Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2041 - 2065 of 2213
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Israeli Cabinet approved a measure that would require a public referendum or vote on any peace agreement that involves withdrawing from land Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Cabinet approved the legislation, which will create a new Basic Law, at its regular meeting on Sunday. The legislation will be brought to a vote of the full Knesset on Wednesday for a first reading. “It is important that every citizen have a direct vote on fateful decisions such as these that will determine the future of the state,” Prime...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel will refuse to cooperate with the European Union in West Bank areas under Israeli control in retaliation for the EU’s new guidelines concerning the occupied territories. Under the orders of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, the Israel Defense Forces’ civil administration will stop cooperating with the European Union on joint projects to benefit the Palestinians. The decision to cease cooperation with the EU in Area C of the West Bank was first reported on Hebrew news websites in Israel on July 25 and confirmed by Th...
(JTA)—Israel is prepared to make “very serious territorial concessions” if the Palestinian Authority recognizes Israel’s Jewish character, senior Israeli minister Yuval Steinitz told a British newspaper. In an interview published July 25 in The Daily Telegraph, Steinitz, Israel’s international relations minister, told The Daily Telegraph, “We are ready for a two states for two people solution. “Both sides will have to make very significant concessions and very difficult concessions. We will probably have to make very serious territorial c...
CAIRO—Muhammad Rizq slowly ascended the pulpit at the Al-Munira mosque in Imbaba, a poor northern Cairo neighborhood. His brusque leg movements made the wood creak with every step. “What do the people want?” he asked his flock rhetorically. “Do we want Islamic law or what the (Muslim) Brotherhood offered—civil strife?” As Egypt splits into two rival camps pitting secularists against Islamists, the puritanical Salafis are on the sidelines unsure of their next move. Salafis are Sunni Muslims associated with a strict, literal approach to Islam. T...
MUSRARA, Jerusalem – It is virtually impossible to eat a watermelon by yourself. The juicy red fruit begs to be shared, and in a large vacant lot just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, all kinds of people are sharing plates of watermelon and salty cheese. The event is called “The Meeting Point” and it harkens back to the 1970s when this area, which was a no-man’s land between Israel and Jordan from 1948 to 1967—was home to watermelon stands that brought Jerusalemites together. Today, the organizers have built a large wooden “bar...
NEVE ILAN, Israel (JTA)—Luke Rosener removed his orange T-shirt, changed into a white dress shirt and alighted from a chartered bus. The garb was a far cry from the uniform Rosener will wear while playing for the U.S. volleyball team at the Maccabiah Games, the 78-nation sports competition that began this week in Israel. The attire was more befitting a religious ceremony—in this case, his bar mitzvah. Rosener, 22, of Cupertino, Calif., had never had a bar mitzvah, owing to his family’s finan...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Michael Oren was deep inside the State Department, relaxed and taking on all comers: He had the facts on his side. It was 2004 and the department was reviewing newly declassified National Security Agency evidence reinforcing Israel’s longstanding claim that its 1967 air attack on the USS Liberty spy ship was a mistake. The attack killed 34 American personnel. Oren, a preeminent historian of the Six-Day War, was not suffering gladly those at the State Department conference who...
Gunmen in Sinai have stepped up attacks on Egypt’s police there, killing three policemen in separate attacks July 18. Earlier last week three cement workers were killed in a similar incident. Now Egyptian police are massing for an offensive in Sinai, with Israel’s tacit support. Israel has already allowed two infantry battalions to be deployed near the towns of Al-Arish and Rafah. Over the past few years, the Sinai has become increasingly lawless with Bedouins, Palestinians and other groups using Sinai for smuggling weapons and drugs into bot...
When Israeli doctors performed a CT scan on Abdulrazak, an 8-year-old Muslim boy from Ethiopia who was almost mauled to death by a wild hyena, they were surprised to find the rabid animal—that caused severe head, scalp and eye injuries to the young victim—had also taken a piece of his jaw bone. So, doctors at the government-run Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya added a bone graft operation to the list of planned life-saving surgeries already set up. “We’re trying to perform all the surgeri...
Thomas, pioneering journalist who retired following anti-Israel gibes, dies (JTA)—Helen Thomas, who paved the way for female journalists in Washington and beyond and retired after saying Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine,” has died. Thomas, who reported on every U.S. president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama working mostly for United Press International, died Saturday at her home in Washington from what was described as a long illness. She was 92. She was known for ending many...
Twitter [has] agreed to release data identifying users to French authorities in response to a January ruling by a French court regarding anti-Semitic tweets posted last October under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew). Users had jumped on the chance to tweet phrases like “a good Jew is a dead Jew,” ultimately forcing the French Jewish students’ union (UEJF) to file a lawsuit against Twitter for allowing that content to appear. [The] decision by Twitter was “a great victory in the fight against...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—During Ramadan, Muslim communities around the world experience a month of fasting, devotion and increased consciousness of their faith. They also remember those who are suffering around the world and seek an end to the forces of hatred that lead to violence against people of all faiths. The spirit of Ramadan, which lasts this year through Aug. 7, can serve as a positive force to bring people together and a powerful reminder of the common humanity that all people share. Muslim communities collect donations to aid those in n...
