Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces struck several terror sites in Lebanon on Tuesday in response to ongoing rocket-fire at the Jewish state. The military said that two launches were detected, to which it responded by shelling the source of the fire. The rockets landed in open fields, causing no injuries or damage. Later on Tuesday, IDF air defenses intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” that had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, causing sirens to blare in the Western Galilee. The military said it also shot down several more projecti...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that there is no way the Palestinian Authority would be allowed to rule the Gaza Strip in a post-Hamas world during a stormy discussion on Monday in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. “Oslo was the mother of all sins. The difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is only that Hamas wants to destroy us here and now, and the P.A. wants to do it in stages,” the prime minister said. “We cooperate with them against Hamas when it serves their interest and ours up...
(JNS) — Israel’s parliament on Thursday approved a 25.9 billion shekel ($7 billion) supplementary wartime budget for 2023. The amendment to the 484 billion shekel ($132 billion) 2023 state budget approved last May passed its final vote in the Knesset plenum with 58 lawmakers in favor and 44 opposed. Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel of the ruling Likud Party was absent from the vote and Likud Knesset member Yuli Edelstein abstained after initially voting yes. National Unity Party members led by War Cabinet minister Benny Gantz did not vot...
(JNS) — Leaders of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria on Monday expressed outrage over the lack of funding for their security, claiming the Israeli government has failed to allocate “a single shekel” to protect the 500,000-plus citizens living in the area since Hamas launched its war against the Jewish state on Oct. 7. During a heated debate in the Knesset Finance Committee, the heads of the Binyamin Regional Council, Gush Etzion Regional Council, Samaria Regional Council, Mount Hebron Regional Council and Beit El Council lashed out at op...
(JNS) — More than 260,000 Israelis have applied for gun permits in the past six weeks, according to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Speaking on Monday at a faction meeting of his Otzma Yehudit Party, Ben-Gvir said the applicants were normal people who simply wanted to protect themselves and their families. “My policy within the office is to allow as many people as possible to receive weapons, and as [to bring in] many people as possible to handle their applications,” he said. “In a very short period, the Firearms Licensi...
Yariv Hagbi, a farmer whose family has been growing produce in the area of southern Israel near Gaza for generations, spent part of Oct. 7 fighting terrorists who broke into his family home in the town of Yakhini. That Saturday, his brother, Yizhar Hagbi, and several other relatives were killed. Since then, the entire community of Yakhini has been displaced, but Hagbi stayed behind because he's determined to save the family farm - despite all the grief, shock and devastation. "At a certain...
(JNS) — The number of violent incidents committed by Israeli Jews against Arab residents of Judea and Samaria continues to drop, according to a leaked Israel Defense Forces memo published on Monday, two weeks after Israel Police data suggested a similar trend. The confidential document was prepared by IDF Central Command, which is responsible for Judea and Samaria, and was first reported by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Monday. In the first week of October, the military recorded 32 incidents of nationalist crime, including four gra...
(JNS) — Israeli lawmakers on Monday voted in favor of a 1.15 billion shekel ($308 million) proposal to fund the recently created Tekuma Authority, which will be responsible for rebuilding, developing and strengthening the Gaza border communities devastated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border massacre. The Tekuma funds, redirected from the 2023 state budget, are to be used for “emergency assistance to communities near the Gaza Strip, assistance to the cities of Ofakim and Ashkelon, and local authorities absorbing evacuated populations,” the Knesset...
(JTA) — Israel is investigating Hamas’ claim that its youngest hostages, brothers Kfir and Ariel Bibas, are dead, along with their mother Shiri. The Bibas family became an early face of the hostage crisis after Hamas released a video showing Shiri holding her sons while being taken captive. Kfir, who is 10 months old, has become a symbol of the campaign for the hostages’ release. His brother Ariel is 4. Although most of the child hostages have been freed under the agreement with Israel, the Bibas family was not among those who have been retur...
(JNS) - The evacuees are slowly returning to Ofakim, 17 miles from the Gaza border. Shops are reopening and quiet has returned to the streets. But a short visit makes it clear that the town, which lost 52 of its residents in the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southwestern Israel. will never be the same again. The unemployed people, who had worked in the now-ruined factories of southwestern Israel, are strapped for cash. People who have seen the harsh sights of war have lost the sparkle in their...
(JNS) - For Sderot resident Danny Eisenman, the story of Oct. 7 began with helping some tourists change a flat tire. The tourists were passing through Sderot on their way to the Dead Sea and Eisenman was out walking his dog that morning. Once the tire was changed, the tourists fussed over the dog, pleasantries were exchanged, selfies were taken and everyone was on his way. A mere five minutes later, he was home when the air raid sirens sounded. "I remember when the sirens started and they didn't...
(JTA) — On the day Israel was attacked, one of Hannah Asnafi’s first-graders from the southern Israeli community of Kfar Maimon hid for hours in a cramped attic. Now, seven weeks later, the child has joined Asnafi and the rest of his class in a makeshift school housed at Israel’s Holocaust museum, which has opened its doors to evacuees from the south as part of a widespread repurposing of available space across central Israel. The symbolism of educating children whose experiences echo famous stories from the Holocaust isn’t lost on anyone...
