Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 5 - 29 of 1961
(JNS) — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called for tougher immigration and border enforcement on Wednesday in response to the firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo. on Sunday. Johnson noted that the alleged perpetrator, Mohamed Soliman, 45, had been in the country illegally since his visa expired in 2023. “We need to go find the other Solimans and get them out of America,” Johnson told reporters at the weekly House Republican leadership press conference. According to prosecutors, Soliman shouted “free Palestine” as he threw molotov c...
Eight people were burned in Boulder, Colorado, in a firebombing attack on a demonstration to draw attention to the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. At least one of the victims, who ranged from 55 to 88, was critically injured, according to authorities. Police arrested one man at the scene. The FBI identified him as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, and said he had used a “makeshift flamethrower” in the attack, which the agency said it was investigating as an act of terrorism. Soliman yelle...
(JNS) — The alleged attacker in Sunday’s firebombing of a pro-Israel vigil in Boulder, Colo., overstayed his visa and was subsequently granted a work permit by the Biden administration, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said on Monday. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, is accused of setting elderly demonstrators on fire during a peaceful “Run for Their Lives” walk calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Eight people were wounded in the attack, which Colorado officia...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — On Sunday afternoon, what began as a peaceful rally in downtown Boulder, Colorado, part of the global “Run for Their Lives” campaign calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas, descended into violence. A terrorist armed with fire bombs had been waiting for the marchers, and hurled a flaming bottle that hit one of the participants directly and wounded several others. “I had just gathered the group and started speaking when the terrorist threw the Molotov cocktail,” said Shahar, who resides in Boulder and has b...
After a gunman murdered two people outside a Jewish museum, a wide range of major Jewish groups has asked the federal government to sharply increase its funding for religious institutions’ security to $1 billion. The request is one of several made by the coalition in the wake of the attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, when a shooter killed two employees of the Israeli embassy. In the wake of the shooting, Jewish security analysts are assessing what went wrong, and how such attacks can be prevented in the future. One piece o...
(JNS) — Auburn University men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl didn’t mince words talking about his Jewish identity and love for the United States and Israel during a Jewish American Heritage Month breakfast in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. “I’m a Jewish-American basketball coach, who coaches basketball in Auburn, Ala.,” he told attendees. “Don’t tell me this isn’t the greatest country in the world.” About 100 people attended the event, which included speeches from more than half a dozen members of Congress, including Sens. Jim Banks (R-Ind.)...
Elias Rodriguez, the Chicago man charged with killing two Israeli embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, shot his victims multiple times, including firing at one repeatedly as she attempted to crawl away, according to an FBI agent’s account of the incident. The account was filed as the Justice Department charged Rodriguez with multiple crimes on Thursday, some that carry a potential death sentence if convicted. He is being charged with the murder of foreign officials, first-degree murder and o...
WASHINGTON — Following Wednesday, May 21, evening’s horrific terror attack on an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum, the leadership of Christians United for Israel expressed their heartbreak and outrage over the cold-blooded murders of Yaron Lischinsky, Sarah Milgrim and the wounding of four others: “May the God of all hope comfort those who mourn as we weep for Yaron and Sarah. We pray for their loved ones and continue to stand resolutely with Israel and the Jewish people against this unmitigated evil....
(JNS) — In a speech to Congress on Tuesday, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objected to a proposal by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) seeking to end the war against Hamas and the blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying the resolution doesn’t focus on who is to blame for the conflict in the first place. “We have no disagreement about the suffering that’s going on in Gaza,” he said, regarding the Palestinian population there. “The problem we have here is, as we heard from both of these speakers, not one word was sa...
On Wednesday night, three armed security officers stood guard as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington held its annual meeting in the nation’s capital. On the agenda: discussions about the various ways antisemitic rhetoric can lead to violence. Hours later, JCRC CEO Ron Halber said he found out about the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy staff at the Capital Jewish Museum. It was a nightmare come to life. “It’s just godawful. There’s no other way to describe it. It was a horrific, antisemitic, anti-Israel, violent...
Eight people were burned in Boulder, Colorado, in a firebombing attack on a demonstration to draw attention to the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. At least one of the victims, who ranged from 55 to 88, was critically injured, according to authorities. Police arrested one man at the scene. The FBI identified him as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, and said he had used a “makeshift flamethrower” in the attack, which the agency said it was investigating as an act of terrorism. Soliman yelled, “Free Palestine,” during the attack, accordi...
(JTA) — Only 38 percent of American Jews believe in an afterlife, far fewer than in Israel, according to a new study of spiritual practices around the world. That share was lower than the 83 percent of U.S. Christians who believe in life after death, as well as the 58 percent of Israeli Jews who say there is an afterlife. The finding dovetailed with other results in the survey published May 6 by the Pew Research Center, which found that Jews were among the least likely in the United States to say animals or objects can have spirits, or that fea...
(JNS) — Just after he completed his first 100 days in office, I had the privilege of hearing President Donald Trump speak in the White House Rose Garden during America’s National Day of Prayer. I was amazed by all that had been accomplished. I sat behind Adi and Yael Alexander — their son, Edan Alexander, is the last remaining American citizen held hostage by Hamas believed to be alive. The president spoke about them at length and talked about his efforts to free the hostages still in Gaza. He described in brutal detail the cruelty of Hamas...
