Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 57
(JNS) — Three-month-old Lia Tzipora Golovnetsitz and six-month-old Aharon (Ari) Katz died on Jan. 19 at a private (pirate) daycare center in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood. Emergency services responded promptly to calls from the women running the unlicensed, unsupervised facility—two or three small apartments in a residential building—reporting that many of the children had become ill. Chaos ensued when EMTs arrived on the premises and discovered that there were more than the 50 kids under the age of three suffering from an unknown ailment...
(JNS) — Just when it appeared that President Donald Trump’s most dramatic threat was to the Iranian regime on Friday, he announced on Saturday that U.S. forces had conducted large-scale strikes on Venezuela. Even more jaw-dropping was his confirmation that dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been captured and brought to the United States to face trial. The news reverberated far beyond Caracas. This was not merely a symbolic reckoning for a narco-state spiraling into ruin. Nor was it simply overdue justice for a despot who...
(JNS) — I land at Ben-Gurion International Airport after a week in New York that feels like a lifetime. The wheels hit the tarmac with a dull thud that spurs customary applause from passengers. They’re either relieved after the long journey or clapping for arriving in the Jewish state. Before passengers are permitted to unbuckle, the pilot takes to the loudspeaker. “Welcome home,” he says in Hebrew, proceeding to highlight the bravery of the Israel Defense Forces and express hope for the swift return of the body of Ran Gvili, the last remaini...
(JNS) — Every time antisemitism spikes abroad — constantly, these days — certain Israeli pundits, politicians and members of the public leap to the same ostensibly comforting conclusion: that it will finally spur Diaspora Jews to “come home.” The reference is to well-off Westerners, not members of the tribe escaping poverty and persecution at the hands of hostile regimes. The latter is and has always been a given. Anyone imagining that the former is about to follow suit is engaged in fantasy. Nevertheless, Israel’s Aliyah and Integration...
(JNS) - The train from Jerusalem to Herzliya hums steadily along the tracks. It's full, as usual, for this time of day in the middle of the week. Voices mingle with the whir of the wheels. A mixture of languages - Hebrew, English, Russian - meld with universal sighs of weary commuters wishing to reach their destination before sundown. Suddenly, a minyan (public prayer quorum) of 10 men rises, almost simultaneously. One stands, calling out the afternoon prayer, his Yemenite accent ringing clear...
(JNS) — You can’t make this stuff up. Yet Nir Hefetz — a state witness in the ongoing bogus trial of his former boss, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu — just gave it the old college try. In an interview with Channel 12’s current-events program “Duach Matzav” (“situation report”), Hefetz made as assertion worthy of the same network’s left-wing satire program “Eretz Nehederet.” But he and his hosts, well-known Bibi-bashers Yaron Avraham and Einav Galili, discussed the claim in earnest. The chat came on the heels of a Truth Social...
(JNS) — Ron Tomer, head of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn against the “severe consequences” that would result from President Donald Trump’s slated 17 percent tariff on Israeli exports to the United States. Tomer wasn’t alone in his reaction to Trump’s new trade policy. Indeed, since “Liberation Day” was declared on April 2, forecasts of gloom and doom have been rampant, particularly among those whose view of Trump was already dim. One Israeli economist who rejects the hysteria of his...
(JNS) — The International Federation of Journalists was disturbed last month when the Israeli Cabinet voted to cut all financial ties with Haaretz, the country’s self-described “paper of record” with a proud, far-left bent. “We are extremely concerned over Israel’s authoritarian drift that undermines media pluralism and the public’s right to know,” Anthony Bellanger, the IFJ general secretary. responded to the move. “The IFJ urges the government to review its decision and stop damaging press freedom in the country by boycotting a news...
(JNS) — As soon as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of Sebastian Gorka to the post of senior director for counter-terrorism in his new administration, the anti-“Make America Great Again” crowd dusted off an old smear campaign against the former West Wing staffer. One enduring attack centers on his association with Vitézi Rend, a Hungarian merit organization established in 1920. Critics have sought to tie the group to Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross regime, despite the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry...
(JNS) — An Israeli broadcast journalist reporting on world leaders who condemned the pogrom in Amsterdam paused after quoting tweets by U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to ask a snide rhetorical question. “And guess who hasn’t responded to the antisemitic attacks in The Netherlands?” she said, sneering with unadulterated schadenfreude. “Donald Trump,” she answered, enunciating each syllable for effect, adding sarcastically that “he must be preoccupied with other matters.” Unlike this media figure and so many of...
(JNS) - The mother of Yotam Haim-who was mistakenly killed by Israel Defense Forces soldiers from the 828th "Bislach" Brigade while he, Alon Shamriz and Samer Fouad Talalka were in the process of escaping from Hamas captivity-has again exhibited the kind of spiritual superiority to which the rest of us rarely aspire, let alone achieve. On Thursday, Iris Haim posted a voice message in the brigade's WhatsApp group to express her gratitude for their elimination of the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023...
(JNS) — Tuesday evening. The conductor of the train from Jerusalem to Herzliya apologizes to passengers ahead of the first stop in Tel Aviv after Ben-Gurion Airport. “Sorry, but we can’t go any farther,” he announces over the loudspeaker. “The security situation doesn’t allow for it.” Irritated sighs could be heard from rush-hour commuters, tired mothers with cranky children and travelers with suitcases in tow. Sketchy internet connections disrupted the updated emergency alert instructing the entire country to shelter until further notic...
