Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 2005
(JNS) — Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) lashed out at conservative firebrand and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson Saturday, calling him “the most dangerous antisemite in America.” Fine didn’t mince words on the third day of the four-day Republican Jewish Coalition annual legislative conference, taking place this weekend in Las Vegas. “Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous antisemite in America,” Fine told the 1,000 participants, making this year’s conference one of the more well-attended. “He has chosen to take on the mantle of leader of moder...
Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor of New York City, delivering a decisive win in a three-way race that divided and in many cases distressed the city's Jews. Mamdani received a significant enough majority of votes that major news agencies declared the election less than 40 minutes after polls closed in the city, following the highest turnout in more than half a century. The results mean that Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who ran on a platform of affordability, will now have a...
(JNS) — On the first day of the Jewish National Fund-USA’s annual Global Conference, held in the heart of South Florida’s extensive Jewish community from Oct. 23-26, CEO Russell Robinson met with representatives from cities not particularly known as bastions of American Judaism. It’s part of a basic business strategy, Robinson told those in attendance. “If you’re not forecasting where your customer acquisition is going to be, if you’re not looking at your customer base and examining those pieces, you won’t be in business long,” he said....
(JNS) — The Anti-Defamation League and the law firm Gibson Dunn announced a partnership earlier this week to launch a nationwide legal network providing free legal services to victims of antisemitism. The new Legal Action Network, which the ADL said comes in response to “a sustained surge of violence and hate toward Jews and Jewish institutions across the United States,” brings together 39,000 lawyers across 35 states, with 40 law firms agreeing to take client referrals or serve as co-counsel. “For decades, victims of antisemitism have come to...
He was elected to represent Astoria, Queens, in New York’s state Assembly and is running to helm New York City. But Zohran Mamdani has called the Palestinian cause “central to my identity,” both in and out of politics. Mamdani consistently and proudly associates with the pro-Palestinian movement in high-profile settings across New York City. Shortly after delivering a stunning upset in the mayoral primary, for instance, he took the stage with Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by the Trump administration, at co...
(JNS) — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who used an appearance before the Heritage Foundation last month to attack Tucker Carlson over the former Fox News host’s anti-Israel rhetoric, blasted him again Thursday after the head of the conservative think tank refused to disavow the right-wing firebrand. Cruz didn’t mention Carlson by name as he kicked off the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual legislative conference in Las Vegas with a call to action to stop the spread of anti-Israel talk among young Christians. But he left no doubt to whom he was ref...
(JNS) — A prominent American evangelical leader said Thursday that the faith-based Christian community needs to take a more verbal stand against antisemitism, and “shut down” people like the right-wing political commentators Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson who feed hatred of Jews and Israel. The unequivocal remarks come at a time when polls show a drop in support for Israel among young evangelicals due to the fallout from the two-year war in Gaza and follow last month’s assassination of the American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was...
(JNS) — Four in 10 Jewish Americans say they try to hide their religious identity, according to a new Washington Post poll that also reported almost one in three respondents saying they don’t feel safe as a Jew in the United States. In the survey, 42 percent of respondents said they do not wear, carry or display anything in public that could identify them as Jewish, with 58 percent saying they do. In an American Jewish Committee poll taken in November 2023, a month after Oct. 7, just 26 percent said they hid their Jewish identity, while 73 perc...
(JNS) — Jewish families have been banned from living in Saudi Arabia for dec-ades. Is this the model that Democratic House leaders now support for Judea and Samaria? When 178 House Democrats signed a letter on Sept. 25 to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposing any Israeli move to annex territory in the West Bank, they weren’t just making a policy statement but endorsing a future where no Jews would live in Judea and Samaria. Do they believe that Jews should be barred from living in their ancestral homeland—the biblical heart...
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law distributed a letter to major U.S. film industry organizations caution-ing that the recent “Film Workers Pledge to End Complicity” (aka “The Holly-wood Blacklist”) violates federal and state civil rights laws and marginalizes Jewish and Israeli voices in entertainment. In a clear display of illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, the pledge, circulated by Film Workers for Palestine, commits signatories not to screen, appear at, or work with Israeli film institu-tions...
(JNS) — The FBI is cutting ties with the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, Kash Patel, director of the federal U.S. law enforcement agency, stated in a pair of social media posts last week. Patel blamed the ADL partnership on his predecessor, James Comey, who the U.S. Justice Department indicted last month for allegedly making false statements and obstruction of justice. Those allegations relate to Senate testimony he gave about the 2016 investigation into potential links between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia....
(JNS) - Edan Alexander, the last living American hostage who was freed in May after 584 days in Hamas captivity, was honored with a street named for him in the borough in which he grew up. "To have a road named here in the place I call home is something I never would have imagined," Alexander said during a ceremony before the street sign was unveiled. "Every time I see this road, I will remember not just the struggle but the love and unity that brought me back home." Alexander, who was...
On too many college campuses today, Jewish students aren’t asking for special treatment — they’re asking to be able to study in peace. Recently, that basic expectation has been shattered. Into that breach stepped Mothers Against College Antisemitism — a parent-led network that rocketed from a Facebook group to a national force almost overnight, now with more than 63,000 members. Their premise is simple: If universities won’t protect Jewish students from harassment and open calls for their eradication, parents will. Elizabeth Rand, attorney...
(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...
