Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 150
(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...
(JNS) — Joe Biden’s first eight years in the U.S. Senate (1973-1981) overlapped with the final years of his colleague Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, a fellow Democrat. Biden and Ribicoff were friends and political allies, and the newcomer benefited from the wise counsel of the elder statesman. So I wonder what the late Sen. Ribicoff would think about now-President Joe Biden visiting a foreign region where there are numerous public sites named after the terrorist who murdered Ribicoff’s niece. Next month, Biden will become the first...
(JNS) — The “West Bank” is “occupied” by Israel. Wait, no, only part of it is. The Palestinian Arabs are “stateless.” Wait, no, a large segment of the region actually is “governed by the Palestinian Authority.” These and other contradictory statements all appeared in a single article in The New York Times on April 17 by news correspondent Raja Abdulrahim. I almost feel sorry for her; she seems so confused. It’s not, however, a confusion based on facts that are perplexing or unclear. It’s based on the blatant contradictions betwee...
(JNS) — I understand that Hillary Clinton is mourning the passing of her friend and predecessor, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. But that doesn’t give her the right to revise the historical record concerning Albright and Israel. Writing in The New York Times on March 27, Clinton described Albright as “a woman of action, especially when facing injustice.” According to Clinton, Albright “understood that American power is the only thing standing between the rules-based global order and the rule of the sword.” And she “never stop...
(JNS) — A New York congressman has withdrawn his support for a pro-Israel bill, saying that J Street, which labels itself as the “home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” convinced him to change his position. This development reveals a great deal about the reasons for the ongoing tension between American Jewish critics of Israel and the rest of the Jewish community. The congressman in question is Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a first-term Democrat who represents a district that covers part of New York City (the north Bronx) and much of Westchester Count...
(JNS) — When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he’s a Palestinian Arab, of course. In any other part of the world, under any other circumstances, somebody who, for nationalistic reasons, fires a submachine gun into a crowd of civilians is recognized as a terrorist. But when Fadi Abu Shkhaydam opened fire with a submachine gun into a group of Jewish civilians in Jerusalem earlier last month, murdering tour guide Eliyahu (“Eli”) Kay and wounding four others, the word “terrorist” was nowhere to be found. The opening sentence of The New York Ti...
(JNS) — It’s the ultimate case of biting the hand that feeds you. Americans for Peace Now has launched a public assault on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations — the very organization that risked its good name and credibility by welcoming Peace Now into its ranks, despite plenty of reason to turn them away. And just to make this whole episode even uglier and more ironic, the attack by APN on the Presidents Conference is over the issue of Jerusalem — the very issue that nearly torpedoed APN’s admission to the co...
(JNS) The obvious lesson for Israel from America’s abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban is that it can’t count on the U.S. to protect it from the consequences of ceding more territory. This reality, however, is a disaster for those who have been banking on the idea of offering “American security guarantees” to facilitate additional Israeli withdrawals. It explains the recent flurry of statements from the think-tank crowd and Jewish former officials of the State Department trying to undercut the notion that the Afghanistan mess demonst...
(JNS) — While the Jewish left keeps trying to convince us that most anti-Israel hatred is not antisemitism, a new poll has found that a large majority of American Jews see things such more clearly. The poll, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, asked Jews whether certain types of anti-Israel statements or actions are antisemitic: “Saying Israel should not exist as a Jewish state” — 75 percent say it’s antisemitic “Comparing Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis” — 70 percent “Protesting Israeli actions outside an American synagogue” — 67 p...
(JNS) — Everything about the murder of Israeli teenager Yehuda Guetta shatters the myths and lies that are used by groups like J Street to promote the Palestinian cause. In a fair world, the killing and its aftermath would be an utter public-relations disaster for the Jewish left. But in the real world, things likely will turn out rather differently. Let’s start with the ironic timing. Last week, J Street announced its support for legislation by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) to penalize Israel for arresting teenage Palestinian terrorists. But...
(JNS) — Left-wing American Jewish groups are crowing about their success in postponing a vote on whether the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund can purchase private land from Arabs in Judea and Samaria. What they are celebrating is the striking of a blow at the heart of Zionism. “We’re happy to share some good news today!” began the email from Partners for Progressive Israel, the U.S. arm of Israel’s far-left Meretz Party. “Thanks to the tireless resistance work being done” by various left-wing activists, “a small victory” has be...
(JNS) — The Biden administration reportedly intends to demand that Israel return to the nine-miles-wide pre-1967 armistice lines. Should we be surprised? How dangerous would that be? And what should American Jews do about it? According to numerous media reports, an outline of the Biden plan has been prepared by Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs. Amr worked on the same issues during the Obama administration. So, it’s hardly surprising that the plan he has drafted reflects the same positions that wer...
(JNS) — When is a Palestinian terrorist not a Palestinian terrorist? When The New York Times covers up her past and hopes nobody will notice. I’m referring to a deeply troubling allegation contained in a major article in the Times on March 6, authored by its new Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley. The article focused on a Palestinian disc jockey, Sama Abdulhadi, who was recently arrested by the Palestinian Authority for performing a concert near a mosque. Incredibly, Kingsley quoted Abdulhadi and others blaming “the Israeli occup...
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Dozens of terrorists who murdered American citizens are walking free in Palestinian Authority-controlled territories. The Biden administration is preparing to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the unreformed, terror-sponsoring PA regime. PA bulldozers are damaging Jewish historical and religious sites in Judea-Samaria and building homes in areas under Israeli control. And the number one issue on the agenda of prominent American Jewish and Zionist organizations is an unkind joke about Israel on ...
(JNS) — The critics of Israel are so predictable, it’s almost funny. Over the past two weeks, as if on cue, The New York Times published an op-ed urging steps to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state; the RAND Corporation released a new study pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state; and the news media manufactured a mini-crisis between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to put more pressure on Israel to—you guessed it—agree to the creation of a Palestinian state I say “as if on cue” and...
(JNS) — It took less than a week for the Biden administration to return to the Obama-Biden policy of moral equivalency, or what I prefer to call immoral equivalency — the policy of viewing Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and their respective actions, as being on the same moral plane. On Jan. 26, just six days after the inauguration, President Joe Biden’s acting representative at the United Nations, Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills, announced that the administration supports creating a Palestinian state. In practical terms, that means...
(JNS) — Ahlam Tamimi’s name will not appear among the list of those whom President Donald Trump pardons during his final hours in office. But the Palestinian arch-terrorist might as well be—because successive U.S. administrations have treated her as if she is immune from prosecution. Tamimi played a major role in the August 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed, including American citizens Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum, and four Americans were among the 122 people who were injured. Tamimi was captured by...
