Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1891 - 1915 of 2213
(JNS.org) Israel’s population grew in 2013 by 1.8 percent, or 147,000 people, bringing the country’s total population to 8.1 million, according to data from the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry. Some 19,200 Jews moved to Israel from other countries. The most significant rise was in the number of immigrants from France, with 3,120 French Jews moving to Israel in 2013, a 63-percent jump from the previous year (1,916). The largest group of immigrants, 7,520, came from the former Soviet Union. Some 2,680 imm...
(JTA)—French Foreign Minister Manuel Valls instructed French mayors to ban performances by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala. Valls sent the non-binding recommendation days before Dieudonne is scheduled to launch a nationwide tour, the French news agency AFP reported. “I have sent an instruction today to all mayors,” Valls said at a news conference near Paris. “It recalls that mayors and municipalities may prohibit a show if it risks creating a disturbance to public order.” The text stipulates that the the mayors may ban shows t...
(Washington Free Beacon)—The Obama administration is pressuring Israeli generals to stop publicly voicing their concerns about the administration’s security proposals in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and instead endorse the administration’s plans, according to Israeli media reports. The administration is seeking a complete or partial IDF withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, where the border between Israel and Jordan lies at the eastern edge of Judea and Samaria, also called the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority has long sought contr...
PARIS (JTA)—The Israeli government is wading into the burgeoning European debate over circumcision and receiving a mixed reception from the continent’s Jews. On Dec. 11, Israel initiated a motion in defense of circumcision at the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organization devoted to enhancing cooperation among its 47 member states. Intended to offset a nonbinding October resolution approved by the council’s Parliamentary Assembly that condemned non-medical circumcision of boys, the Israeli initiative will be reviewed in January and p...
Bus bomb in Israel called similar to Boston Marathon type JERUSALEM (JTA)—The bomb that exploded last month on an evacuated public bus in central Israel closely resembled the type used in the Boston Marathon attack. The explosive in Bat Yam was enclosed in a pressure cooker and was activated by a cell phone, according to the Shin Bet security service, the Times of Israel reported. Some 14 people have been arrested in the foiled Bat Yam attack, the Shin Bet announced after a gag order on the arrests was lifted on Jan. 2. Among them are four m...
Several weeks after Bedouin and global anti-Israel elements celebrated the apparent cancelation of a plan to resettle tens of thousands of Bedouin in Israel's southern Negev region, the fate of the plan remains unknown. In a dramatic press conference on Dec.12, former Israeli minister Benny Begin, placed in charge of the implementation of the "Prawer Plan," resigned his post and announced that the plan would be withdrawn. Just days later, however, Knesset members continued to meet to discuss...
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was surprised by a forthright expression of support for the Jewish state from Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting last month in Moscow, Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported on Friday. Netanyahu had flown to meet the Russian leader in a last minute effort to prevent an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers from being signed. During the meeting, Netanyahu asked Putin to withhold support for the convening of a Nuclear Non Proliferation Conference the stated purpose of which would be...
NEW YORK– Jewish National Fund (JNF) is denouncing the decision by the American Studies Association to boycott Israel’s academic and research institutions by encouraging people to take action. Items include a letter writing campaign to the president of the ASA and university deans and faculty members, tweets to the ASA (“End the @AmerStudiesAssn boycott of academic institutions in #Israel! #academicfreedom”), and spreading the Positively Israel message of Israel’s contributions to the world by bringing a Positively Israel event to campus, helpi...
(JNS.org) Following the proposal of a new Iran sanctions bill in Congress, Mehdi Moussavinejad, a senior member of the Iranian parliament's energy committee, threatened that Iran would increase its uranium enrichment to 60 percent. In November's interim nuclear deal, Iran agreed to dilute its 20-percent-enriched uranium stockpiles down to 5 percent. "Given the method that the other negotiating side-the U.S. in particular-has adopted during the nuclear negotiations, the legislators are working...
Some 250 women in Jerusalem set a Guinness World Record for donating the most hair to make wigs for cancer patients in a single drive. The record was broken in November at a hair salon in Jerusalem's Malcha Mall after five hours, when the Zichron Menachem Cancer Support Center collected 117 pounds of hair. The drive continued for three days at 200 salons throughout the country. The haircuts were free. Several of the women who donated their hair were cancer survivors and their family and...
(JTA)—A county in Sweden is moving ahead with plans to ban the nonmedical circumcision of boys, its leading elected official said. Per-Ola Mattsson, the commissioner of Blekinge County, said he will bring up a ban on the practice with the county’s health board in February, according to an article published Thursday by the Sydostran Daily. According to the Dagens Medicin medical news site, Mattsson, who is also chairman of the Public Health Board of Blekinge, said he opposes the practice because minors “have no possibility to say no to the s...
PARIS (JTA)-To outsiders, they seem like ordinary men striking macho poses for the camera. But there is a dark side to the photos that are appearing with growing frequency in the French media. The men-and less frequently women-are performing the "quenelle," a gesture vaguely similar to the Nazi salute that some believe was invented solely to express hatred of Jews without inviting prosecution. In France, displaying Nazi symbols is illegal if done to cause offense. But the quenelle, in which one...
