Gaza in which IDF soldiers kil...
(JTA) - The Israeli military has rescued two hostages in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the second such rescue since Hamas took hundreds of Israelis captive on Oct. 7. The overnight rescue operation, which was announced in the early hours of Monday morning, Israel time, comes as the Israel Defense Forces are shifting their focus to Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where there are currently more than a million Palestinians. The rescue operation also comes as negotiations toward a...
(JNS) — An Israeli army reservist stumbled upon an ancient Assyrian scarab amulet while hiking in northern Israel’s Nahal Tabor Nature Reserve during a day off, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday. “I received a two-day leave from the reserves and decided to take advantage of the two sunny days for a trip,” said Erez Abrahamov, 45, a resident of Paduel. “During the trip, I saw something shimmering in the ground. At first, I thought it was a bead or an orange stone. After I picked it up, I noticed that it had engraving...
(JNS) — Israeli leaders are considering the idea of exiling Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar in exchange for the release of all hostages held by the terrorist group and an end to its governance of the territory. Six Israeli officials and senior advisers confirmed to NBC News on Feb. 8 that Jerusalem would be willing to allow the exit from Gaza of the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre. Sinwar is believed to be hiding in the vast tunnel systems underneath Khan Yunis and Rafah, surrounded by hostages used as human shields. In addition to S...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces soldiers operating in the heart of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza discovered a large tunnel, one where Hamas had held a around a dozen hostages, the military revealed on Wednesday. Troops from the IDF’s 98th Division, working alongside combat engineers from the elite Yahalom unit, located the approximately 1,000-yard-long tunnel while exploring an underground labyrinth composed of numerous branches. On Jan. 21, the IDF announced that the 98th Division unearthed and destroyed a nearby tunnel branch of similar size. The...
(JNS) - Mosab Hassan Yousef, also known as "The Green Prince," the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, has joined Israel's public diplomacy campaign amid Israel's war against the terror group. Yousef, who rejected terrorism and went to work helping fight against it, arrived in Israel and toured the areas of the Oct. 7 massacre in the Western Negev. Referring to Hamas's Charter calling for the genocide of Jews, he said, "The people that wrote the Hamas Covenant are a bunch of...
Palestinian terrorists in northern Samaria opened fire on Tuesday on the northern community of Kibbutz Meirav, located inside pre-1967 Israel. There were no injuries in the attack, but one home was damaged when a bullet penetrated a window. Israeli forces in the area returned fire, and troops launched a manhunt for the terrorists. “They fired a burst. One bullet hit our house,” kibbutz resident Oren Henig told JNS. Henig, who is director of the Liba Center, a group seeking to strengthen the Jewish identity of the state, has been serving for...
(JNS) - Friends, family and supporters gathered on Feb. 7 at the Nahum Gutman Museum of Art in Tel Aviv to mark what would have been Shani Louk's 23rd birthday with an exhibition of work that runs through Feb. 21. On Oct. 7, Louk became a symbol of Hamas's unfolding atrocities as terrorists paraded her lifeless body on a pickup truck through the streets of Gaza, with crowds cheering and spitting on her lifeless body. "We wanted to keep Shani's memory alive through her passion for dancing and...
(JNS) - The OneFamily organization on Sunday hosted a unique day retreat for 25 of the most senior officers of the "IDF Casualty Center," providing a short respite and critical support for soldiers with one of the most difficult jobs in the army. The IDF Casualties Center is a unique division of 1,800 people tasked with notifying the families of fallen soldiers. The unit was founded in 1948 but only became active two years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which claimed the lives of thousands of...
(JNS) — Israel will not agree to the “delusional demands” Hamas is making to release the 136 remaining hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on Feb. 7. Bowing to the terrorist organization’s demands will lead to another massacre and a “major disaster” that no Israeli citizen will accept, he emphasized, speaking from his office in Jerusalem. “We are on our way to total victory,” he declared. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory is within reach....
(JNS) — Scores of Christian supporters from around the world gathered in Israel’s parliament on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus in a show of solidarity amid the war against Hamas in Gaza. The event, which came on a somber day following the single deadliest attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out three and half months ago underscored the growing force of faith-based diplomacy around the globe. “Over the last 20 years, you have proven in the best possible way what true fr...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday set out the country’s core demands for ending the war against Hamas in Gaza. “The essential goal is, first of all, the elimination of Hamas. To achieve this goal, three things are needed,” Netanyahu told journalists ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv. “The first requirement is the collapse of Hamas’s battalions. To date, we have leveled 17 out of 24 battalions. Most of the remaining battalions are in the southern Gaza Strip and Rafah—we wi...
