Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2 - 26 of 1993
(JNS) — The U.S. Justice Department announced on Monday that it filed a civil complaint against those who “engaged in a coordinated effort to intimidate and disrupt Jewish worshipers” on Nov. 13, 2024. The department filed the suit under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which former President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 to protect those seeking abortions and attending religious services and abortion clinics and houses of worship. The federal complaint alleges that the defendants—including Party for Sociali...
(JNS) — The U.S. Postal Service dedicated a new, two-ounce stamp honoring Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during a first-day-of-issue ceremony on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y on New York City’s Upper East Side. The 18th which the Postal Service has issued in its distinguished Americans series, the stamp features a black-and-white portrait of Wiesel. It will serve as a permanent rate stamp for two-ounce mail. The half-hour ceremony drew about 100 people, inc...
(JNS) — According to Lara Burns, a former FBI agent who spent years tracking Hamas in the United States, the terror organization has for decades had a detailed strategy for both fundraising and winning the propaganda war, especially on American campuses. One of the targets of the recent Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, which apparently failed, was Musa Abu Marzouk, who served as the first chairman of the Hamas political bureau from 1992 to 1996 and then as deputy chairman from 1996 until 2013, when he was succeeded by Ismail H...
By Jonathan D. Salant (JNS) — American policy towards Israel is increasingly viewed along party lines, and more Americans now say that Washington is providing too much support for the Jewish state as its war with Hamas continues, according to a survey released on Thursday. The findings revealed a “strong and growing partisan factor in American views of U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas,” according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Lester Crown Center on U.S. Foreign Policy. In the survey, 37 percent of Americans said...
(JNS) — The United States Congress will hold a discussion next month on the application of Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, according to Yesha Council Chairman Yisrael Ganz. “We are at a rare moment in time with a friendly and supportive U.S. administration. This is the time to move forward with a historic step that will affect the security of the entire State of Israel,” said Ganz, who is currently in the U.S. promoting the sovereignty plan. Referring to last week’s deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, which left six people dead—in...
(JNS) — The Trump administration has issued broad additional restrictions on visa applications by holders of Palestinian Authority travel documents, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing four American officials. The measures, said to have been announced in an Aug. 18 cable sent to all U.S. diplomatic missions, would prevent Palestinians from Samaria and Judea from entering America, including for medical treatment, university studies, visits to friends or relatives and business travel. The new policy reportedly goes beyond the s...
The Library of Congress has awarded Geraldine Brooks, a Jewish author whose best-selling novels are often inspired by Jewish history, its prestigious 2025 Prize for American Fiction. Brooks, a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel "March," which reimagines "Little Women" from the father's perspective, in 2006. Her bestselling novels also often focus on aspects of Jewish history, including "People of the Book," which chronicles...
(JNS) — Robin Westman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot after killing two children at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minn., wrote of murdering “filthy Zionist Jews,” that “six million wasn’t enough” and “free Palestine,” the New York Post reported on Wednesday. The Post said that it translated writings in the Cyrillic alphabet by the shooter, 32, who was transgender. “If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews [sic],” the shooter reportedly wrote in a journal that the...
(JNS) — When the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced that it is investigating manipulation of information on Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, co-founder of the encyclopedia, welcomed the news. “I am glad that Congress is investigating the use of foreign and U.S. government funds to pay for biased editing on Wikipedia,” Sanger, who has criticized Wikipedia frequently in recent years, told JNS. Sanger told JNS that he asked U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who led the U.S. Department of Gover...
The United States Postal Service announced a new series of stamps honoring Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Wiesel, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, is the 18th person to be honored in the USPS' Distinguished Americans stamp series. "The 18th stamp in the Distinguished Americans series honors humanitarian Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), a survivor of Nazi concentration camps whose dozens of works bore witness to the Holocaust and whose resilience and compassion continue...
The Reform movement’s Washington-based advocacy arm is urging Attorney General Pam Bondi not to seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., in May. Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, called on Bondi to forgo the death penalty in the trial of Elias Rodriguez in a letter sent Wednesday. “Despite the pain of Sarah and Yaron’s murders and despite the hateful motivation behind their deaths, we believe that the death penalty is a stain...
(JNS) — The U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing the death penalty and hate crime charges against Elias Rodriguez, who it accuses of shooting and killing two Israeli embassy staffers as they left an event at a Jewish museum in Washington in May, CNN reported. “The charges, if approved by a grand jury, would position the case as a centerpiece of the Trump Justice Department’s fervent approaches toward both violent crime and targeted hate against the Jewish community,” per CNN. The news organization said it sought comment from the Justice...
(JNS) — The University of Wisconsin-Madison has suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after the group was “found in violation of multiple rules” after an April protest. The SJP chapter announced its suspension on social media on Sunday. In its statement, the group wrote that the decision was made in response to the chapter›s protest of a speaking appearance by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in April. John Lucas, officer of strategic communication for the university, told JNS that “f...
