Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Ofer Prison, West Bank—The long strings of blue and white Israeli flags, set up for Israel’s upcoming Independence Day, flap incongruously against the background of barbed wire and tall gray watchtowers. Inside, some 710 Palestinian prisoners, including 100 minors, wait for their transfer to other prisons or for their release. Mohammed Jamal Al-Natshe, 55, a Hamas legislator from Hebron with a trim white beard, says that he was arrested most recently last month and placed under administrative detention, meaning that no charges have been fil... Full story
(JTA)—“When Gilles Bernheim speaks, France listens.” That’s how Avraham Weill, the chief rabbi of Toulouse, describes what he believes was the main appeal of his charismatic mentor, who on April 11 resigned as chief rabbi of France after admitting to several instances of plagiarism and falsely using an academic title. The media frenzy that led to Bernheim’s resignation after five years on the job was part and parcel of the 61-year-old’s strong media presence—a presence that may have attracte... Full story
Tiny Bahrain consists mainly of a 34-mile island connected to Saudi Arabia by a causeway, but aside from having modest oil and gas reserves, a booming market-based economy and lots of tourism, it also happens to be the home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet that patrols the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea. Bahrain’s strategic military location is complemented by its symbolically important place in the Arab world for a relatively liberal and tolerant society despite its own brief ver... Full story
Hundreds of Israeli flags are in place; the Air Force has been rehearsing its formation fly-by routine for days; platforms and sound systems stand ready in the main squares in town; groups of tourists mill about and there’s a discernible festive air. But before Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations of the nation’s 65th birthday take place on April 16, Israel has to pay tribute to those who fell in battles and terror attacks that continue to claim lives even until today. Officially known as Fallen Soldi... Full story
Sharansky: Women saying Kaddish at Western Wall won’t be arrested JERUSALEM (JTA)—Women who recite the Mourner’s Kaddish at the Western Wall will not be arrested, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said he has been assured, despite a police vow to enforce a ban. Jerusalem police Commissioner Yossi Pariente in a letter sent April 4 to Women of the Wall Chairwoman Anat Hoffman said he would enforce the Justice Ministry’s strict interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting women f... Full story
At midnight, most people who worked all day at an office job would be in bed. But then Gal Sharon, a superintendent with the Israel Police, has never been a cookie-cutter sort of person. At this witching hour, it wouldn’t be uncommon to find Sharon on a run along Tel Aviv’s beachfront. The 50-year-old mother of three boys is a sports nut. And she has used her love of physical fitness to create bonds of friendship across nations. While acknowledged among peers and family for many successful for... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—History will remember former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for relentlessly facing down communism and helping to turn back more than three decades of socialist advance in her country. But it was Thatcher’s embrace of British Jews and insistent promotion of Jews in her Conservative Party that inspired an outpouring of tributes from Jewish and Israeli leaders following her death April 8 at 87. Thatcher, who suffered from dementia in her later years, died peacefully aft... Full story
SALMA, Latakia, Syria—The village of Bayt Swalkha in the coastal province of Latakia bears the physical scars of the Syrian civil war. Piles of stones are all that remain of rows of houses. Municipal buildings have been reduced to blackened skeletons. But while the destroyed infrastructure will eventually be rebuilt, it is the emotional wounds that are irreparable. For in villages like these throughout Latakia, the sectarian harmony that prevailed for decades has been shattered by a civil war that has increasingly taken on a religious bent. Of... Full story
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA)—The potholed streets leading to Tiszavasvari’s rusty train station offer no clue that this sleepy town of 12,000 in eastern Hungary is considered the “capital of Jobbik,” the country’s ultranationalist, anti-Jewish party whose name means “better.” The first sign appears near the office of the mayor, Erik Fulop, the first of five Jobbik politicians elected to run a Hungarian municipality. Shortly after taking office in 2010, Fulop set up a twinning arrangement b... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Yityish Aynaw immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at age 12, she was thrust into an Israeli classroom. An orphan lacking Hebrew skills, Aynaw says she relied on other kids and her own sheer ambition to get through. Ten years later Aynaw, 22, is the first Ethiopian-Israeli to be crowned Miss Israel—a title she hopes to use to showcase Israel’s diversity. “Israel really accepts everybody,” she told JTA. “That I was chosen proves it.” Ethiopian and other African-Israe... Full story
A national anthem written more than 50 years before the birth of the state for which it was composed, “Hatikvah” has served as a source of hope and inspiration for Jews who have found themselves in the most dire of circumstances. During the darkest hours of the Holocaust, Jews defied their tormentors by singing the song’s powerful lyrics. Filip Muller was a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz—a Jewish slave laborer who was kept alive because he helped take corpses from the gas chambers to the crematoria... Full story
BERLIN (JTA)—I was 23 when I first met my cousin Gilbert Michlin. He was sitting at a brasserie near his office in Paris wearing a dark suit with a folded handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket. His short, dark hair was perfectly combed. He said, in charmingly accented English, “There is one thing I must tell you: I was in Auschwitz.” Of course, I already knew. But I had never met a survivor before, let alone our French cousin, who had been a slave laborer for Siemens at the death camp.... Full story
Journalist Steven Pressman first learned of the 50 children rescued by Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus in 2002 from his wife Liz Perle, the Krauses’ granddaughter, who had possession of a formerly hidden and unpublished manuscript written by Eleanor decades earlier. That manuscript spelled out in detail the Krauses’ mission to rescue Jewish children shortly before the outbreak of World War II, launching Pressman on an extensive quest for more information that took him to Europe and to archives in Jer... Full story
