Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The elections that have just taken place in Israel and the United States each boiled down to a contest between dragons and dragon-slayers. The difference is this: Israeli Jews mostly recognize who are the dragons and who are their slayers. American Jews mostly can’t work out which is which. In Israel, the dragons are the Palestinians, who want to kill Israeli Jews and steal their land, as well as the Islamic revolutionary leaders of Iran, who want to kill Israeli Jews and destroy their land. In last week’s election, the Israeli publi...
(JNS) — It has often been said that the media is a pillar of democracy because it keeps our politicians honest. Lifting the veil of secrecy in which authorities like to cloak themselves, revealing inconvenient truths that expose the inadequacies and worse of government actions and subjecting all politicians to forensic questioning without bias—this is how the media acts in the public interest. But when the media doesn’t deliver, truthfulness goes out of the window, propaganda and ignorance take over and democracy stumbles. We see this in much...
(JNS) — Diaspora Jews worry about how to deal with the current tsunami of antisemitism that is washing through the world. They also worry about how to deal with the anti-Zionism and demonization of Israel that are now the default position for “progressives” in the West. Most painful of all, they observe with horror that Jews themselves are increasingly involved in the onslaught against Israel. However, there’s a problem that’s even more fundamental to the well-being of the Jewish people. It’s that Diaspora Jews are increasingly turning awa...
(JNS) — Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the breakout time for Iran to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon had now come down to “a matter of weeks.” This is clearly deeply alarming news. But why did Blinken choose to announce this to the world? After all, it invites the question, “So what are you going to do about it?” Blinken told the hearing that renewing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which lifted sanctions in return for limitations on its nuclear program,...
(JNS) — The onslaught against Ukraine by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is a horrific tragedy for all Ukrainians as well as a crisis for Europe and the west in general. Nevertheless, for the Jewish people, it has special and deeply troubling resonance. During the Holocaust, an estimated 1.2 million to 1.4 million Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered. Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s heroic president who is inspiring its resistance, is a Jew who lost relatives in that cauldron. Now Ukraine’s Jewish community, which carries a long history of trau...
(JNS) — The campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel has recently moved into a higher gear with the increased use of one particularly vicious falsehood. This is the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. The claim is as fatuous as it is pernicious. Apartheid was the name given to South Africa’s systematic oppression of its black inhabitants, who were denied political, civic and human rights. By contrast, Arab Israeli citizens have fully equal rights. They study in Israel’s universities; enjoy Israel’s beaches and parks; receive equal trea...
(JNS) Diaspora Jews have a collective history of constant migration. Ethnically cleansed hundreds of years ago from their ancient homeland in Israel, they wandered between continents that periodically persecuted them, threw them out or barred them altogether. How, then, should Jews approach today’s phenomenon of the mass migration of peoples? All over the world, millions are on the move from the impoverished and violent developing world to the West in search of a better and safer life. On America’s border with Mexico, tens of thousands are try...
By (JNS) — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, got himself into an unfortunate mess during the COP26 conference on climate change held in Glasgow, Scotland. After he claimed that politicians who failed to take the necessary action to halt climate change would be viewed in an even worse light than those who had ignored the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he was asked whether that meant failure to act on climate change would be worse than allowing genocide to happen. He replied: “It will allow a genocide on an infinitely greater sca...
(JNS) — Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, was a senior foreign-policy adviser in the Trump administration. Now an op-ed by Kushner published in The Wall Street Journal has caused jaws to drop. Kushner was a key mover behind the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf States. This agreement, brokered by Trump, was the most significant move towards peace in the Middle East for the best part of a century. In parallel, Trump’s U.S. withdrawal in May 2018 from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, coupled with the re-imposition of s...
(JNS) - The World Council of Churches has gone full theological incitement against the State of Israel. In a recent Zoom webinar with more than 300 Christian activists to promote a film about the former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and pro-Palestinian activism of Michel Sabbah, Rev. Frank Chikane, the moderator of the WCC's Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, went much further than the usual falsehoods about Israel's "brutality" toward the Palestinians. "We need to begin to say to those who support Israel to brutalize...
(JNS) — A row over anti-Semitism that has erupted in Britain illuminates the problem that bedevils so many in the West over their understanding of what Judaism actually is. The controversy started with a tweet by the Labour Party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, congratulating the new head of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, on his appointment. Rayner described Sarwar, who is of Pakistani descent, as “the first-ever ethnic minority leader of a political party anywhere in the U.K.” Sarwar is certainly the first Muslim or Asian leader...
(JNS) — The U.S. presidential election has illustrated more graphically than ever before that we are living beneath an erupting civilizational volcano. The flaming cultural lava is spreading well beyond America. We have to wonder whether we are now watching the steady asphyxiation in the West of both liberalism and democracy. Nowhere is waiting with greater apprehension for the eventual outcome of the election than Israel. If President Donald Trump is finally edged out, the recent startling prospects for peace in the Middle East may well be e...
(JNS) — There is clearly no limit to the depths of moral perversity that the enemies of President Donald Trump are prepared to plumb, not least within America’s Jewish community. The Jewish Democratic Council of America has released a new campaign ad aimed at Jewish voters in swing states that compares Trump’s presidency to the rise of fascism in Germany. The ad features parallel images of anti-Semitism and nationalism in Nazi Germany and today’s America. There are images of anti-Semitic graffiti from 1930s Germany, along with similar attacks...