(JNS) — “I was six years old when I was captured by terrorists during the Entebbe hostage crisis, and Emilia Aloni, who was just released, is the same age. I can’t get her out of my head,” Shay Gross told JNS. Aloni, 5, was freed from Hamas captivity on Friday, along with her mother Danielle, as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian terror group took captive some 240 people during its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded. Gross was among 246 civilia...
(JTA) — Hamas released another 10 Israeli hostages, nine women and a 17-year-old girl, on the first day of a two-day extension of a ceasefire, one the Biden Administration hopes to further extend as it seeks to expand humanitarian relief for Palestinians in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. The hostages released Tuesday bring the total of Israeli hostages released to 61. Also released were two Thais, bringing the total number of foreigners released to 20. They are among an estimated 240 hostages taken when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel from G...
(JNS) — Rami Davidian, a farmer from Moshav Patish, an Israeli farming community located about 10 miles from the Gaza Strip, saved scores of young partygoers during Hamas’s murderous assault on the northwestern Negev. Davidian, 58, will participate in a series of gatherings and speaking opportunities in Miami and New York to describe the role he played as a civilian hero during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, which killed 1,200 and wounded thousands. He also met Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erda...
(JTA) — Hamas has claimed responsibility for a shooting attack in the Ramot neighborhood of east Jerusalem that killed three and wounded six on Thursday morning, in what the Palestinian terror group said was retaliation for Israel’s war against it in Gaza and an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. The attack was carried out by two brothers from east Jerusalem who had each served sentences in Israeli prisons for terror-related crimes, according to the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. Ibrahim Namr, 30, and Murad Namr, 38, e...
(JNS) - The remains of a 12-year-old Israeli girl, burned alive alongside her twin brother and great-aunt in the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southwestern Israel, have been identified by archaeologists sifting through the rubble, family members said on Sunday. Liel Hetzroni was murdered, together with her twin brother Yanai and their 73-year-old great-aunt Ayala, in the attack on Kibbutz Be'eri after they were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, who were then engaged in a firefight with...
This is a developing story. Friday - First 13 Israeli and 10 foreign hostages released (JTA) - Hamas released 13 Israeli hostages into Egypt on Friday, Nov. 24, a sign that the four-day ceasefire brokered between Israel and the terror group that runs Gaza was holding. Ten Thai nationals and one Filipino national were also released in a surprise additional deal that Egyptian officials said they had brokered. Thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners were released from Israel as part of the agreement,...
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israeli health, military and government officials have been preparing for what a release of hostages from Gaza would look like since Oct. 7. But on Friday, as the first round of hostages were released at the start of a ceasefire brokered with Hamas, some admitted just how difficult that preparation has been. “We had to write these guidelines without any theoretical or practical knowledge in the world of a situation where children are being held captive by a terrorist organization,” said Sarit Sarfatti, a government offic...
(JNS) — Israel is making sure that none of the Palestinian prisoners it may release as part of a potential exchange with Hamas are connected to the terrorist group, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The newspaper reported that an internationally-brokered agreement for a temporary pause in fighting in Gaza and prisoner exchange is close to being realized. Hamas holds some 240 Israelis hostages in Gaza, who were captured during the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of the northwestern Negev. According to Egyptian officials, the pro...
(JNS) — The White House says it won’t support Israel’s plan to expand its operations into the south of the Gaza Strip unless it shows it will protect the Palestinian civilians there. In a Tuesday press call, U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said the United States won’t support Israel “moving forward with operations in the south absent a clearly articulated plan for how they’re going to protect the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people” there. “There’s an obligation for them to factor that into their planning,” Kirby...
(JNS) — The seaside Zikim base in southern Israel borders one of the kibbutzim destroyed by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre. Tanks, armored vehicles and excavation equipment that unearths terror tunnels roar past, heading for the Gaza Strip. Intense looking boys in uniform go to and fro in apparent chaos. But it is not chaos, it is Israel’s ongoing series of military operations against Hamas. The paratroopers we meet are finally having a drink. Yesterday, they managed to eat and take a shower after nine days in the Strip, during which the...
(JNS) — Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel is working to revoke the Israeli residency status of individuals affiliated with the Hamas terrorist organization. Specifically, Arbel began the process to revoke the status of Jerusalem residents Maged Juaba and Rashid Rashek for carrying out “actions to promote and support” terrorism against Israel as part of their membership in the terrorist organizations Hamas and Shabab al-Aqsa. The minister said his action was in accordance with section 11A of the Law on Entry into Israel, which conce...
(JNS) — Israel will resume its war against Hamas following the conclusion of the ceasefire agreement reached with the terrorist group early Wednesday, according to a government statement. “The government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza,” the statement read. In his remarks at the start of Tuesday’s all-night Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya...
(JNS) — Some 100 young Jewish men and women from around the world have decided to make aliyah and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces as Israel wages war against the Hamas terrorist organization. In a month, they will put on their uniforms. Meanwhile, they are completing a preparatory course run by the Defense Ministry’s Defense and Society Department. The course is taking place at an immigrant absorption center in Karmiel, in the Galilee—an area where strikes by the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group are a daily occurrence and the threa...
