Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(JNS) — Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist who built his career on a lie about his pro-Palestinian past, has just authored a column bemoaning the legitimization of lying in American culture. Then, just a few hours later, he publicly urged Democrats around the country to temporarily relocate to Georgia and lie about their intentions in order to vote in the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff races there. In his Nov. 11 column in the Times, Friedman announced that “the worst legacy of the Trump presidency” is that “lying has been normali...
(JNS) — Pundits will tell you that the most dangerous enemies of the Palestinian Arab cause are the Gulf kingdoms that have decided to recognize Israel, or the European countries that are moving their embassies to Jerusalem, or the American politicians who refuse to keep underwriting the Palestinian Authority’s debts. I disagree. I say that the Palestinians’ most formidable foe is archaeology. A 2,000-years-old mikvah (ritual bath) was recently uncovered in the Lower Galilee. Most people probably would never have heard about the disco...
(JNS) — Partners for Progressive Israel, a left-of-center group that is part of the American Zionist Movement, is in the midst of a 12-session “digital excursion to Israel and Palestine.” Session No. 3, which was held this past week, consisted of virtual meetings with officials of the Palestinian Authority. The Partners’ official program booklet, describing the contents of the sessions, includes a photo or illustration for each one. For the session with the P.A. meetings, the booklet reprinted the official logo of the Palestine Liberat...
(JNS) — I have a Jerry Seinfeld question. Why do Jewish celebrities keep whining about their parents? Popular actor-comedian-director Seth Rogen ignited an Internet firestorm with his recent complaint that his parents “fed [him] a huge amount of lies about Israel.” They “never told him” that “Oh, by the way, there were people [Arabs] there.” But Rogen says he now knows the truth and realizes that having a Jewish state “makes no sense.” What actually makes no sense is the notion that his parents said there were no Arabs in pre-Israel Palestine....
(JNS)—At a time when violence against Jews is on the rise around the world, should the United States provide advanced weapons to a government that actively promotes anti-Semitism? That’s the question we need to consider as the Senate debates Senate Joint Resolution 26, which would block the administration’s plan to provide Qatar with 24 attack helicopters, 2,500 Hellfire missiles and other sophisticated military hardware. Qatar is the world’s leading financer of the Hamas terrorists. Qatari money pays for the missiles that Hamas fires at kind... Full story
(JNS)—In what crazy, upside-down world does a Palestinian Arab randomly stab Jews in Jerusalem, get shot dead by Israeli policeman and then become the focus of an Associated Press article with a headline about Israelis killing Palestinians? In our crazy, upside-down world, that’s where. The latest craziness began when the terrorist was strolling through the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday morning when he happened to see a Jewish man. So, the Arab stabbed the Jew. The stabber then went a little further along, until he spotted a Jewish child wal... Full story
(JNS)—A Pennsylvania high school teacher, who says he was deprived as a teenager, is now taking it out on his students—by lying to them about Israel. Sam Schindler, co-founder and history teacher at the Stone Independent School, a private school in Lancaster, Pa., explains in The Forward this week how the “truth” about Israel was hidden from him. His teachers only taught him about the positive side of Israel, he complains. “What was kept from me then were images of the occupation, of pulverized houses, of bloody civilians and of terrified... Full story
(JNS)—There was a time when a proposed U.S. sale of sophisticated rocket systems to an Arab regime that finances terrorism against Israel would arouse fierce opposition from American Jewish leaders. So why are Jewish leaders silent in the face of the Trump administration’s announced plan to sell $300 million in advanced rocket technology to the government of Qatar? The Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, claimed at his White House meeting on April 10 that he doesn’t help terrorists. (I guess his well-paid American PR advisers told him w... Full story
(JNS)—Radical Jewish students at Harvard University are planning to hold a late “Liberation Seder” to “protest the continuing occupation by Israel.” On Thursday, April 5, six days after all other Jews around the world held their Passover seders, the Progressive Jewish Alliance held its event to protest “our community’s support for the occupation” and to ask “Are you for endless occupation, or for freedom and dignity for all?” I have a question for these students: Have you ever taken a course in the history of modern Israel? Either the answer is... Full story
(JNS)—Have you ever read a news report about a Palestinian Arab who starved to death? Even one? Of course not, because it never happens. Yet the foreign minister of Sweden is now claiming that the Palestinian Authority must provide salaries to terrorists and their families because otherwise, they will “starve.” Sweden, which was the first country in the European Union to recognize the P.A.-occupied territories as the “State of Palestine,” has given the Palestinians more than $700 million in aid since 1993. The Swedes are now in the middle of... Full story
(JNS)—The Trump administration’s conference on the situation in the Gaza Strip this week “focused on the need for the Palestinian Authority to take control over Gaza,” a White House official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. If that report is accurate, it means that the United States still doesn’t understand the basic problem in Gaza—or how to solve it. The idea that Hamas is the “bad guy” and the Palestinian Authority is the “good guy” is a fallacy that began with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and is still the mindset of too many... Full story
