Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JNS) — What, exactly do American Jews think about the possibility of reuniting small parts of Judea and Samaria with the rest of Israel? Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, says he knows. Writing in Haaretz this w...

(JNS) — A young Israeli soldier, Amit Ben-Yigal, was stoned to death last week by Palestinian Arab terrorists. The response of the American Jewish left was appalling. However, the response of the rest of the Jewish community wasn’t much better. Eve...

(JNS)—“Annexation Would Hurt Israel” declared the headline of a May 8 op-ed in The New York Times by Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes. According to Pipes, the incorporation of any part of the Judea-Samaria territories into the State of Israel is a bad i...

(JNS)—They almost had me believing. The Saudis, that is. Last week, they almost had me believing that they are truly becoming moderate and really do accept Israel’s existence. Then the mask came off, and my hopes all came crashing down. What got my...

(JNS)—The whole world is changing—but not for J Street, which, virus or no virus, is still devoting itself to persuading members of U.S. Congress to embrace the Palestinian cause. Over the past several weeks, J Street was mobilizing its sup...

(JNS)—A Palestinian activist’s harsh response to the first Israeli fatality from the coronavirus has sparked some controversy. It’s a tempest in a teapot, but it also contains an important lesson or two. The activist, Ms. Leen Dweik, was presi...

(JNS)—Did you hear the shocking news? Sixty Congress members just signed a letter demanding that the federal government stop dismantling illegally built homes belonging to whites, though they didn’t object to the dismantling of illegal homes bui...

(JNS)—The problem of anti-Semitic intimidation on American college campuses is serious, and hopefully, U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order will help combat it. But an equally significant problem is the deeply entrenched ant...

(JNS)—Amid all the hubbub over the latest wave of Palestinian Arab rocket attacks against Israel, one extremely important part of the story passed almost unnoticed. I call it Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s dirty little secret. A new...

(JNS)—The decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to serve as one of the featured speakers at the upcoming J Street conference should trouble every supporter of Israel. It’s both a boost for the Jewish critics of Israel and a dis...

(JNS)—What would a Jewish holiday be, without an op-ed in The New York Times demanding that Israel make more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs? On Rosh Hashanah, the Times published “Shrinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” by the Israe...

(JNS)—Many parents of my age remember striving to be able to send their children to summer camp. Now, as grandparents, we see our own children doing the same. I believed then, as I do now, that summer camp is a time when children make new f...

(JNS)—For years, the pundits have been telling us that Israeli democracy is in danger because of the Arab birthrate, or because of the Jewish nation-state law, or because of the debates over the powers of Israel’s High Court. I wonder if they wil...

(JNS)—New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker seems to think that America has been supporting the creation of a Palestinian state pretty much since time immemorial. He’s badly in need of a history lesson. Booker made his latest comments in an interview with Dav...

(JNS)—Some liberal American Jewish organizations are urging U.S. President Donald Trump to oppose Israeli annexation of any part of Judea and Samaria. Some conservative Jewish organizations are urging the opposite. Good. It’s time we had a full deb...

(JNS)—In the space of 48 hours last week, four Jewish Democrats in Congress denounced Israel’s prime minister, two more Democrats wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post denouncing Israel’s prime minister, and 10 Jewish liberal groups issued a state...

(JNS)—He has engaged in “crude anti-Semitism,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. He has “consistently impugned the loyalty of American Jews,” said the American Jewish Congress. And he has compared Israel to the Nazis, which according...

(JNS)—Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has a lot of “firsts” to her credit. She is the first Palestinian Arab elected to the U.S. Congress. She is one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress. And now she is the first member of Congress to ma...

(JNS)—Like most victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism, Avraham Bromberg would have been completely forgotten if not for the persistence of the murderer’s many admirers and financial sponsors. Bromberg was just 20 years old when he was murdered. The...

(JNS)—The precise details of the forthcoming Trump administration Mideast peace plan are not yet known, but the basic principle was declared by senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at last week’s Warsaw conference. “Both sides...

(JNS)—More than three-fourths of American Jews want Israel to be reduced to just miles wide—narrower than Washington, D.C., or the Bronx. How can that be? The answer, of course, is that it can’t be. But J Street is now making that claim anywa...

(JNS)—The Palestinian Authority last week removed a photo from the website of one of its ministries because it showed a meeting of P.A. officials in which bottles of a popular Israeli juice were visible on the table. For friends of Israel, it was a...

(JNS)—The Australian government has decided that Israel’s capital should be torn in half, resuming the apartheid-like status that prevailed the last time the Arabs occupied part of Jerusalem. Would the Temple Mount be in Israel’s part of Jerus...

(JNS)—New York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg has stirred quite a hornet’s nest with her recent article declaring that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic. Others will wrestle with the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism debate. I prefer to focus on...

(JNS)—Some American pundits are slamming Israel for denying entry to Palestinian-American student Lara Alqasem. Perhaps they should take a look at America’s own laws concerning the admission of extremists before they throw mud at Israel. In 201...