(JNS) — The debate on Thursday evening between U.S. President Joe Biden and predecessor Donald Trump is a gift that keeps on giving. Every syllable spoken by the two presumptive nominees continues to be the focus of both serious and comedic discourse. Only a handful of desperate straw-graspers are rejecting the consensus opinion that the incumbent’s performance revealed an unacceptable level of age-related brain fog. Even those of his ardent supporters in the media who’ve been telling us not to believe our lying eyes realized that the jig w...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden’s bait-and-switch speech last Friday evening, timed to prevent religiously observant Israelis from watching and Jerusalem officialdom from issuing a proper response, was as worrisome as it was oxymoronic. Though talking out of both sides of his mouth is typical of the confused incumbent who’s seeking re-election in November, his Shabbat performance was a doozy. Taking credit for his and his team’s “intensive diplomacy” to end the war in Gaza, he announced that Israel had “offered a comprehensive new proposal:...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden began his Earth Day speech at Prince William Forest Park in Virginia on Monday by singling out a few prominent climate-change figures in attendance. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who introduced him, was one of them. “You know, I learned a long time ago: Listen to that lady; listen to that lady,” he said. “We’re going to talk more about another part of the world, too, real quickly.” It doesn’t take a genius to guess what region he had in mind. AOC—as the member of his party’s radical...
(JNS) — Marking on Sunday six months since the Oct. 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by listing what he called the “considerable achievements” of the war in Gaza. “We have eliminated 19 of Hamas’s 24 battalions, including senior commanders,” he said. “We have killed, wounded or captured a large number of Hamas terrorists. We have cleared out Shifa [Hospital in Gaza City] and other terrorist command centers.” He went on, “We have destroyed rocket factories, command centers and weapons caches. A...
(JNS) — In a social-media post on Friday night, Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (res.) Tal Russo urged fellow anti-government activists to skip the demonstrations scheduled for the following evening. “In light of the difficult events throughout the country, security and police forces are on high alert and deployed in central locations from the Gaza Strip to the northern border,” he tweeted. “I therefore call on my comrades-in-protest against the coup to cancel tomorrow’s countrywide rallies. The situation demands it!” Russo, who served in v...
(JNS) — In a social media post on Sunday, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu blasted the Gray Lady for its gall. “After burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades on its front pages, The New York Times now shamefully calls for undermining Israel’s elected incoming government,” he tweeted, in response to a weekend editorial titled: “The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy.” He was right to fight back, as the piece not only asserted that his coalition-in-fo...
(JNS) — Let’s set aside speculation as to why President Joe Biden has yet to congratulate Israel’s former and soon-to-be prime minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, on his victory in the Nov. 1 Knesset elections. One could argue that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides’s call on Thursday—to wish Netanyahu well and say that he’s “looking forward to working together to maintain the unbreakable bond”—was a sufficient temporary stand-in for the real thing. It’s worth remembering that Biden’s got his own political hurdles to cross at the moment. P...
(JNS) — Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, the head of Israel’s falsely dubbed “center left” Labor Party, doesn’t even bother these days to temper the radicalism that makes her indistinguishable from Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On. This isn’t the sole reason that the outspoken feminist — who has boasted of carrying on the legacy of the late (assassinated) prime minister Yitzhak Rabin — is polling so poorly in the run-up to the Nov. 1 Knesset elections. Her drawing of such a comparison would be merely comical if it didn’t serve a purpose b...
(JNS) — The latest brouhaha surrounding former U.S. President Donald Trump pertains to comments he posted on Sunday about—and directed to—American Jews. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” All true, other than the “surprisingly” part. The majority of Jews in the United States wouldn’t support a Republican if their...
(JNS) — In an interview last week at the White House with Israeli Channel 12’s Yonit Levi, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated his administration’s desire to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from which his predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew in 2018. “The only thing worse than the Iran that exists now is an Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said during the one-on-one chat that was taped on the eve of his trip to the Middle East and broadcast in Israel after his arrival in the country. “And if w...
(JNS) — Despite managing to raise $160 million in New York on Thursday, at a pledging conference of the Ad Hoc Committee of the U.N. General Assembly, the head of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was not pleased. Trying to sound grateful for the ill-deserved windfall, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini simultaneously boasted about the international community’s “firm commitment” to the organization and bemoaned that the funds pledged were far from sufficient to keep the place running past the end of the...
(JNS) — The moment that some Israelis have been dreading and others happily anticipating finally arrived on Monday. Though the announcement by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of a call for the disbanding of the Knesset was virtually a foregone conclusion, it came as a bit of a surprise. Earlier in the day, it was reported that Bennett had bought his teetering coalition an additional week. This was attributed to the fact that Likud Party and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was postponing a no-confidence m...
(JNS) — The May 24 slaughter of 19 children and two adults at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, provided fresh ammunition for the rhetorical and ideological battle over gun control. Combatants in this ongoing war tend to be diehards on the left and right. The former hold firearms and those who champion the constitutional right to bear them responsible for such horrific acts of violence. The latter hail the Second Amendment and support the National Rifle Association, which backs the right of law-abiding citizens to defend t...