RAMALLAH—Palestinians are torn between being happy that many have received permits to visit Jerusalem and Israel during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan (July 8-Aug. 7), and being concerned for the West Bank shops which will lose a great deal of business to stores in Israel. Ramadan is considered the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. Religious Muslims all over the world fast from sunrise to sunset. At the end of the month, Muslims celebrate Eid Al Fitr where they visit relatives or take a few days off to travel. On a recent morning, d...
THE HAGUE, Netherlands—The intensity with which Israel reacted last week to new European guidelines prohibiting support for projects based in disputed territories surprised not only EU diplomats, but also their Israeli counterparts. The guidelines, which preclude already nonexistent EU grants to Israeli entities in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene an emergency meeting and release a sardonic statement t...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—“I was with him when” Ron Dermer laced his address to the 2009 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. Dermer used the phrase five times in the first five minutes of the speech—the “him” being Benjamin Netanyahu. “I can shed a little insight into the mind of the Israeli prime minister,” Dermer told the crowd, “because on that I’m something of an expert.” Two elements of the address, made just weeks after Netanyahu assumed office, explain Dermer’s ascension la...
With his attention focused on a situation that is stable, relative to its immediate surroundings, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has left many in Israel wondering if the U.S. has its foreign policy priorities straight—particularly in the Middle East. Kerry has visited Israel and the Palestinian territories five times since he started his new post in February (with the sixth, scheduled for July 11, expected to be canceled because of his wife’s health) in an effort to restart peace neg...
If you click on the Israeli army’s new Hezbollah website, you will see a red and black logo that reads, “Hezbollah, Army of Terror.” The site is a combination of graphics, text and videos, all focusing on the Lebanese-based, Iran-proxy terrorist organization and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Na’srallah. One link refers back to what Israelis call the Second Lebanon War of 2006, and in fact, the site was launched on the seventh anniversary of that 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel that was triggered by a cross-border raid by Hezbollah fighter...
GAZIANTEP, Turkey—Dr. Waja Muharram studied the tibia bone closely. The Syrian internist’s eyes darted back and forth as an American cardiovascular surgeon inserted and removed needles at a rapid pace, explaining how to provide trauma patients with intravenous fluids by tapping into the bone marrow. “We see so many victims who suffer from trauma,” noted the 41-year old Dr. Muharram. “This technique will be of great use to us in the field.” As Syria’s civil war, now in its third year, grows deadlier by the week, the country’s understaffed an...
(JTA)—Until 2009, right-wing Portuguese politician Jose Ribeiro e Castro didn’t have much interest in the expulsion of his country’s Jewish community in the 16th century. That changed once Ribeiro e Castro opened a Facebook account. Online, the 60-year-old lawmaker and journalist connected to several Sephardic Jews, descendants of a once robust Jewish community numbering in the hundreds of thousands, many of whom were forced into exile in 1536 during the Portuguese Inquisition. Eventually the encounters morphed into a commitment to recti...
Presidential bid coming? Perry says he’ll visit Israel (JTA)—Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in what observers see as a move signaling a possible White House run, said he is planning to visit Israel in October. Perry, who has announced that he will not run for a fourth term as Texas governor, told the Washington Times in an interview last Friday, “We will be going to Israel to bring together Arabs, Christian and Jews in an educational forum.” Political analysts believe the trip to the Jewish state s...
Ahmad Kamal took a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The searing summer heat was taking its toll on the 31 year old’s stamina. The obligatory fast from dawn to dusk pious Muslims observe during the month of Ramadan further weighed him down. “Our president was legitimately elected,” the mechanical engineer exclaimed as his passion spurred on a momentary burst of strength. Around him at the Raba’a al-Adawiyya mosque a crowd of men nodded in agreement. Though the Egyptian military has deposed President Mohamed Morsi and key figures...
BALTIMORE (JTA)—The first arrows Roxana and Rafael Gonzalez launch at the upcoming 19th Maccabiah Games will take flight from their fingertips, but also from Jeffrey Sudikoff’s imagination. Roxana, 25, and Rafael, 24, are part of the first Cuban delegation to participate in the Maccabiah, a quadrennial sports competition that dates back to 1932. The siblings arrived July 3 in Israel from their native Cienfuegos to continue their archery training in advance of the games, which opened July 18....
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA)—The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration—first in leading the resettlement of Jews who arrived here at the turn of the 20th century, then in absorbing hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews in the 1980s and ‘90s—HIAS is making formal its shift to refugee care and resettlement overseas. The vast majority of its work will not be with Jews, and...
CAIRO—When Brian Dennison was considering where to study Arabic abroad, the 23-year old’s choices were limited. Yemen? It has an al-Qaida affiliate that feasts on foreigners. Syria? It is enmeshed in a civil war where dodging fighter jet bombings is the latest fad. Saudi Arabia was too conservative and Lebanon too Western. Egypt seemed the perfect fit—it was full of quality Arabic schools, Westerners with whom to socialize and ancient ruins at which to marvel. But the Virginia native’s dream took an unexpected turn two weeks ago when the cou...
(JTA)—In their Krakow home, Anna Makowka Kwapisiewicz and her husband, Piotr, skim through an online article about Poland’s recent ban on kosher slaughter. What they find even more disturbing than the actual news are the comments posted by other readers. Hundreds of comments calling on Jews to leave Poland have appeared beneath news articles in the days since the country’s parliament defeated a bill that would have reversed a ban on kosher slaughter, or shechitah, first imposed in Janua...
