Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 141
(JNS) — Harvard University’s decision to “pause” a research partnership with Birzeit University, a Palestinian university near Ramallah, was long overdue. In 2023, Israeli security forces arrested eight students from Birzeit University who were planning what was described as “an imminent terror attack.” That apparently meant that the plan wasn’t just theoretical; it was on the verge of becoming operational. Birzeit should be known as “Terror U” for its students’ active support of Hamas. For instance, a basketball championship game w...
By (JNS) — Despite all that’s happening in Israel, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, three U.S. senators—the chairs of important senate committees—are outraged over the behavior of some Jewish residents of the Shomron and Yehuda. The three—Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the committee; Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen expressing their growing...
(JNS) — The killing of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 is just another in a long line of anti-terror activities that take place outside the borders of Israel. For a country that struggles to manage mail delivery within its borders, delivering a concealed bomb to a hotel 1,000 miles away in Tehran didn’t seem to be a problem. Haniyeh’s and other recent assassinations are not one-off events, as Israel’s long arm of retribution for harm against its citizens has been seen before. Following the massacre of 11 members of the Israeli ath...
(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel since the start of the Oct. 7 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has my head spinning. His approach has been marked by a delicate balancing act that attempts to support a key ally on one hand while addressing humanitarian concerns faced by Gazan civilians on the other. However, this balancing act—some might call it “nuanced”—has led to contradictions that impact the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Remember that it began after a horde of Hamas terrorists invaded Israeli communities along the G...
(JNS) — There he was, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, lying on the floor kicking his feet in anger over the U.S. veto of a resolution for Palestinian statehood at the U.N. Security Council. Of course, I am exaggerating about the 88-year-old on the floor, but his reaction to the American veto was not too far from a 2-year-old’s tantrum. Notwithstanding that the Biden administration pressed Abbas not to go ahead with the bid for statehood, the administration’s veto must have come as somewhat of a shock to the Plestinians because...
(JNS) — With settlers in the headlines because of recent U.S. sanctions on four Israelis in Judea and Samaria who have been linked to violent attacks against Palestinians and talk about a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, one would think it was enough unwelcome news for the week. But now along comes U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and his criticism of Israel’s announced plan to add 3,000 homes to settlements in Judea and Samaria. Saying that Israel’s expansion of settlements in the territories was “inconsistent with interna...
(JNS) — Palestinian Arab journalist Bassam Tawil recently described a “fierce crackdown” on Palestinian reporters by the Palestinian Authority, including arbitrary arrests and beatings. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden, in his recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last week, emphasized the importance of “upholding democratic values.” Then the president called for the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state next to Israel—a state that would be governed by the same regime that...
(JNS) — Michigan State Sen. Sylvia Santana has publicly apologized to her state’s Arab community for the “sin” of visiting Israel earlier this month. Her only intention, she pleaded, was “to improve my understanding of matters related to Michigan.” Well, if Santana is genuinely interested in Arab-Israeli developments that are “related to Michigan,” then she didn’t have to travel 6,000 miles. All she had to do was look in her own backyard—at least four Michiganders have been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists. I’m sure the victims’ fam...
(JNS) — On his way out the door, the retiring U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, has belatedly acknowledged that he “screwed up” in one of his last major actions. He’s just the latest in a growing line of U.S. diplomats who have admitted—when it was too late—that they made significant errors in their treatment of Israel. So why does anybody still listen to them when they offer advice on the Arab-Israeli conflict? In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, Nides was asked about his outrageous tweet commenting on the June 20...
(JNS) — “Welcome to Apartheid.” That was the slogan on a placard brandished by a protester outside a home in Jerusalem’s Old City section, denouncing last week’s removal of illegal Arab squatters from the property. On one level, it was just another ordinary real estate dispute, the kind that is heard in courts every day in every city in the world. Except that this one involves Arabs, Jews and racists who believe that Jews should not be allowed to live in mostly Arab neighborhoods—like the guy with the “Welcome to Apartheid” sign. That’s ri...
(JNS) — I understand why universities boast about their most famous graduates. But should a university boast about a graduate who has claimed that members of U.S. Congress are “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby?” Brandeis University, where my daughter Alisa was a student when she was murdered in a suicide bombing in Israel in 1995 and where another one of my daughters graduated a few years later, recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Sunday New York Times headlined “University Quotas Were a Polite Way of Telling Jews Where The...
(JNS) — Harvard University is building ties with a Palestinian Arab university that supports terrorism, even though some of Harvard’s own students have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Last month, Harvard president Lawrence Bacow paid a friendly visit to Al-Quds University near Jerusalem. According to an Al-Quds press release, “he met some of the students and faculty, who expressed their enthusiasm about collaborating with Harvard on future research and educational projects.” I wonder if Bacow had a chance to discuss with the student...
(JNS) — Amid the latest wave of Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks, international condemnations of Israel and assorted other controversies, a significant recent development has received scant attention—the attempt by Palestinian Arab terrorists to shoot down an Israeli plane. It happened on April 2, when an Israel Air Force cargo plane flew over the city of Jenin. Terrorists on the ground shot at the low-flying Hercules C-130J aircraft. Video posted on social-media networks was adorned with the boastful caption, “Soldiers firing on a Zioni...
