Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Yair Lapid might only be Israel’s interim prime minister, but he appears to be determined to maximize the position in the four months he is guaranteed to occupy it. In a speech delivered Saturday night, Lapid laid out a set of beliefs that he said bind Israelis of all ideologies, as well as his diagnosis for why widespread agreement on fundamental ideas hasn’t translated into political harmony. “The answer is politics,” he said in the speech, published in English by the Times of Israel and in adapted form in Hebrew by Lapid on Twitte...
(JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s has come out against its own parent company’s decision to sell the ice cream maker’s brand in Israel to an Israeli company that pledges to continue selling the products in both Israel and the West Bank. “While our parent company has taken this decision, we do not agree with it,” the Vermont-based frozen treat makers said on social media, hours after Unilever announced it would sell its Israel business interests in Ben & Jerry’s to the Israeli company American Quality Products Ltd. The Ben & Jerry’s statement also...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett won’t run in his country’s upcoming elections this fall, his office announced Wednesday, after he served as head of a fragile, now collapsing Knesset coalition for a little over a year. The announcement caught many in Israel by surprise given that Bennett had led the country for just a year and, as the leader of the right-wing Yamina party might well have won a role in any future government coalition. He indicated in his final speech to the Knesset that he would continue to support Yair Lapid...
(JTA) — Ahead of his first presidential visit to Israel, Joe Biden congratulated Yair Lapid on becoming prime minister on Thursday, following the resignation of his predecessor Naftali Bennett. “Congratulations to @YairLapid, Israel’s new Prime Minister, and thank you to Alternate Prime Minister @NaftaliBennett for your friendship over the past year. I look forward to seeing you both in July to celebrate the unbreakable U.S.-Israel partnership,” Biden wrote on Twitter shortly after Lapid assumed the premiership. Biden is scheduled to visit I...
(JTA) - Ian Kinsler is trading in his bat for a lineup card. The former All-Star second baseman will manage Team Israel in the upcoming 2023 World Baseball Classic. He currently has no plans to play for the team as well. The Jewish 14-year MLB veteran played for Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics that were held last year, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time that his goal was to raise the sport's profile in Israel. "Medaling for Team Israel would create that buzz," he said, and "obvio...
(JNS) - Israel appears set to head back to the polls after a "change coalition" has failed to hold its razor-thin majority, barely a year after its formation. Elections are likely to be held on Oct. 25, just after the conclusion of the Jewish High Holidays. The elections would be the fifth in just three-and-a-half years. Meanwhile, according to the coalition's complicated rotation agreement, Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid will tentatively become a caretaker "transitional" prime minister wit...
(JNS) — With the dramatic announcement on June 20 by coalition leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid of their intention to dissolve Israel’s government, the nation began bracing itself for its fifth round of elections in three years. A proposed date of Oct. 25 has already been set. However, elections could still be avoided if opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu succeeds in forming a government before the Knesset is dissolved. Can he do it? Netanyahu currently controls 55 Knesset seats. He needs 61, a bare minimum majority in Israel’s 120-s...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid have agreed to disband the current Knesset and head to new elections. A preliminary bill will tentatively be brought during the upcoming parliamentary session on June 27. If the motion to disband passes, it will be brought into the parliamentary committee and get sent back to the Knesset, where it will need to pass three formal readings. If the Knesset officially votes to disband, Lapid, who currently serves as foreign minister, will become a transitional p...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — After returning to full operations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport is having difficulty coping with heavy passenger traffic as the summer travel season gets underway. Even though the airport has reopened Terminal 1 and airport director Shmuel Zakai is on the floor himself helping conduct security checks, the lines remain long. Zakai has said that the airport is having difficulty recruiting new staff and is facing a shortage of some 1,000 workers. Zakai said he expects it...
(JNS) — Researchers at Tel Aviv University have published encouraging test results of a procedure that could lead to a one-time treatment for patients with HIV. The study was led by Adi Barzel, Ph.D., and Ph.D. student Alessio Nehmad of the school of neurobiology, biochemistry and biophysics at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Dotan Center for Advanced Therapies, in collaboration with Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center, and additional researchers in Israel and the United States. The treatment involves the use of the CRI...
(JNS) - As European and American negotiating teams continue to convene in Vienna in an attempt to sign a new nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranian people have taken to the streets to protest the rising cost of living. Food and gasoline prices have risen, and clean water is scarce. Unemployment is high, and prices of goods have skyrocketed. Western media outlets will have readers believe that Iran's economy is tanking due to United States-led sanctions only, but there is more to the story; in...
(JNS) — A Knesset vote to renew a law, set to expire on June 30, that applies Israel’s legal system to citizens in Judea and Samaria, and has been in force as “emergency regulations” since the Six-Day War of 1967, went down in defeat on Monday night. Although these regulations have been extended without fanfare every five years, this time the government failed to muster the required votes and the bill failed to pass, 58 to 52. The law failed despite the opposition party led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supporting it in princip...
At least 70,000 Israeli from all over the country proudly participated in the Flag Parade celebrating Jerusalem’s Day on Sunday night, ignoring Hamas’ threat to attack Israel. The Jerusalem Day celebrations, marking the victory during the 1967 Six-Day War and the reunification of Israel’s capital, include a parade in which tens of thousands of Israelis march with flags through the city’s center and then through the Old City while entering it through the Damascus Gate. In one of the most joyful and memorable marches in recent years, familie...
