Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Jewish state is fighting a war against “the forces of barbarism” for itself and for all decent countries, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told foreign reporters on Monday. “It is a time for everyone to decide where they stand,” he said. Netanyahu hopes that the world will back Israel, because “Israel’s fight is your fight,” and should “Hamas and Iran’s axis of evil win, you will be their next target,” he said. The “horrors of Hamas” show that the 21st century has not moved “beyond the barbaric horrors of the past” toward...
(JNS) — Eden Zechariah had told her family she was coming home when terrorists started shooting at the outdoor music festival she attended Oct. 7. Her boyfriend, Ofek Kimchi, was killed trying to protect her and she was dragged off to Gaza alive. Her mother, Orin Ganz Zecharia, talks about her on video: “If there’s something you can’t miss about Eden, it’s her smile. She used to write down thanks every day for everything she has: thanks for her job, for her parents, for her friends. She really wanted things to be good. The world can’t stand to...
(JNS) - The Gaza Strip is a complex piece of land that has been at the center of disputes in the Land of Israel dating back thousands of years. The roughly 40-kilometer-long (24.9 miles) coastal enclave lies at the core of the current war between Israel and Hamas. The roots of the conflict can be traced back to the foundation of the State of Israel; now at a boiling point, it is causing myriad deaths. The population of Gaza has risen from around 185,000 in 1948 to more than 2 million today - a...
(JNS, KIBBUTZ BE'ERI) - Israel and a significant portion of the international community have been deeply affected by the events of Saturday, Oct. 7, when Hamas carried out a coordinated land, air and sea attack on multiple communities on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. This heinous act resulted in the loss of more than 1,400 lives, with thousands sustaining injuries and at least 222 persons, including women, children, the elderly and soldiers, being taken captive. Disturbing footage of the...
(JTA) -After the deadly attack by Hamas, the Jewish world has joined to share in the grief of the mourners and lament the lives cut brutally short. Below are just a fraction of the men and women who were killed on and since Oct. 7 - some are soldiers, most are civilians, and all helped make up the rich tapestry of the Jewish state. Omer Balva, 22, graduate of a Jewish day school in Maryland Omer Balva was on vacation in Maryland, where he was born and lived until graduating from high school, on...
(JNS) — Israel is preparing the world for the moment it needs to enter Hamas’s main headquarters, located inside and underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and is focusing media efforts on exposing the terror group’s activities there. According to Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Daniel Hagari, Israel has “concrete evidence” that “hundreds” of terrorists flooded into the hospital to hide from Israeli retaliation following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. Israel released video footage on Friday in which a captured Hamas terrorist, a member of the ...
(JNS) — After showing foreign journalists footage of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, the IDF on Monday published two segments from the interrogation of Hamas terrorists who participated in the massacre. “The plan was to go from house to house, throw grenades and kill everyone there, including women and children,” the terrorist said. He also told interrogators that Hamas had instructed them to behead their victims. “The purpose of entering Israeli territory… was to kidnap civilians...
DEAD SEA, Israel (JTA) — Nearly three weeks after Kibbutz Be’eri was massacred, its surviving members still gather for their community’s traditional evening meeting. The kibbutz, ransacked and empty, is now a closed military zone. To those familiar with the litany of atrocities committed on Oct. 7, its name has become synonymous with some of the day’s worst horrors. Many of Be’eri’s residents refer to that day as a “Shoah,” or Holocaust. Now, the nightly meetings instead take place at the David Dead Sea Resort, where most of Be’eri’s member...
(JNS) — A tent city is being built in Ramat Gan to house some of the more than 200,000 Israelis internally displaced by the war with terrorists from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The Tel Aviv suburb’s Kfar Maccabiah resort complex will provide temporary shelter for 1,000 people evacuated from northern communities under fire from the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon, Amir Gissin, the CEO of Maccabi World Union, told Israel’s Channel 12. Families that evacuated southern Israeli communities close to the Gaza border are already stayi...
(JNS) — More than 2,000 ultra-Orthodox Israelis have asked to be enlisted in the IDF, in an unprecedented mobilization in the haredi sector. The volunteer recruitment follows Hamas’s murder of more than 1,400 Israelis and wounding of thousands of others on Oct. 7, the bloodiest one-day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. About 150 haredim arrived at the IDF recruitment office at Tel Hashomer in Ramat Gan on Monday as the military begins to draft them as volunteers. Most of the volunteers, who ranged in age from their mid-20s to...
(JNS) — A 73-year-old grandmother, her 43-year-old son and barely 10-month granddaughter. Three generations of one Israeli family brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were laid to rest Sunday side by side, the infant sharing the same coffin as her father. In ceremonies across the country, a nation in mourning was burying its dead from the worst assault on Israel in half a century, and the most deadly one-day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In many cases, the c...
(JNS) - Hamas rocket fire targeting Jerusalem interrupted the opening session of the Knesset's winter session on Monday afternoon, Oct. 16. The legislators exited the plenum for the parliament's hallway during the attack. MK Merav Ben-Ari of the Yesh Atid Party was at the podium when air raid sirens sounded in the distance. "I think there's a siren," Ben-Ari told Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who told everyone to go to the hallway. The second session of the 25th Knesset opened with a minute of...
