Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1916 - 1940 of 2213
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Amid simmering tensions over Iran policy, the Obama and Netanyahu governments appear to have quietly forged common ground in recent weeks on Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the United States accepting that a possible “framework” agreement might not address every outstanding issue in the negotiations. Such an agreement, the United States and Israel seem to agree, would maintain a role for Israel in providing for its security, presumably by maintaining some form of military presence in the West Bank. What’s not clear is if the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—When it comes to the deal between Iran and major powers, Israel and the pro-Israel community are retreating from a strategy of confrontation and working instead to influence the contours of a final agreement. In a conference call last week, Howard Kohr, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s executive director, advised pro-Israel activists and leaders not to confront the Obama administration directly over the “difference of strategy” between the United States and Israel on Iran. Instead, Kohr said to focus on passing...
Germany’s largest synagogue, on Rykestrasse in Berlin, reopened in 2007 after a lavish restoration. The synagogue, with a 1,200-person capacity, has been described as one of the jewels of Germany’s Jewish community. And although this event happened six years ago, the interesting thing about it was that the gathering of rabbis bringing the Torah to the synagogue in a ceremony witnessed by political leaders and Holocaust survivors from around the world was led by former Temple Israel Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski. Restoration of the neo-classical bui...
Ron Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), called upon Hillary Clinton to present the organization's second annual Theodor Herzl Award to Marion and Elie Wiesel last month at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Clinton recalled a lecture Wiesel gave at the White House on the eve of a new millennium. "He emphasized that indifference is more dangerous than anger and hatred," she said. "Elie's own story of survival has steeled the world's resolve that an atrocity like the Holocaust can...
Now that the U.S. and other P5+1 powers made an interim nuclear deal with Iran without Israel's involvement, the Jewish state is free to act as it sees fit on the Iranian issue without consulting America, former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in an exclusive interview with JNS.org. The U.S. "has indicated that they are going to act independently of Israel as it relates to Iran," Huckabee said, calling that a "very foolish policy." "I think now [the...
(JTA)-On the last evening in November, at least 31 protesters were taken into custody and dozens treated for injuries following a violent confrontation with Ukrainian police in Kiev's Independence Square. But that wasn't enough to intimidate the crowds who have occupied the main square of the capital since Nov. 21. Thousands showed up the following morning, including a young woman carrying a 10-liter pot of fresh borscht to help the crowd through another cold day on the square. It was "like a...
It was a true miracle for a young couple from Dolev, whose one-year-old daughter was kidnapped by local Palestinians that had hijacked the family’s car on Tuesday afternoon, December 3. Driving home to Dolev, a community located in the southern Samarian hills north of Jerusalem, the Israeli mother had her daughter buckled in the back car seat, when a Palestinian vehicle that had been tailgating suddenly bumped into the rear end of her car. “I pulled over and got out to check what had happened. There were three Palestinians in the other veh...
Iran: No traces of ex-FBI agent Levinson (JTA)—There are no traces in Iran of Robert Levinson, the retired American-Jewish FBI agent who vanished in the country six years ago, according to Iran’s foreign minister. Javad Zarif made the assertion Sunday on the CBS news show “Face the Nation” two days after the Washington Post reported that Levinson had been working for the CIA in a rogue operation. The U.S. government has said publicly that Levinson, who left the FBI in 1998, was in Iran on business as a private citizen. Emails and other documen...
Renen Schorr explains how Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School saved Israel’s film industry and propelled it to international acclaim. On December 12, audiences across the world will mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Perlov, an Israeli filmmaker most of them haven’t even heard of. In 39 different countries at 50 arty venues, 5,000 people will watch a movie inspired by one of Perlov’s masterpieces and produced by graduates of and students at the Sam Spiegel Film & TV School in Jerusalem. This simultaneous screeni...
(JTA)—They can’t agree on the project’s goal. They can’t agree on who supports it. They can’t even agree on its name. But when it comes to the Israeli government’s plan to relocate 30,000 Negev Bedouin, representatives and allies of the Bedouin community agree with the right wing on one thing: the Prawer plan must be stopped. At a meeting this week, leaders of an alliance between Negev Bedouin and several left-wing groups adopted a proposal to join with “right-wing opponents” of a bill that would relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from th...
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (JTA)-In the early 1940s, at a time when it was virtually impossible for a South African of color to secure a professional apprenticeship, the Jewish law firm Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman gave a young black man a job as a clerk. It was among the first encounters in what would become a lifelong relationship between Nelson Mandela and South Africa's tiny Jewish community, impacting the statesman's life at several defining moments-from his arrival in Johannesburg from the...
WASHINGTON (JTA)— There’s the six-month interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program that trades some sanctions relief for a freeze on Iran’s nuclear program. And then there’s the interim before the interim begins. Little noticed in the wake of the historic pact reached last month by Iran and the major powers is the fact that technically, the deal is not yet underway. A commission of experts from the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain, China and France, working with Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, first must work out the technic...