(JNS) — Media pundits spend a lot of time “explaining” to the rest of us why some political or social development just occurred. Last week, The New York Times presented what it claimed are the real reasons behind the controversy over Israeli judicial reform. The recent election results, which brought Israel a new government—and the judicial reform plan—are part of a “rightward drift” that goes back a number of years, according to the Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief Patrick Kingsley. “The failure of peace negotiations with the Palestinians in the...
(JNS) — Elan Ganeles of Connecticut was murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists this week, thus becoming the 147th American citizen to be killed by Palestinians since 1968. Yet not a single Palestinian Arab terrorist has ever been brought to the United States to stand trial for any of those crimes. Think about that: 147 dead Americans and not one prosecution. The problem is not that we can’t find the suspects. The whereabouts of some of them are already known to the authorities. In fact, the Israeli government has publicly identified some of...
(JNS) — The Palestinian Authority and its supporters have a new enemy: the Louvre. The world’s most-visited museum, the famous French institution that holds some of the greatest works of art and antiquities, is likely to find itself on anti-Israel boycott lists around the world. This is because among the Louvre’s storied collections is a slab of stone with an inscription that affirms the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The stone, known as the Mesha Stele, was first discovered in 1868 near the Dead Sea, but its i...
(JNS) — Twice in recent weeks, Arab workers from Gaza have been arrested in Israel for terrorist activity. Can you imagine what would happen if 100,000 Gazans were being admitted to Israel every day? That’s not just idle speculation. A proposal for Israel to admit 100,000 workers from Gaza every day was promoted a few years ago by a former State Department official. It was just one in a long series of attempts by the ex-State Department crowd to pressure Israel into making risky one-sided concessions to the Arabs. In the aftermath of the rec...
(JNS) — A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what happens when that picture contradicts the very article it accompanies? That’s what the editors at The New York Times should be asking themselves in regard to their Oct. 26 article concerning Israel’s recent counterterrorist operations. Times correspondent Isabel Kershner reported that the IDF has targeted “the Nablus-based militia known as the Lions’ Den, which emerged this year.” Well-organized, heavily armed terrorist groups do not suddenly “emerge.” Moreover, the Palestinian Aut...
(JNS) — For more than 50 years, Israel’s critics have claimed that if Israelis would just agree to create a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would live in peace with them. Well, last month, Israel’s prime minister offered to create a Palestinian state. How did the Palestinians respond? Is the long-promised peace at last dawning upon the Middle East? Not quite. At the United Nations on Sept. 22, Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced his willingness to create a non-terrorist Palestinian state. Did the Palestinian Arab leadership respond by an...
(JNS) — What do you do if Israel’s prime minister makes a speech that includes some statements you don’t like? If you’re the left-wing lobby J Street, you just edit out the parts with which you disagree, thus fooling the public into thinking that the prime minister never said them. That’s what happened with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s speech at the United Nations on Sept. 22. J Street loved his line about “two states for two peoples” and immediately issued a press release “welcoming and commending” Lapid for using those “extremely im...
(JNS) — You didn’t read about it in The New York Times or see the footage on CNN, but last week, yet another Jew walking near a synagogue was brutally beaten by assailants yelling “Kill the Jews!” The mob assault took place on Aug. 26, near the synagogue at Kever Shmuel, the Tomb of the Prophet Samuel, which is located close to the northern edge of Jerusalem. A cell-phone video of the attack has been shown by the Israeli media but has been ignored by the international media. It shows the screaming attackers—many waving PLO flags, piling on...
(JNS) — The Biden administration is claiming that Israel has not provided evidence that the seven NGOs whose offices it closed down last week were tied to a terror group. Yet there is a mountain of publicly-available evidence proving the existence of such ties—and some of it comes from the U.S. government itself. The administration was clear in its support of the NGOs. U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the administration “voiced our concern” about Israel’s actions. Disputing Israel’s assertion that the groups were connected t...
(JNS) — The families of the Israeli athletes massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics have announced a boycott of an upcoming 50th-anniversary commemoration in Germany. They’re protesting the inadequate level of compensation provided by the German government, and I fully support their position. But let’s not forget that one of the masterminds of the massacre heads a regime that is currently receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect aid each year from the United States, Germany and numerous other countries. I am refer...
(JNS) — It’s summertime! For most children, that means campfires, nature hikes and outdoor games like “Capture the Flag.” For kids in the regions governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, it means weapons training, skits in which the children pretend to kidnap and murder Jews, and lectures on the importance of destroying Israel. Hillary Clinton once called it “Palestinian child abuse.” One glance at the campers’ daily schedule explains why. The Central Hebron branch of Fatah, the major faction of the P.A., has posted on its website d...
(JNS) — The bullet that the Palestinian Authority handed over to U.S. officials may or may not have been the one that killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin earlier this year. The bullet may or have been too damaged to determine conclusively whose gun it came from. The bullet may or may not have been fired by an Israeli soldier. All that matters is who bears responsibility—legal and moral responsibility—for Akleh’s death. And it has been indisputably clear from day one who the guilty parties are: the Palestinian Arab terrori...