(JNS) — After days of anti-Semitic rants on social media, the “Grime” rapper Wiley has finally been barred from Twitter and Facebook following outrage by Jews and others that he was allowed to use these platforms for his vicious incitement. This episode was particularly chilling. It involved a sustained onslaught of anti-Jewish invective by a prominent public figure who described Jews as “cowards and snakes,” likened them to the Ku Klux Klan and suggested they should be shot. He could do this with impunity because no one saw fit to stop him...
(JNS) — Should Jewish communal organizations aim to achieve consensus above all or bear witness to the truth? Both in the Diaspora and in Israel, Jews are divided over politics, religion and worldview. These arguments, moreover, generally carry an emotionally fraught sub-text; that the opposing side threatens to undermine Jewish security and the existence of the Jewish people. This makes it even more difficult for Jewish organizations whose aim is to protect and defend the Jewish people from ever saying anything about contentious issues of t...
(JNS)—While countries around the world struggle to get on top of the COVID-19 crisis, Israel’s achievement so far has been remarkable. Its mortality rate from the virus has been vastly smaller, in proportion to its population, than the rate in countries such as Britain, Sweden or the United States. That’s largely because it tackled the virus with the kind of bold, strategic approach with which it defends itself against its physical foes. This week, with new cases reduced to a few dozen, it started to lift a wide range of restrictions on publi...
(JNS)—Leave aside, for the moment, the deepening rows about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision” for ending the Middle East conflict. Leave aside the question whether the plan’s lead author, Jared Kushner, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, backtracked on an “immediate” Israeli declaration of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the “Triangle” of disputed territory (they didn’t; the need to first map out and agree on the details was stated from the start). Leave aside the uproar among Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,... Full story
(JNS)—Leave aside, for the moment, the deepening rows about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision” for ending the Middle East conflict. Leave aside the question whether the plan’s lead author, Jared Kushner, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, backtracked on an “immediate” Israeli declaration of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the “Triangle” of disputed territory (they didn’t; the need to first map out and agree on the details was stated from the start). Leave aside the uproar among Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,... Full story
(JNS)—Britain now has its first celebrity prime minister. On Tuesday, Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Tory Party following Theresa May’s resignation over her failure to deliver Brexit. On Wednesday, Johnson “kissed hands” with the Queen and thus succeeded Mrs. May as Britain’s PM. As with all social or political developments of note, the Jewish world is predictably asking about this one: “Will it be good for the Jews?” Johnson has entertained and scandalized Britain for years through his many scrapes, his jokes, his politically i... Full story
(JNS)—The Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has made a number of anti-Semitic remarks, is currently embroiled in controversy over her marriage history. When claims against her of bigamy and immigration fraud first emerged in 2016, Omar accused the journalists involved of “Islamophobia.” Omar has also made a claim being heard more and more: that Muslims are called anti-Semites only because they are Muslim. In other words, anyone who calls out Muslim anti-Semitism is Islamophobic. This twisted claim is a way of making Musli... Full story
(JNS)—A few days ago, Britain’s Daily Telegraph revealed that in 2015 the British authorities had uncovered a Hezbollah terrorist plot. The key point was that this had been kept secret until now. In a bomb factory on the outskirts of London, a total of three metric tons of ammonium nitrate was discovered—more than was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people—stashed in ice packs. This was apparently no rogue plot, but part of an international Hezbollah operation laying the groundwork for future attacks. The London cell wa... Full story
(JNS)—Why is anti-Semitism now out of control in the West? Jew-hatred, alas, is always with us. The most we can expect is that it is kept down by unequivocal social disapproval. What causes it to explode into an uncontrolled epidemic is the weakening of that powerful social stigma. After the Holocaust, the enormity of that crime was such that anti-Semitism went underground. Any such expressions that did occur were regarded as the province of cranks on the fringes of society who were accordingly shunned. What tells you the Jews are in trouble i... Full story
(JNS)—If there’s one concept in Western progressive circles that is deemed essential for a decent society, it’s “social inclusion.” The promotion of diversity is assumed to be morally unchallengeable. That’s also the prevalent attitude among Jews in both America and Britain. Many if not most support liberal immigration policies and equate anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia.” The belief is that those who are against immigration and diversity will be against the Jews too. In fact, the opposite is the case. The default narrative on the left is ven... Full story
(JNS)—Ever since President Donald Trump astounded the world by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, commentators have been trying to work out the significance of this decision. Among those conservatives who believe America should make alliances against the enemies of the West and then stand by those allies, there has been shock and consternation. A number of Israeli analysts have expressed similar dismay. The cause of the concern is obvious. By withdrawing the 2,000 or so U.S. troops stationed in the border area between Iraq, Sy... Full story
(JNS)—Once again, Hezbollah flags flew in London last weekend at the Iran-supporting “Al Quds” march in Britain’s capital city. Hezbollah, the proxy army of the Iranian regime, is responsible for numerous murderous attacks around the world against Jews, Americans and other Western interests. No matter. The march—an annual London fixture, no less—featured calls for Israel to be wiped from the map, and was led by a man who previously made the deranged claim that “Zionists” were behind an appalling London apartment block fire last year in which m... Full story