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—In a dark glass building here, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter shows that his memory is crystal clear and his voice is strong. His responses seem a bit delayed—not that different from other survivors I have known who are reluctant to speak openly about their experiences—but he’s doing just fine for a 3-D image. In the offices of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, Gutter, who as a teenager had survived Majdanek, the German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts... Full story
VANCOUVER, Canada (JTA)—When Austrian and German Jews escaped Nazism by fleeing to Britain during the 1930s, the last thing they expected was to find themselves prisoners in Canada, interred in camps with some of the same Nazis they had tried to escape back home. But that’s what happened to some 7,000 European Jews and “Category A” prisoners—the most dangerous prisoners of war—who arrived on Canadian shores in 1940. Fearing a German invasion, Britain had asked its colonies to take some German... Full story
Tamar field in northern Israel yields natural gas JERUSALEM (JTA)—Natural gas started to flow from a Tamar field that is expected to meet Israel’s domestic needs for at least the next 20 years. The gas, which began flowing from an offshore rig in the Mediterranean Sea, was expected to reach an intake center in Ashdod in southern Israel last Sunday afternoon. Some 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is believed to be contained in the field off the coast of northern Israel near Haifa. “This is an important day for the Israeli economy,” Israeli... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The conviction in Cyprus of a Hezbollah operative plotting to attack Israelis could undercut efforts by the terrorist group to carry out additional attacks outside the Middle East. The conviction two week’s ago was the second confirmation in recent months that Hezbollah is active on European soil. The first was when Bulgarian authorities identified the Lebanon-based terrorist group as being behind the July 2012 bombing in Burgas that left six people dead, five of them Isr... Full story
Listening to Hebrew songs is officially frowned upon by many West Bank residents, but interest in learning the language of th e “other society that is very close but still far away” is clearly picking up among Palestinians wishing to understand Israelis. One example is the Mohammed bin Rashid Bin Al-Maktoum School in Al-Bireh, a town adjacent to Ramallah, where many students in grades 7 through 10 are opting to study the Hebrew language. A somewhat strategic explanation for this little-known fact was offered by Samer Nimer, a director of the... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—For a trip that U.S. officials had cautioned was not about getting “deliverables,” President Obama’s apparent success during his Middle East trip at getting Israel and Turkey to reconcile has raised some hopes for a breakthrough on another front: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The question now is whether Obama has the means or the will to push the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who stayed behind to follow up with I... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—President Obama had three goals for his first presidential trip to Israel. He wanted to persuade Israelis that the United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He wanted to promote the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, albeit without any specific “deliverables.” Most of all, however, he wanted to charm the pants off the Israeli people. He dropped Hebrew phrases into his speeches. He quoted the Talmud. He invoked the story of Passo... Full story
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed Israeli policy last Friday, offering an apology to the Turkish people for the deaths of nine Turkish citizens aboard the armed Mavi Marmara flotilla headed toward Gaza in 2010. But that apology may have had less to do with Turkey itself than with guarantees relating to Iran or Syria. “Apologizing to Turkey may clear the deck on one issue to get free reign on other issues,” Dr. Harold Rhode—who worked for 28 years in the Pentagon, including from 1989-90 as the head of the Turkish Desk at the U.S... Full story
HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA)—Four weeks ago, militants in Gaza landed a rocket near the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Three weeks ago, Egypt raised its state of emergency in the Sinai Peninsula, warning of an increase in jihadist activity there. Two weeks ago, a rock thrown by a West Bank Palestinian critically wounded a 3-year-old Israeli girl. And last week, Israel plans to ask the United States for support should it strike Syrian weapons convoys en route to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Along both its n... Full story
Christianity is the world’s largest religion. And with more than 1 billion members, the Roman Catholic Church is its largest denomination. Anyone who watched the recent installation of Pope Francis I, attended by luminaries from 132 nations, would have taken away the enduring impression of a powerful, influential faith that commands respect even from its detractors. But in other parts of the world, it’s a very different story. In the dusty alleyways of Lahore in Pakistan, or in the choked streets of northern Nigeria’s cities, Christians lead... Full story
Report: ‘Prisoner X’ spy Ben Zygier tipped off Hezbollah SYDNEY (JTA)—The man known as Prisoner X unwittingly leaked classified information to Lebanese authorities, leading to the arrest of two Hezbollah agents who were spying for Israel. Ben Zygier, an Australian-Israeli citizen who was working for the Mossad, botched an attempt to recruit a spy for the agency, according to an expose in Der Spiegel. Zygier was attempting to restore his reputation in the Mossad by attempting to turn an enemy into an ally, according to the magazine. He had b... Full story
SUNNY ISLES BEACH (JTA)—Sitting outside a Starbucks coffee shop in this small city north of Miami Beach, Paul Hariton recalls the dramatic night in 2002 when he and his wife decided to leave their native Venezuela. Leftist leader Hugo Chavez had just returned to power following a failed coup and the Haritons feared the political fallout. “We thought he was gone already,” said Hariton, 56. “We came back from a big opposition demonstration in the city center where several people were shot, i... Full story