SAHARONIM, Israel (JTA)- A long chain-link fence with barbed wire seems to rise up out of the desert at the new Sadot facility in Israel for African migrants. Situated along Israel's barren border with Egypt and across the street from the notorious Ketziot Prison, which houses thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Sadot is slated to begin operations this month as an "open residence facility" for some 3,300 African migrants. In a large dirt field, long rows of railroad-style red-and-beige rooms...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-At least 28 protesters were arrested and 15 police officers injured during protests over a plan to resettle Bedouin into permanent communities in southern Israel. The thousands of protesters in the Negev Desert, Haifa, eastern Jerusalem and the Arab-Israel community of Taibe threw rocks at police forces and blocked roads as part of a so-called Day of Rage against the plan. Police used water cannons, tear gas and sound grenades to disperse the demonstrators, according to The New...
(JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pope Francis in their first face-to-face meeting talked about the Middle East and plans for a papal trip to Israel, among other issues. Also at Monday's closed-door, 25-minute audience at the Vatican, Netanyahu presented the pope with a book about the Spanish Inquisition written by his father, the late historian Benzion Netanyahu. The dedication read, "To the great pastor and guardian of our common heritage." The Vatican said in a statement...
TEL AVIV- Fifty lone soldiers and more than 200 young professional Olim celebrated "Thanksgivukkah" at a festive event organized by Nefesh B'Nefesh and White City Shabbat. Revelers celebrated the once-in-a-lifetime double holiday of Chanukah and Thanksgiving at the landmark Goren Synagogue in Tel Aviv with a three-course meal replete with traditional holiday foods including latkes and turkey. After the meal, Tel Aviv's deputy mayor Asaf Zamir led the Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony. This...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-When reports emerged over the weekend that France's hard line was responsible for the failure of negotiations over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, supporters and critics of the diplomatic push resorted to familiar stereotypes. Conservatives scoffed that even the conflict-averse French had outflanked President Obama. Leftists accused Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, of doing Israel's bidding. The reality typically is more nuanced. France's posture in the...
Cuban Jewish leaders meet with Alan Gross (JTA)—Cuban Jewish leaders who met with Alan Gross said the imprisoned American-Jewish contractor “was in better spirits.” Havana community President Adela Dworkin and vice president David Prinstein met with Gross on the last day of Hanukkah, two days after Gross marked his fourth year in jail in Cuba, according to The Associated Press, citing a statement from the Beth Shalom Temple in Havana. The Cuban Jewish leaders have met with Gross for other Jewish holidays throughout his imprisonment. “Duri...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Breakfast costs Dov Jakobovitz $2. Lunch costs him $2.25. Both are served in the public old-age home in south Tel Aviv where he lives. But the food is not to his liking. Jakobovitz longs for the dishes he ate as a child in Transylvania-gefilte fish, goulash, chicken wings-rather than the rice-and-salad fare more typical of the Israeli diet. A restaurant he enjoys in the center of the city serves such Ashkenazi fare, but he can't afford it. For dinner, he eats leftovers from...
(JTA)-With an asylum application to her own homeland, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein was hoping to draw attention to the problem of anti-Semitism in Sweden. Hernroth-Rothstein acknowledges the bid is "absurd"-but it's working, having garnered international media coverage and stirring debate. "EU statutes provide that asylum be granted to persons with 'well-founded reasons to fear persecution due to race; nationality; religious or political beliefs; gender; sexual orientation; or affiliation to a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—For 90 minutes in a packed hotel conference room in the heart of Washington, Israel was the colonizer, the settler state, the perpetuator of apartheid. As the annual meeting this weekend of the American Studies Association demonstrated, participants who favored boycotting Israeli universities far outnumbered those opposed. Of 44 speakers, 37 supported the resolution, in which the association would endorse and “honor the call of Palestinian society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” The preamble to the resol...
BERLIN (JTA)—The extraordinary disclosure that a trove of more than 1,400 vanished artworks were found in a Munich apartment has raised more questions than it has answered. What were these works, which were produced by masters such as Chagall, Matisse and Picasso? Who are their rightful owners? And where is Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Holocaust-era art dealer in whose apartment they were found? Responding to growing international pressure, German authorities have begun to offer some preliminary answers. A few weeks ago, the state p...
(JNS.org) Australia's new Liberal Party government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott has shifted to a pro-Israel position in the U.N., saying that it will not support resolutions that are "one-sided." Earlier this month, Australia abstained from two votes in the U.N.'s General Assembly that condemned Jewish construction in the West Bank, and another one forcing Israel to comply with the 1949 Geneva Conventions. "The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided," a spokeswoman for...
A day after arriving in typhoon-struck Philippines, Israel Defense Forces field hospital medical staff delivered a baby, whom the mayor of Bogo City, where the hospital was established, announced will be named “Israel.” The new life follows the Philippines’ massive loss of life. A statement by the U.N. placed the typhoon’s death toll at 4,460, with 920,000 people displaced by the storm. The field hospital began treating the sick and injured on Friday, Nov. 8, delivering its first baby the same day. “Israel,” the male baby, was born in his eigh...
Temple Mount closed after Jewish-Muslim brawl JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was closed to visitors after a fight broke out between Jewish visitors and Muslim worshipers. The Jews visiting the site Sunday morning reportedly began singing Chanukah songs and praying. In response a group of Muslim worshipers attacked them, Israeli media reported. Two Jews and two Muslims were arrested in the incident. Jews generally are not permitted to pray or bring any ritual objects to the Temple Mount, which is considered Judaism’s holiest sit...
