Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2016 - 2040 of 2213
Israel stands down in wake of Syria threat JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s military sent home many of the reservists called up to deal with the threat from Syria. The decision on Sunday to release the reservists, who remain on alert status, came a day after President Obama said he would seek approval from the U.S. Congress to launch a limited military strike on Syria. Congress reconvenes next week following its summer recess. Citing unnamed Israeli officials, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sev...
Temporary Western Wall prayer site comes with mixed gov’t messages JERUSALEM (JTA)—A temporary platform for non-Orthodox prayer was built at Robinson’s Arch adjacent to the Western Wall plaza, Israeli government minister Naftali Bennett said. According to a statement Sunday from Bennett’s office, the platform is meant “as an interim but primary place of worship for Jewish egalitarian and pluralistic prayer services.” The announcement from Bennett, the minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, came amid mixed messages from government...
By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA)—In increasingly strident tones, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling his American friends that the purported moderation of Iran’s new president is a ploy aimed at relieving international pressure and buying the Islamic Republic more time to cross the nuclear threshold. But in ways both subtle and direct, some of those friends—among them some of Israel’s closest allies in Washington—are saying that maybe Hassan Rohani is worth hearing o...
Last Monday, Israel named the first 26 of the 104 Palestinian terrorist prisoners that it agreed to release as a goodwill gesture for the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations. But while the Palestinian terrorists will initially earn their freedom in this deal, efforts are under way in the U.S. to bring about the further prosecution of those terrorists whose attacks harmed American citizens in Israel. With the support of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a pro-Israel think tank and policy center in Washington, D.C.,...
Did an Israeli drone cross into Egyptian airspace last weekend and fire a rocket at gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula who were about to launch a strike on Israel? Probably. Will any Israeli or Egyptian official admit it, even off the record? Probably not. The official story coming out of Egypt is that it was the Egyptian military that attacked Jihadists in Sinai, killing five. The Egyptian army, which is presently controlling Egypt after Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was forced from office, is wary of being seen as too close to Israel...
BERLIN (JTA)—Chancellor Angela Merkel, making the first visit by a German head of state to the Dachau memorial, said it was “a very significant moment for me.” Merkel laid a wreath, visited the concentration camp memorial’s museum and met with survivors on Tuesday. “The memory of these fates fills me with deep sadness and shame,” Merkel said, the German news media reported. Max Mannheimer, 93, a survivor who met with Merkel, praised her visit as a sign “of respect for the former detainees.” Ahead of the visit, critics had accused Merkel...
U.S. nixes Egypt drill over civilian deaths, completes Navy exercise with Israel (JTA)—Israel and the United States concluded a joint military naval exercise as President Obama canceled a U.S.-Egyptian drill due to civilian deaths in Cairo demonstrations. Obama told reporters on Aug. 15 that aid cuts could be coming if Egypt’s military government does not stop its bloody crackdown on protesters and move quickly to new elections, USA Today reported. His statements on Egypt came as Israeli and American vessels were wrapping up their Reliant Mer...
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (JTA)—Sarajevo is a city with a rich multicultural past, but it also bears the scars of war. Take a short walk through the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and you will see the many cemeteries and bullet-riddled walls, which are undergoing restoration. These lay side by side with magnificent churches, mosques and synagogues. For this reason, 100 Jews and Muslims from 39 countries gathered there last month to listen and learn from one another at an interfaith dialogue c...
(JTA)—A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish constitutional court outlawed Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter in response to a petition filed by animal welfare activists. But shortly before Margolin’s meeting was to take place, President Bronislaw Komorowski’s office unexpectedly canceled. Margolin, directo...
NEW YORK—Ninety students from 37 colleges and universities across the country have successfully completed the 2011-2013 Taglit-Birthright Israel Excel Fellowship program, an elite fellowship program beginning with a 10-week business internship in Israel for talented Jewish college sophomores, juniors, and select seniors pursuing careers in business and/or technology. During the all-expense paid program, each Birthright Israel Excel Fellow interns at a prominent, global Israeli company from within a wide range of industries, including f...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel gave the final approval to build 1,200 apartments in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank—a move Palestinian peace negotiators said could destroy chances for peace. Sunday’s announcement comes three days before peace negotiations are set to restart in Jerusalem and on the same day that the special U.S. envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk, met with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. The final approval by Israel’s housing and con...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)—Three weeks ago, the Dutch public learned of what appeared to be an unprecedented victory for European advocates of boycotting Israeli products. Four major supermarket chains reportedly declared a boycott of products from the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But the “victory,” as some activists in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement called it, was short lived. Days later, the international supermarket chains Aldi and Hema, along...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli settler leader Dani Dayan has made it his mission over the years to warn members of Congress, particularly Republicans, of the perils of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Dayan has been a regular visitor to Washington, his trips often coinciding with developments in the peace process. During the Annapolis talks in 2007-08, Dayan would watch Israeli officials as they met with the media in the lobby of the venerable Mayflower Hotel, just blocks from the White House, and then move in to offer his own spin. In June, Dayan m...