(JNS) — Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, stated on Aug. 1 that the Jewish state is guilty of the “mass starvation of innocent civilians” and of inflicting “heartbreaking and inexcusable” trauma on children and families. The word “Hamas” appeared nowhere in her LinkedIn post, titled “Thoughts and updates: standing in solidarity with Palestine.” “As you all know, Teach for Palestine, our network partner operating in the West Bank, is continuing its vital work despite escalating violence, severe restrictions on fundamental freedom...
(JNS) - A night of speeches ended in dance. By design, nearly 2,000 teenage Jewish athletes at the JCC Maccabi Campus Games fulfilled the promise of former hostage Mia Schem, who, upon release from Hamas captivity, declared: "We will dance again." Those words, which Schem inked on her arm with the date Oct. 7, 2023, were referenced by social-media influencer Montana Tucker during her address to attendees of the Opening Ceremonies of the JCC Maccabi Campus Games. "From the Maccabees who fought...
(JNS) — Hundreds of pro-Israel students met in Washington last week for the Israel Campus Coalition’s national summit. Jacob Baime, the group’s CEO, told JNS that the 21 months since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and subsequent rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on campus marked a “new moment” for students who support the Jewish state. “As horrible as everything has been, as horrific as it’s all been since Oct. 7, there’s the silver lining of a huge surge in Jewish pride and interest in the issue,” Baime said. “This is a...
As images of starving children in Gaza continue to circulate and the international outcry grows louder, a number of American rabbis used their pulpits this past Shabbat to speak up about the humanitarian crisis, some with sorrow, others with moral urgency, and many with a sense that silence was no longer tenable. The sermons came amid growing pressure on Jewish institutions to reckon with the consequences for Palestinian civilians of Israel’s war against Hamas as it nears the end of its second year. In recent days, more than a thousand r...
A record number of Senate Democrats, representing a majority of the caucus, voted in favor Wednesday of two resolutions blocking U.S. military sales to Israel. The vote tally, including several senators who had not previously voted against such aid, underscores an apparent decline in support for Israel within the party. The vote comes as Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and amid a humanitarian crisis in the enclave that is drawing widespread condemnation. The resolutions were sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermont I...
By (JTA) -A Muslim democratic socialist state lawmaker in his 30s defeats the establishment candidate for mayor of his city, setting up a showdown in advance of November's general election. The scenario played out last month in New York City - and again this week in Minneapolis, where Omar Fateh won the endorsement of the state's Democratic Party in his bid to unseat the city's Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey. Fateh, 35, is the latest progressive candidate to ascend amid a shift away from...
(JTA) — The first athlete to notch a Manischewitz endorsement is transferring from a university with just a handful of Jewish students to a school with one of the highest proportions of Jewish students in the United States. Jake Retzlaff will play for Tulane University, according to reports in sports media. Neither Retzlaff nor Tulane has confirmed the move, but Retzlaff retweeted an article about it. Retzlaff announced earlier this month that he would leave Brigham Young University, the M...
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it is investigating Harvard University’s participation in the exchange visitor visa program. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Harvard’s continued use of the program might undermine U.S. national security. “To maintain their privilege to sponsor exchange visitors, sponsors must comply with all regulations, including conducting their programs in a manner that does not undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United...
While the majority of Americans oppose antisemitism, a quarter believe that the recent string of attacks on Jews in the United States were “understandable,” according to a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League on Friday. The report comes in the wake of three recent attacks on Jewish targets by people claiming to act on behalf of the Palestinians: the arson attack on Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house in April, the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington D.C. in May and the firebombing attack on a gro...
The number of antisemitic assaults and acts of vandalism on college campuses fell sharply in the last school year, according to Hillel International. And the pro-Palestinian encampments that ignited fear among many Jewish college students in early 2024 effectively disappeared in the year since, with just nine encampments taking place in the last school year, the Jewish campus group said in its annual tally of antisemitic incidents, released Thursday, July 17. But Hillel International said antisemitic incidents were still on the rise on college...
(JNS) — The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, a 135-year-old federal body, voted on Thursday to change the names of two entities in Alaska, one with Nazi ties and the other a derogatory term for Japanese people. The board’s domestic names committee approved changing Nazi Creek, a mile-long stretch on the state’s Aleutian Islands, to a phrase that means “gizzard creek” in the Unangam Tunuu indigenous language. It also opted to change nearby Nip Hill, an anti-Japanese reference, to a phrase that means “gizzard hill.” Michael Livingston, a...
(JNS) — A final-hour revision to the Trump administration’s reconciliation package, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed on July 1, preserved the Educational Choice for Children Act, a provision that will direct new funding to Jewish schools, Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudath Israel of America’s national director of government affairs, told JNS. Motzen told JNS that the school choice provision in the bill, which creates a pool of federal tax credits to fund scholarships for private schools, including yeshivot and Jewish day schools, was initially...
