Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — It’s very troubling that President Joe Biden said during his Democratic National Convention speech that “those [anti-Israel] protesters out in the street, they have a point.” Similarly, during her interview with The Nation in July, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that the anti-Israel “protesters” “are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. … I understand the emotion behind it.” What exactly is the point of anti-Israel, anti-American terror-affiliated rioters? (“Protesters” is way too mild a term f...
On the very same day when over three hundred thousand Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, travelled to Washington, D.C., to support Israel’s efforts to prevent Hamas from ever slaughtering innocent Jews again, President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved 10 billion dollars of additional sanctions relief to the Iranian terror regime. It is beyond recklessly irresponsible, sickening and frightening that the Biden administration authorized releasing money to the Islamic Republic of Iran, while Iran is funding Hamas’ and Hezbo...
(JNS) — “Sex and the City” fans appropriately expressed outrage after SATC’s reboot “And Just Like That” made an offensive joke about the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day. They further charged that the show was permeated with overdone “woke-ism.” But other deeply disturbing things about AJLT received little to no notice. First, AJLT repeatedly promoted the dangerous George Soros-funded Israel-bashing propaganda organization Human Rights Watch. This became even worse in the just-aired AJLT Season 2, which also displays giant HRW signs...
(JNS) — For many decades, during Shabbat services, Conservative and Religious Zionist Orthodox congregations have recited the heartfelt Prayer for the State of Israel, written by Israel’s chief rabbis in 1948. The Conservative movement’s Sim Shalom prayer books seem to solely use the prayer’s first paragraph. Reconstructionist Jews, in their Kol Haneshamah prayer books, have also adopted the prayer’s first paragraph, with minor modifications, and made more modifications to latter portions of the prayer. The prayer’s widely-used first paragraph...
(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides has persisted in interfering in Israel’s internal affairs, egregiously violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Affairs, which requires diplomats to “respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state” and “not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.” While collaborating on foreign matters of mutual interest (such as working together to counter Iran) would be welcome, interfering in Israel’s internal affairs is off limits. Yet Nides regularly makes hostile demands and e...
(JNS) — Several days ago, I returned from attending the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (“CoP” or the “Conference”) leadership mission in Israel, along with the leaders of approximately 20 other American Jewish organizations that are Conference members. The mission’s sole purpose was supposed to be to learn directly from Israel’s key elected leaders about vital and serious issues that confront Israel so that American Jewish leaders can be better informed when they address their communities, the media and Con...
It is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination is impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. We Americans do not let threats of violence stop us from changing a discriminatory “status quo.” Thus, threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots did not stop the U.S. government from ending the longstanding “status quo” of segregated schools, “whites only” drinking fountains and practices that prevented Jews and blacks from living in many neighborhoods. Instead, we stood up to the racist Black-hating terrorists....
(JNS) — “Democracy is at stake” was a major theme voiced by President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party throughout the recent U.S. midterm elections. For instance, during a Nov. 2 speech entitled “On Standing Up for Democracy,” in which Biden accused “MAGA Republicans” of voter intimidation, the president asserted: “Democracy is fundamental. … Democracy is on the ballot for all of us. … Autocracy is the opposite of democracy. It means the rule of one: one person, one interest, one ideology, one party. … Democracy is under attack because … [of...
(JNS) — In an interview published on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides again used his phony assertion that he is “trying not to do things to agitate people” as a pretext for boycotting (“not visiting”) Jewish communities in the lawful and historic Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria where more than 500,000 or almost 10 percent of Israel’s Jews live. The only people who are “not agitated” by Nides’ boycott are the terrorist dictatorship of the Palestinian regime, Israel-haters and Jew-haters and extremist leftists. Yet his...
During her remarks at the United Nations Security Council on Oct. 19, 2021, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the UNSC to reduce its criticism of Israel and adopt "a more balanced approach." But then Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield engaged in the same type of unbalanced criticism of Israel that she complained about. The U.S. Ambassador exaggerated and condemned "violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians and their property,"...
At least twice this week, far-left Jew-hating Congressional Squad members again endangered Jewish (and Arab) lives. On Sept. 21, Squad members ― led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), and also including Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) ― coerced the Democratic House leadership to remove $1 billion of funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, by threatening to vote against a key Democratic bill to increase the debt ceiling and continue funding the...
By Morton A. Klein and Elizabeth A. Berney (JNS) — J Street just released a new deceptive “push poll” that, like J Street’s previous “polls,” uses shady practices to grossly overstate Jewish community support for J Street’s anti-Israel agenda and for J Street’s endorsed presidential candidate Joe Biden. J Street employed classic “sampling error” to distort its poll results in its favor: J Street surveyed a group that included a far lower percentage of Republican Jews than is present in the overall Jewish population. J Street’s sample gro...
(The Jewish Advocate) — The relentless, previously failed attempts of extremist groups J Street and New Israel Fund to demonize, silence, and “cancel” strong defenders of Israel and the Jewish people, is now being repeated by JCRC (“JCRC pushed to oust ZOA,” The Jewish Advocate, Sept. 4, 2020), who always prided itself on dialogue and having a “ big tent.” Yet I was never contacted about these false allegations. Shamefully, J Street, NIF, Women of Reform Judaism, The Workers Circle — previously Workmen’s Circle — etc. filed a baseless, ludicro...
