Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2000 - 2024 of 2213
Report: Israeli agents backing Kenyan troops in bid to end Nairobi mall siege JERUSALEM (JTA)—Kenyan troops reportedly backed by Israeli agents launched an assault to end the siege by Somali militants at a Nairobi shopping mall. A Kenyan security source confirmed that Israelis “are rescuing the hostages and the injured” at the upscale Westgate mall, the French news agency AFP reported. The Israeli Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny its agents were involved in the operation, which took place shortly after nightfall on Sunday. Kenya...
On the same day that the U.S. and Russia agreed to a deal stipulating that Syria must remove or destroy its chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014, Israelis were happy to spend Saturday’s 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in synagogue, and not on the battlefield or in safe rooms with gas masks. Yet Israelis’ long-term outlook on the situation in Syria isn’t as rosy. “Israelis are relieved in the short-term but concerned in the long-term,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli political pollster...
NEW YORK (JTA)—When Georgette Bennett decided a few months ago to help refugees from Syria’s civil war, she wanted to do it in a Jewish way. Citing a passage from Leviticus she said her late husband often quoted, “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor,” Bennett met with the CEO of a major Jewish aid group and quickly got him to agree to head a Jewish effort for the refugees. Bennett, a former professor, journalist and philanthropist, supplied the first $100,000. The CEO, Al...
Israeli Member of Knesset Nachman Shai (Labor), who studied and worked in the U.S. for years, says he had no idea how much the 25-year-old prayer rights group Women of the Wall mattered to North American Jews—until he went there on a recent outreach trip. “We were shocked to see how important women praying at the Kotel was,” Shai says in an interview with JNS.org. “For average Israelis it’s not such a big issue.” “Wherever we went [in North America] we heard about the Kotel as if it was the ce...
During his term as Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren found himself faced with a rapidly changing America, a Middle East on fire, and an Israel that had to deftly navigate between the seismic changes taking place in both locations. But looking at the polls, which continuously show high support for Israel among Americans, Oren is satisfied, saying they show that support for Israel in American public opinion is “the highest it’s ever been.” “At a time when the Middle East is turbule...
Twenty years after the signing of the fateful Oslo Accords between Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, Knesset Members are heavily debating the merits of the peace process and the two-state solution paradigm. Parliamentarians from both Israel’s left and the right agree that the process has not yielded the results anyone would have hoped for, including the deaths of more than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians, and agree that th...
Report: Israel stopped producing nukes in 2004 (JTA)—Israel stopped producing nuclear warheads nine years ago when it reached a stockpile of 80, according to a new report. According to the September-October issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was released over the weekend, some 125,000 nuclear warheads have been built since 1945—approximately 97 percent by the United States, the Soviet Union and Russia. The report by Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris calculated that Israel began making nuclear warheads in 1967 and pro...
Like the biblical Jacob, U.S. President Barack Obama sees a ladder in his dreams. But instead of God at the top, the American president sees his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, with his proposal that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad transfer his chemical weapons stockpile to international hands, will ultimately save Obama from ordering an attack. It’s not clear what is preferable to Obama—Putin’s solution or a “no” vote from Congress. Either way, Obama—regardless of wh...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Jewish groups backing President Obama’s call to strike Syria militarily are citing moral outrage and U.S. national security as primary considerations, but concern for Israel—however muted—also looms large in their thinking. A lingering sensitivity over misrepresentations of the role of the pro-Israel community in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 kept Jewish groups from weighing in on Syria until it was clear that President Obama was determined to strike. Now that same sensitivity is leading them to downplay any mention of Is...
AIPAC to lobby lawmakers for limited Syria strike (JTA)—AIPAC officials reportedly said the pro-Israel group will lobby U.S. lawmakers to authorize a retaliatory strike on Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons. The unnamed officials told several media outlets over the weekend that the group would send activists to Capitol Hill this week to garner support for a resolution to launch a limited military strike in retaliation for the Aug. 21 attack by the Syrian government. Investigations have provided mounting evidence that President B...
TEL AVIV (JTA)— Daniela Hayoum arrived at a Tel Aviv post office at 7 a.m. and took a number. The line of people waiting for gas masks was long and Hayoum stepped away to run errands. She returned in the afternoon to find hundreds of Israelis crowding under a hot sun on the building’s wide steps, some holding umbrellas and others food. On the street below, medics treated a woman suffering from the heat. On the sidewalk, men sold cold water and bagels. Hayoum began to push her way through. “Th...
Shira Kaiserman remembers her 2010 Taglit-Birthright Israel trip like it was yesterday. While the New Yorker’s group was visiting Mount Herzl, the guide began to tell them the story of Hannah Senesh, an Israeli national heroine who was caught and killed by the Nazis after parachuting into Europe to help rescue Holocaust refugees in 1944. “As a woman you don’t really hear about a lot of modern-day Jewish women who made such a strong contribution to the Jewish people,” Kaiserman told JNS.org...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Two years ago, Hadassa Margolese became a symbol of resistance to haredi Orthodox domination after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to tell an Israeli reporter how religious men had spit on her as she walked to school. The report made headlines around the world and cast Margolese into the spotlight as a defender of the rights and values of the Modern Orthodox community in Beit Shemesh, a city of approximately 75,000 just off the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv w...
In a sign of growing economic partnership, Israeli and Chinese transportation authorities have signed an agreement to significantly increase the frequency of passenger flights between their countries. According to the deal, Israel and China can operate 14 regular passenger flights as well as seven cargo flights between the countries. Until now, only Israel’s El Al operated three weekly flights to Beijing, while China’s national airline, Air China, does not provide any flights to Israel. App...
WASHINGTON, DC—Joining presidents and giants of the Civil Rights movement as part of the national commemoration of the March on Washington, Alan van Capelle, CEO of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, urging his fellow American Jews and all Americans to continue the struggle for civil rights. “The vision Dr. King offered us 50 years ago wasn’t only a dream. It was a call for equality but it was also a demand for justice,” van Capelle said. “We may be closer to equality but we are far f...
As Israeli children begin their school year, one particular requirement for students is taking on a somewhat sudden and newfound sense of urgency—inoculation against polio. The disease, which many in Israel had believed to be completely eradicated for more than two decades, has recently been identified in sewage systems—first in the south and then in the north of the country—during routine testing. Many across Israel are invoking thoughts of a biblical-style plague outbreak, even though no fo...
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...