SANA’A, Yemen – Sam (not his real name), an American photographer and editor for an English-language local newspaper, lives in one of the tall historic buildings in the city. With increased kidnappings of Westerners in Yemen, he has grown more cautious. The number of kidnappings has increased recently, with tribesmen or Al-Qa’ida terrorists using hostages either as bargaining chips for the release of imprisoned members or as a way to get a lucrative ransom. Several foreigners have been abducted this year by either Al-Qa’ida gunmen or disgrun...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel handily won the most medals at the 19th Maccabiah Games, which came to a close in Jerusalem. The games closing ceremony last Tuesday at Teddy Stadium featured some of Israel’s most popular pop music groups, such as Balkan Beat Box and Infected Mushroom. Speakers urged the athletes to consider making Israel their permanent home. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the National Basketball Association, presented the Most Outstanding Ath...
West Bank settlements join Israel’s list of national priority communities JERUSALEM (JTA)—Fifteen West Bank settlements were added to the list of communities approved by Israel’s Cabinet that are entitled to extra government benefits. Some 90 settlements were among the 600 national priority communities on the list that was approved Sunday by a vote of 15-0 with four abstentions, including Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s lead negotiator in the revived peace talks with the Palestinians. Four of the settlements were legalized this year. S...
Suppose that Israeli President Shimon Peres and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat entered therapy together. “What keeps you up at night?” the American therapist asks the 90-year-old Israeli president in a soothing voice. “My prostate, heartburn, and Iran—to bomb or not to bomb?” Peres answers in his characteristic Polish accent. She then turned to Arafat. “You’re in a safe place here,” she promises. “He is trying to kill me—to poison me!” Arafat yells about Peres. Many Palestinians still believe that Israel poisoned Arafat, who...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The inauguration of a new Iranian president is an opportunity to address international concern over Iran’s nuclear program, the White House said. The White House statement Sunday, a day after Hassan Rohani was inaugurated, was notably not in President Obama’s name and did not congratulate Rohani but the “Iranian people.” “We again congratulate the Iranian people for making their voices heard during Iran’s election,” the statement said. “The inauguration of President Rohani presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to re...
ERUSALEM (JTA)—Early in the morning o, at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av, the Western Wall plaza was a cacophonous mess. Women of the Wall, the activist group that holds women’s prayer services each month at the site known as the Kotel, loudly sang festive prayers at a spot far from the wall itself. Police had barricaded them there, ostensibly for their own protection. A few feet away, a group of haredi Orthodox boys shouted at them, called them Nazis, blew whistles, waved signs and...
When Jerusalem resident Eli Beer implemented a neighborhood-based volunteer emergency response system to Israel in 2006, he wasn’t dreaming of prizes, only of saving lives. But in recognition of the fact that United Hatzalah of Israel has brought together some 2,100 trained volunteers from every sector of Israeli society to respond to medical emergencies in Arab and Jewish neighborhoods without discrimination, Beer and Arab-Israeli United Hatzalah-East Jerusalem leader Murad Alyan were chosen to receive the 2013 Victor J. Goldberg IIE Prize f...
Mika Bromberg stood outside the Israeli Prime Minister’s office holding a black-and-white poster of Avraham Bromberg, her brother-in-law and an Israeli soldier who was killed while hitchhiking in 1981. The attackers shot him, stole his gun, and pushed him out of the car. He was found on the side of a highway, and died of his wounds two days later. Maher and Kareem Younis, two Arab citizens of Israel, were tried and found guilty of the murder, and received a sentence of life imprisonment, later reduced to 40 years. In an ironic twist, one of the...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Eventually, all Jews will end up in Israel, Cliff Katz says. But for now, a labor dispute in the Jewish state is holding things up. Katz, 47, decided to immigrate from Texas about a year ago. He filled out all the paperwork, paid the fees and already had two job interviews lined up for later this summer. But the dispute between the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s union and the Finance Ministry has led the Foreign Ministry to halt all consular services, including processing new imm...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Women of the Wall asked the rabbi of the Western Wall to allow the group to use one of the site’s Torah scrolls. In a letter sent Sunday, Women of the Wall made the request to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz for their Rosh Chodesh prayer service, marking the start of the new Jewish month. The group asked to use one of the site’s 100 scrolls available for public use or to bring in its own. According to regulations established several years ago by Rabinowitz, worshippers are not allowed to bring a Torah scroll from outside the site....
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Cabinet unanimously approved the appointment of Ron Dermer as Israeli ambassador to the United States. The appointment of Dermer, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was approved Sunday during the regular weekly Cabinet meeting. Dermer, who immigrated to Israel from Florida 15 years ago, succeeds Michael Oren, a New Jersey native. Oren announced on July 5 that he would be vacating his post in the fall. “Ron is one of the most talented and dedicated people I know,” Netanyahu said after the vot...