(JNS) — “I came to Israel with a single message: You are not alone,” U.S. President Joe Biden posted on social media on Wednesday. As Air Force One returned stateside, some critics say the president should have left well enough alone, even as America’s close ally is at war. Biden’s several hours in Israel proved “a missed opportunity to show strength and secure the release of American hostages,” wrote the Republican National Committee. Biden barely mentioned the kidnapped Americans but did announce $100 million in new funding for Gaza, “shower...
(JNS) — In the ever-evolving battle against cancer, Israeli researchers have uncovered a previously unknown strategy employed by cancer cells to evade detection by the immune system. The findings may open the door for doctors to increase the effectiveness of current cancer treatments. The research, led by professor Yifat Merbl of the Weizmann Institute of Science, sheds light on the intricate world of cellular waste processing and its role in cancer’s ability to fly under the radar of our immune defenses. The team’s findings were recen...
(JNS) — The Israeli Air Force struck hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza in recent hours, including tunnels with terrorists in them, while infantry and armored corps conducted raids on the ground in the enclave in preparation for a wider ground offensive, the Israeli military stated on Monday. Dozens of operational command centers housing Hamas and PIJ operatives were also hit, according to Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. Strikes were also conducted on targets that posed a threat to f...
(JNS) - The Israeli military has not ruled out the possibility that Hamas terrorists who infiltrated the Jewish state during the devastating cross-border invasion on Oct. 7 remain in the country. "We have not finished scanning [the Gaza border area] yet," IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Thursday. He noted that troops on Wednesday located and captured a Palestinian terrorist-tired and hungry-who was attempting to return to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Hagari stressed that there have...
(JNS) - Israel will fight until it is victorious, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday. During a visit to an IDF staging area near the Gaza border where he met with soldiers, Gallant said: "I see the determination, the spirit of battle, and above all, the motivation to carry out everything needed to defeat Hamas, to eliminate terrorist infrastructure, and to execute the mission as needed." Israel has been attacking Hamas targets from the air since the Oct. 7 massacre that killed more...
(JTA) — Hours after Saturday’s deadly surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, the Israeli protest group Achim le’Neshek (Brothers and Sisters in Arms) was helping arrange transportation for army reservists being called to the front. “Brothers and Sisters in Arms call on everyone who is required to stand up for the defense of Israel without hesitation and immediately,” the group tweeted early Saturday. “Right now the most important thing is the safety of the country’s citizens.” It was an abrupt turnabout by a group of military veterans and re...
(JNS) - "You're not going out. You are not going out." Those were 63-year-old Vivian Roitman's fateful words to her 72-year-old husband Menachem on the morning of Oct. 7, after the Hamas terrorists who had ransacked their home in southern Israel and failed to open the door to the safe room in which they were hiding had left the house. She didn't know it then, but the terrorists would be back less than two hours later for another attempt to murder or kidnap them, and then again for a third...
(JNS) — The leaders of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government endorsed the establishment of an “emergency national government” during a meeting of the party heads on Tuesday. “Every head of the coalition parties, without exception, supported the establishment of an emergency national government and authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act to create it,” a spokesperson for the ruling Likud Party announced. Local media reported that an agreement for Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party to join the coalition is...
(JNS) — After more than 3,000 Jewish pilgrims visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the first days of the week-long Sukkot holiday, one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s key ultra-Orthodox coalition partners on Wednesday demanded that the holy site be closed to Jews. “The ascension to Temple Mount involves a severe prohibition of karet,” tweeted United Torah Judaism Party MK Moshe Gafni, using the Hebrew religious term for divinely-inflicted premature death. “It pains my heart that 3,000 Jews violated this severe prohibiti...
(JNS) — Israeli forces have regained control of all the communities near the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday morning after two days of combat with Hamas terrorists. “We are in control of the ‘Gaza envelope’ communities,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told journalists during a press briefing. He warned, however, that there are still terrorists in the area. Hagari added that the military has called up 300,000 reservists. Early Monday morning, exchanges of fire took place at Kibbutz Be’eri, Kibbutz Holit, Kibb...
(JNS) — Israeli forces killed several terrorists attempting to enter Israel from Lebanon, Army Radio reported on Monday afternoon. “The IDF forces killed a number of militants who crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanese territory,” the Israel Defense Forces confirmed in a statement. The IDF was searching the area to make sure additional terrorists had not entered the country, while attack helicopters carried out strikes near the border. Residents near the border fence were instructed to remain in their homes, with their doors locked and li...
(JNS) - The Hamas gunman aimed his rifle at the elderly couple in their home in Ofakim, southern Israel, early Saturday morning. He held a grenade on Rachel Edri's head, began screaming "Allah Akbar" and announced he was a "martyr." But Edri maintained her composure. Thinking quickly, she offered the group of five terrorists refreshments, and later a meal, engaging them in small talk, playing for time until security personnel could arrive. For the next 20 hours, Rachel and her husband, David,...
(JTA) - One, just out of the army, told his dad "I love you" and "I'm sorry" then went quiet. One who just joined the army has no family nearby, so a stranger is keeping him company in the hospital. One was a peace activist. These are some of the stories beginning to emerge as Israel strives to identify the hundreds of people who are dead and dozens who are missing after Saturday's attack on southern Israel by Hamas. There are no figures yet on the number of North Americans killed or abducted...