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed legislation on Monday to prohibit the state’s agencies from using the term “West Bank.” The bill, which passed in the Arkansas General Assembly earlier this month, is considered to be the first time that a U.S. state has required its documents to call the area that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria. “It is the intent of the General Assembly to: (1) Refer to the land controlled by Israel from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day...
(JNS) — Sandra Hagee Parker, chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund, called on April 28 to prevent U.S. taxpayer-funded contracts going to those supporting boycotts against Israel. “We are not here to try and change the hearts and minds of people who hate Israel,” Hagee Parker, the daughter of CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee, said at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem. “What they are not entitled to do is weaponize taxpayer dollars. Nobody has a right to gain a government contract while hating on our closest...
(JTA) — As the Antisemitism Awareness Act heads to a Senate committee for a crucial vote, 10 progressive Jewish organizations have signed a letter opposing the legislation for representing an endorsement of the Trump administration’s “efforts to weaponize antisemitism.” “Voting in favor of this legislation in this current political climate would represent an endorsement of the Trump Administration’s escalating efforts to weaponize antisemitism as a pretext for undermining civil rights, deporting political dissidents, and attacking the fundame...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring colleges and universities to better disclose their funding from foreign sources or risk losing federal funding. The Higher Education Act of 1965 in part “requires institutions of higher education to report significant sources of foreign funding,” but since the relevant section “has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown,” Trump stated. “From 2010 to 2016, according t...
(JTA) - Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro revealed on Thursday that investigators had managed to retrieve ritual Passover items from the dining room that was heavily damaged by an arsonist's fire shortly after his family's seder on Saturday night. "Some just required a dusting and a cleaning," he said outside a Harrisburg firehouse where he and his wife Lori were serving lunch to first responders who rescued his family and doused the flames early Sunday morning. "Others are destroyed." Shapiro,...
(JNS) - Some 100 people, ranging in age from about 8 to 102, huddled for warmth as they braved 40-degree temperatures on a damp day at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to watch, as speaker after speaker put it, Pfc. Adolph Hanf and Pvt. David Moser "come home." Neither of the Jewish soldiers, who served in World War I and who have been dead for more than 100 years, underwent a geographic relocation. But with the help of Operation Benjamin, a donor-supported nonprofit, Moser (1898-1919) and...
(JNS)- U.S. President Donald Trump named an Orthodox Jewish judge, whose official bio notes his penchant for studying the Talmud, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Per his official biography, Matthew H. Solomson, of Silver Spring, Md., "enjoys studying Talmud, playing tennis and spending time at the beach with his family." "It's notable that Judge Solomson is the first Orthodox Jew to be appointed as chief judge of the federal court he is serving on," Nathan Diament, executive dir...
(JTA) — A Jewish family was killed Saturday when their private plane crashed en route to upstate New York to celebrate Passover. Among those lost in Sunday’s crash were siblings Karenna Groff, 25, and Jared Groff, 26, and their parents, surgeons Michael Groff and Joy Saini. Karenna’s boyfriend James Santoro and Jared’s girlfriend Alexia Couyutas Duarte, 24, were also on board. Both couples planned to get engaged in the coming months, according to the Associated Press. Michael Groff piloted the twin-engine plane which crashed in Copake, New Yor...
(JTA) - Florida's Todd Golden became the first Jewish coach in 37 years to win March Madness, the NCAA men's basketball tournament, since 1988. The Gators edged Houston 65-63 in the final on Monday night. Golden's championship capped an especially Jewish- and Israeli-inflected Final Four. Along with Florida, Duke and Auburn were coached, respectively, by Jon Scheyer and Bruce Pearl, both of whom are Jewish. Houston player Emanuel Sharp is the son of longtime Maccabi Tel Aviv player Derrick...
(JTA) — A Pennsylvania man will be charged with terrorism and attempted murder after allegedly firebombing the official residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro, hours after Shapiro and his family hosted a Passover seder there. On Saturday, Shapiro posted a picture of a table set for the seder on social media, with the message, “From the Shapiro family’s Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach!” On Sunday, he shared that Pennsylvania State Police officers had awoken him and his family at 2 a.m. to alert them that an arsonist had set...
(JTA) — As Sen. Cory Booker broke the record for the longest Senate speech and made clear he was going for 25 hours, Jewish social media lit up with jokes. “This is the closest Cory Booker will get to experiencing Yom Kippur,” tweeted Sami Sage, the co-founder of Betches Media, in one representative post. As Jews do on Yom Kippur, Booker fasted during his entire Senate speech, consuming only a few sips of water. He also apologized for his and his party’s errors that allowed Donald Trump to retake the presidency. And with the help of his Dem...
(JNS) — America’s youngest adults continue to be an outlier in their views of Hamas and Israel, according to a poll released on Monday. The Harvard Harris poll for March found that 48 percent of American 18- to 24-year-olds say they support Hamas over the Jewish state, making them the only age demographic for which Israel did not enjoy at least double-digit support over the terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. By contrast, 93 percent of Americans 65 and older say they support Israel compared to just 7 percent who say they support Hamas. Ove...