(JNS) — A recent JNS article needs to more clearly expose the true identity of the signers and originators of a falsehood-filled letter to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations . The letter maligned me and the Zionist Organization of America for appropriately opposing the election of HIAS chair Dianne Lob to become chair of the Conference of Presidents, and for explaining how HIAS’s activities conflict with the Conference’s missions of helping Jews and Israel. The letter misleadingly identified its signers as carin...
ZOA urges Joe Biden to retract his profuse praise of extremist anti-Israel J Street and to reject J Street’s and far-left Israel-bashing socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ endorsements. ZOA also urges Biden to retract his anti-Israel video remarks at AIPAC last month, condemning and threatening Jewish communities and lawful Israeli sovereignty in Judea-Samaria. (Biden failed to attend AIPAC in person.) Biden’s remarks and embrace of these radical endorsements do great harm to bipartisan support for Israel. Inappropriately, during his pre-recorde... Full story
(JNS)—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commonly known as AIPAC, recently made headlines in almost every major media outlet when it wrongly and publicly criticized Israel’s just and proper decision to refuse to admit Jew-hating Israelophobes Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for a trip to so-called “Palestine” sponsored by a terror-promoting group Miftah. The congresswomen’s trip was designed to demonize Israel with numerous propaganda events to incite hatred and boycotts, divestment and sanctions against I... Full story
(JNS)—As part of the Palestinian Authority’s latest ploy to avoid direct negotiations with Israel, it is now absurdly claiming that United Nations Resolution 181, passed by the U.N. General Assembly in November 1947, gave Palestinian Arabs a “right” to a state and the “right” to U.N. membership. In fact, U.N. Resolution 181 merely recommended partitioning the remaining 22 percent of the Palestine Mandate into Jewish and Arab states. (The British previously wrongfully carved off 78 percent of the mandate, which Britain held in trust for reestab... Full story
It’s painfully shocking that Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt recently wrote on ADL’s website: “it is a horrific tragedy that so many people have been killed and wounded at the Gaza border.” (“ADL Statement on Violence at Israel-Gaza Border,” May 15, 2018.) This broad statement was not limited to the tiny minority who were not members of a terrorist group. (And even that small minority joined the violent riots whose goal was to breach Israel’s border fence to descend upon nearby Jewish communities, schools, and day care centers... Full story
French President François Hollande is disturbed that President Donald Trump criticized a U.S. ally, describing the terrorism that has plagued France in recent years as the product of an open border policy. Yet it is Hollande who should self-reflect on his own criticism of a French ally. “Take a look at what’s happening in Germany,” Trump said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. “Take a look at what’s happened in France. Take a look at Nice and Paris. We fully understand that national security begins with border security.... Full story
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) recent statements essentially criticizing the election victory by Donald Trump and Mike Pence are inappropriate and harmful. The front page of the ADL’s website features a blurb and link to an ADL blog post titled “White Supremacists Celebrate Trump’s Victory” (Nov. 10) that deceptively seems to tie President-elect Trump to former KKK leader David Duke and Jew-hating neo-Nazis—while never mentioning Trump’s repeated repudiations of David Duke and neo-Nazis. The ADL post also never mentions that the Trump/Pen... Full story
Egyptian Muslim President Gen. Abdul Fateh al-Sisi’s address to Egypt’s religious leaders at Al-Azhar University on Jan. 1, 2015, called for Muslim religious officials to lead a “religious revolution” to stop Muslims throughout the world from killing and causing destruction. This starkly contrasts with President Obama’s angry tirade on June 14, 2016, condemning those who criticize the president and his administration for refusing to use the term “radical Islam.” Pres. al-Sisi courageously and properly urged Muslim religious leaders that... Full story
What would have happened if Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t been murdered? Would history have been altered? Not according to former IDF Intelligence head and Labor Party frontbencher, Amos Yadlin, speaking last week. “He would have lost the elections in any event to Binyamin Netanyahu in ‘96. The public atmosphere in the country was that the Oslo process failed, the terror attacks of [Islamic] Jihad and Hamas were unacceptable and Rabin himself would have reconsidered Oslo. I have no doubt that he lost his trust, if he even had i... Full story
As has been typical throughout all the years that President Obama has been in office, his latest holiday message to Jews differs significantly from his holiday message to Muslims in troubling ways for the Jewish community. In past years, President Obama’s Rosh Hashanah messages hardly mention the word “Jew” or “Judaism,” while his messages on Ramadan frequently mention the word “Islam” and “Muslim.” In addition, the president has never lectured Muslims on how to behave or urged them to repent for their sins. Yet Obama’s Rosh Hashanah messages f... Full story
(ALGEMEINER)—There were very good reasons why the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the Conference) clearly voted against the membership application of J Street , an extremist group whose activities are hostile to Israel. The key stated missions of the Conference are “mobilizing support to halt Iran’s nuclear program,” “counter[ing] the global campaign to delegitimize Israel and the Jewish people,” “bolster[ing] Israel’s security” and “combating terrorism and anti-Semitism.” J Street ’s actions are clearly at... Full story
Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) are engaging in negotiations refused for years by the PA. Yet, only weeks ago, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash delivered a paean to Shekih Ahmad Yassin, founder and leader of Hamas, the terrorist organization that has murdered hundreds of Israelis in scores of suicide bombings, calling him a Palestinian “icon.” How can peace talks and glorifying a terrorist chieftain coexist in the PA? Al-Habbash gave us the answer this summer, when he justi... Full story