(JNS) — A video clip making the rounds in Hebrew media features Ofakim Mayor Yitzhak Danino revealing disturbing details of a conversation he had with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as the Oct. 7 attack unfolded, in which he pleaded for army helicopters to save the small southern city, which Gallant promised but were never sent. Located 18 miles east of the Gaza Strip, Ofakim suffered more than 50 dead during the Hamas attack. The death toll would have been still worse but for the heroic actions of local residents, most armed only with h...
(JNS) - Despite a military closure, on Monday a diverse group of hundreds of protesters from all over Israel gathered at the country's Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza for the sixth day in a row, to demonstrate against the flow of humanitarian aid into the Hamas-controlled enclave. The demonstrators, including relatives of those murdered or kidnapped during Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre and of soldiers fighting the terror group in Gaza, avoided police checkpoints by driving through fields and...
(JNS) - In an exuberant display of support for re-establishing Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip, 5,000 activists filled three large halls to overflowing at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem on Sunday night. A kind of Zionist revival meeting, the conference featured music, a cheering crowd, and a parade of rabbis and politicians delivering speeches and prayers. Religious Zionists made up the vast majority of the participants, with a smattering of haredim or ultra-Orthodox....
(JNS) — Israel’s National Security Minister, Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened on Tuesday to bring down the government if it reaches a “reckless” hostage deal with Hamas. His tweet came amid apparent progress on an agreement to free the 136 captives remaining in Gaza whom the terrorist group abducted during its Oct. 7 attack on the northwestern Negev. In an apparent response to Ben-Gvir’s tweet, opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X that his Yesh Atid Party and its 24 Knesset members would give the government full back...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces will retain full security control over the Gaza Strip after the war with Hamas ends, giving it the freedom to operate there similarly to the way it currently does in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday. “After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control [it] militarily, but won’t control it in a civilian sense,” Gallant told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee dur...
(JNS) — Israel Defense Forces troops foiled a Palestinian stabbing attack in the Tekoa area in the Gush Etzion region of Judea on Monday. Soldiers from the Tabor Battalion of the Etzion Brigade shot and killed a terrorist who attempted to stab them while they were guarding a military position near the Arab town of Taqua, located near the Israeli community of Tekoa. The 16-year-old terrorist was identified as Rani Yasser Chalaf a-Sha’ar from Taqua. No Israelis were injured in the attack. Clashes broke out after residents who tried to reach the...
(JNS) - Founded in 1916, Kfar Giladi is one of Israel's oldest kibbutzim. Located less than a mile from the Lebanese village of Odaisseh, it is currently evacuated. Nisan Zeevi is a member of the kibbutz's local security squad. "If Israel does not address the threat Hezbollah poses, residents of northern Israel are at risk of another murderous invasion similar to Hamas's Oct. 7 attack," Zeevi told JNS. "On Oct. 7, we woke up to the horrors of Hamas's massacre and were certain that Hezbollah...
(JNS) - An art exhibition is debuting Thursday at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the memory of the Shoah is fresh on the minds of Israelis following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The exhibition, titled "Bigger Than Me," features six oil paintings and some 10 additional sketches by the Israeli artist Shai Azoulay. It has been given added significance following the Hamas massacre, the worst single-day attack on the Jewish people since the...
(JNS) - Hundreds of demonstrators prevented humanitarian aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip from Israel at the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Wednesday. The protesters from the "Order 9" movement demanded that "no aid goes through until the last of the abductees returns, no equipment be transferred to the enemy." (An Order 8 call-up notice is an order for the emergency mobilization of an IDF reserve soldier outside the framework of regular reserve duty. Many were issued after Hamas's Oct....
By Sveta Listratov (JNS) - Israeli actor-singer-songwriter Idan Amedi, best known for starring in the hit Netflix show "Fauda," recounted to reporters on Thursday his experience fighting in Gaza and the blast that had him hospitalized for over two weeks. "We are dealing with an enemy that doesn't care about anything. This is a just war and the enemy we are facing is beyond Hamas, we have found weapons in schools, assorted institutions and private homes. The world needs to know that," said...
(JNS) — While the Israel Defense Forces is gaining ground against Hamas by the day, destroying it as a military force will take time, according to former IDF officers. Professor Gabi Siboni, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and who holds the rank of colonel (res.), told JNS that the Israeli campaign will be “very long.” In Gaza, Hamas has built up the most fortified terror base in the world, he said, both above and below ground. With so many homes in Gaza containing weapons and being linked to under...