(JTA) — Jewish extremists shouted racist slogans and clashed with Palestinians during a heavily policed Jerusalem Day march, but there were no major injuries at an event that last year was among the spurs to a deadly conflict. Police said 50,000 Jews marched through the Old City on Sunday, Jerusalem Day, the Hebrew calendar anniversary of Israel’s capture of the area in the 1967 Six-Day War. A record 2,600 Jews visited the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, which is also the sight of a mosque enclave among the holiest in Islam. A num...
(JNS) — Israel has boosted the deployment of its air-defense systems due to concerns that Iran could retaliate for the May 22 assassination of a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer in Tehran, Kan News reported on Monday. The move comes after the National Security Council took the unusual step on Monday of updating a travel advisory to Turkey, citing a tangible threat of Iranian attack on Israeli nationals there. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told a weekly government meeting that “the era of immunity for Ira...
(JNS) — The Jewish presence in the Galilee is shrinking — in part, critics say, because of government policies that effectively discriminate against Jews in favor of Arabs, who constitute the vast majority of the area’s inhabitants. The stakes are high, say those warning of the danger, noting that a large ethnic minority controlling a significant bloc of territory can lead to irredentist movements. “The issue also exists in the Negev with the Bedouin, but the problem in the Galilee is much more serious,” Bentzi Lieberman, chairman of the Shilo...
(JNS) — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has resolved to pass legislation that will stop public bodies from adopting anti-Israel boycott resolutions. The proposed legislation was outlined in the Queen’s Speech, an annual ceremonial address on May 10 that opens parliament and which sets out the government’s legislative priorities. The bill’s purpose, according to a government summary, is to stop public bodies in the United Kingdom from engaging in BDS measures and to prevent them “adopting their own approach to...
(JNS) — Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared the main criminal case against him “dead,” after state prosecutors were forced to alter the charge sheet, Israeli media reported last week. The state’s witness in the trial, former Communications Ministry Director-General Shlomo Filber, was cross-examined by Netanyahu’s attorneys throughout the week. Prosecutors have charged that Netanyahu entered into “bribery relations” with businessman and former owner of the Bezeq telecoms giant Shaul Elovitch. According to the charges,...
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s participation in an upcoming event at the community of Elkana in Samaria is sparking controversy and generating protests against his participation, with residents telling Bennett “stay away.” Bennett is planning to participate in an event celebrating the town’s 45th anniversary. However, residents say that his visit is “an attempt to cynically exploit the residents of Elkana and make political capital, while Bennett’s government violates the state’s Jewish and Zionist values on a daily basis.” Residents have lau...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Three-quarters of Arab Israelis believe Jews have no right to sovereignty in the country, according to a recent study by Israeli NGO Habithonistim–Protectors of Israel. When asked where their loyalties would lie in case of an existential battle between Israel and Arab states, 26 percent of Arab Israelis said they would support the Jewish state, 23 percent said they would back Israel’s enemies and 51 percent said they would remain neutral. The survey, which focused on Israeli’s sense of security and governance, had a s...
(JTA) – Israel has granted a temporary residency to American basketball player Jared Armstrong, ending for now a months-long saga of multiple rejections, accusations of racism and petitions by influential people including an American investor and a rabbi with close ties to President Joe Biden. Israel’s Interior Ministry, which handles citizenship applications, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of its decision Sunday, three weeks after Armstrong’s tourist visa expired and one week after the ministry announced it would be granting citizenship to...
(JNS) — Israel’s security forces worked in an intensive, integrated manner to disrupt the wave of terrorist violence that had afflicted Israel beginning in March and lasting through the first week of April. A number of factors have now led to the current relative calm, a security source stated, listing those factors as firm enforcement in the form of hundreds of arrests, tens of administrative detention decrees, tens of investigations, hundreds of people questioned and many conversations with persons of concern. Looking ahead, the Israeli def...
(JNS) — Israel began marking the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism on Tuesday evening when, at 8 p.m., a one-minute siren rang out throughout the country, causing all to stop in silence. The central ceremony was held at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem in the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. In his speech, Herzog stated: “Our sons and daughters, who fell in defense of our state, fought together and fell together. They did not ask...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Some 38,000 new immigrants will celebrate their first Independence Day as Israeli citizens this year, according to figures released by the Jewish Agency on Sunday. The figure marks a two-decade immigration record. The data also shows that immigration was driven higher by the war in Ukraine, where the Jewish Agency, in cooperation with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews , helped rescue thousands of Jewish refugees. Upon arrival in Israel, the Aliyah and...
(JNS) - Nefesh B'Nefesh, in partnership with Israel's Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and JNF-USA, welcomed its 74,000th new immigrant on Wednesday. Charley Smith, 34, made aliyah from Florida and reunited with his wife, Shaked, and their son, Adar, who arrived in Israel earlier this month. He landed just one week before Israel celebrates its 74th Independence Day. Originally from Minneapolis, Charley's connection to the Jewish state...