"We don't consider Iran as an enemy," Israeli President Shimon Peres told CNN's Richard Quest on Sunday at the Globes Israel Business Conference in Tel Aviv. Asked whether he would be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Peres replied, "Why not? I don't have enemies." "It's not a matter of a person but of a policy," Peres said. "The [goal] is to convert enemies into friends." In August, Rouhani reportedly said of Israel, "After all, in our region there has been a wound for...
(JNS.org) Brandeis University and Penn State Harrisburg on Wednesday announced they have withdrawn from the American Studies Association (ASA) following the ASA membership’s Dec. 15 vote to endorse a boycott of Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster,” the Brandeis American Studies Department said in a statement. “We remain committed to the discipline of American Studies...
U.S. immigration to Israel drops 13 percent JERUSALEM (JTA)—Immigration to Israel rose slightly in 2013 to 19,200, but that included a significant drop in immigrants from the United States. Last year Israel absorbed 18,940 new immigrants. The most dramatic increase in aliyah came from France, with 3,120 immigrants, a 63 percent increase over the previous year. The Jewish Agency for Israel credited its own programs to introduce French young people to Israel for the rise. Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption and the Jewish Agency are...
The security situation in Israel has grown increasingly tense of late, with a spike in terror attacks carried out on numerous fronts, and through various means, by both recognized terror groups and presumed “lone wolf” assailants. But such developments don’t rattle VADM (ret.) Yedidia Yaari. “I sleep well because I know we (Israelis) have the capability to outsmart our enemies in every respect,” says Yaari—president and CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Israel’s second-largest government owned defense company—in an interview with...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)-On a busy street near the Dutch Parliament, three white musicians in blackface regale passersby with holiday tunes about the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, and his slave, Black Pete. Many native Dutchmen view dressing up as Black Pete in December as a venerable tradition, but others consider it a racist affront to victims of slavery. With Holland marking the 150th anniversary of abolition this year, the controversy over Black Pete has reached new heights. Hundreds...
(JNS.org) Canada has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to dismiss its special investigator, Richard Falk, over a recent statement accusing Israel of having “genocidal intentions” against the Palestinians in an interview on the Russia Today (RT) television network. “When you target a group, an ethnic group and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal,” Falk told RT. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird called on the U.N. to dismiss Falk immediate...
The media reported that Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), rejected the peace proposals submitted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The Palestinians leaked that Abbas sent a letter to Kerry reiterating his complete opposition to the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This was declared a “red line” that the Palestinians will not cross. This “red line” is not just about semantics, but rather the essence of the conflict. The Palestinian position amounts to denying the Jews the right to establish their state in t...
(Israel21c)-In an upcoming space mission, the Vecoy platform-which tricks viruses into committing suicide-will be tested to see how it works in zero gravity. The Israeli company Vecoy Nanomedicine became a media sensation last year after ISRAEL21c covered the company's virus "decoy" designed to outwit the world's worst viral enemies before they do any damage. The biomed technology platform tricks a virus into committing suicide, a tactic which could eventually neutralize viral threats like...
BERLIN (JTA)—A painting by Marc Chagall discovered in a sensational art trove found in Munich is believed to have been looted by the Nazis from a Latvian Jewish family. According to the German newspaper Bild, evidence was uncovered that the painting from the collection hidden for decades by the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, may have been looted during the Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union in 1941. Experts told Bild that the painting, “Allegorical Scene,” is now worth nearly $1.5 million. The painting was claimed in the 1950s by Savel...
WADI AL-NAAM, Israel (JTA)-In this unofficial Bedouin town of 14,000 not far from Beersheva in the Negev Desert, families live in clusters of shanties with intermittent electricity provided by generators or solar panels. A communal structure has soft plastic walls and dirt floors, with a small pit at one end for an open fire that provides the room's only heat. Roads in many places are demarcated only by piles of rocks. For decades, Bedouin tribes like those living in Wadi al-Naam and similar set...
By Cnaan Liphshiz PARIS (JTA)-In an overcrowded conference room in the heart of Paris' 14th arrondissement, 100 French Jews are losing their patience. They have gathered at the Paris office of the Jewish Agency for Israel for a lecture on immigrating to Israel, but the agency staff is running behind. Its 20 staffers are coping with a 57 percent jump in the number of French Jews moving to Israel over the last year and a surge of applications. In addition to four weekly public talks, they are...
U.S. rented apartment to spy on Israel’s defense minister JERUSALEM (JTA)—The United States in 2007 rented an apartment directly across the road from then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, it was reported in the wake of revelations that the U.S. and British intelligence were spying on Israeli leaders. Washington said the apartment was rented for a Marine working in the U.S. Embassy’s security department, Yediot Acharonot reported Sunday, adding that Israeli intelligence discovered that a large amount of electronic equipment was delivered to and s...
Jerusalem and its environs were blanketed with snow, causing access routes to Jerusalem, including Highway 1, to be blocked for part of the day as municipal crews worked to clear the roads in the city; school was canceled for the day. Shown here are young people sitting at a cafe table set up amid the snow on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on Dec. 15. Some two feet of snow fell on Mount Hermon in Israel's north. Roads were closed due to flooding in the Negev Desert in the south. Syria and Lebanon also...