(JNS)vJ Street and the radical wing of the Democratic Party have worked hard in recent years to chip away at the party’s traditional support for Israel. And they’ve made some progress, to judge by recent public opinion polls, in the changes in the Democratic Party platform and the number of Democratic congressmen who have signed J Street’s letters criticizing Israel. But a speech at the AIPAC conference, made by the senior U.S. senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, has struck a powerful blow against those trends in his party. As the Senat... Full story
(JNS)—A Palestinian state in Israel’s backyard, international control over Jerusalem’s Old City and the mass expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from Judea and Samaria: Is this the “price” that President Donald Trump recently hinted Israel would have to pay? According to Arab diplomats cited by the London newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, the Trump plan for the Middle East, soon to be unveiled, includes “U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital”; the imposition of “international protection” over Jerusalem’s Old C... Full story
(JNS)—Stop the presses! A vulgar American Jewish comedian has praised a Palestinian teenage girl who assaulted an Israeli soldier. Put it on the front page! The comedian, Sarah Silverman, recently sent out a tweet demanding that Israel release Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who staged a video in which she repeatedly slapped a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. Tamimi tried, but failed, to provoke the soldier to respond in a way that would make useful propaganda. “Jews have to stand up even when—especially when—the wrongdoing is by J... Full story
(JNS)—A senior Palestinian Authority official this week declared that “Nikki Haley needs to shut up.” He’s referring to the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. If a representative of any other regime had used such language against a female American diplomat, feminists everywhere would be up in arms—and rightly so. But for some reason, Palestinian misogyny gets a pass. The P.A.’s Saeb Erekat made his ugly remark about Ambassador Haley in an interview with the Palestinian website Al-Watan Voice on Feb. 3. It came soon after... Full story
(JNS)—Ever wonder why polls consistently show that a large portion of the Israeli public supports creating a Palestinian state? How can it be that despite the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorism, violations of the Oslo Accords and non-stop anti-Israel incitement, so many Israelis seem to be in favor of establishing a Palestinian state next door? Could it be that the answer is found in the asking? Just last week, newspaper headlines announced that according to a new poll, 47 percent of Israeli Jews still support Palestinian sta... Full story
Why is it that every time a female US government official says something that the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t like, PA leaders respond by making a disparaging remark related to the fact that she is a woman? In his bizarre, two-hour rant before the Palestinian Central Council on Jan. 14, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared that US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, “wears high heels not for elegance but to use to hit anyone who attacks Israel.” When Condoleeza Rice was national security advisor, an official PA newsp... Full story
You know that critics of Israel are getting panicky when they start trotting out the old “one state” bogeyman. “As a 2-State Solution Loses Steam, a 1-State Plan Gains Traction,” a New York Times headline announced on Jan. 5, above an article so palpably absurd that it can only reflect the mad panic among advocates of Palestinian statehood as they see their dream fading away. And the fact that The Times chose to make it page one news says a lot about the fearful mindset among the left-wing news media, Israel-bashing pundits and Jewish peace c... Full story
The “P is for Palestine” children’s book that is causing so much controversy presents anti-Israel propaganda and deeply disturbing justifications for “intifada” violence. But it also contains one very important truth. Golbarg Bashi, the Iranian-born author, decided to use the device of an alphabet book to indoctrinate children with anti-Israel messages. The most incendiary part, which has been at the center of much of the public debate about the book, declares, “I is for Intifada, Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or grow... Full story
The Taylor Force Act started out as a powerful and long-overdue tool for pressuring the Palestinian Authority to stop paying terrorists. But the legislation has been diluted, weakened and compromised in so many ways that it is now a pale shadow of its former self. The Taylor Force Act has been gutted. Known in the Senate as S. 1697, the Taylor Force Act is named after a young Vanderbilt University student—and U.S. Army veteran—who was murdered by a Palestinian Arab knife-wielding terrorist in Jaffa in 2016. The lead Senate sponsor is Sen. Lin... Full story
The most prominent Jewish leader in America did not mince words when it came to the question of whether the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should have an office in Washington, D.C. In a telegram to the president, he wrote, “Our country must not permit the killers of Jewish children and the assassins of American diplomats to open an office in Washington, D.C.” But I’m not talking about last week’s news. I’m taking about 1976. The chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was Rabbi Alexander... Full story
Senior Trump administration officials reportedly are crafting a plan for Middle East peace. Based on the details that are available so far, friends of Israel have good reason for concern. According to a front-page New York Times report on Nov. 12, the administration is preparing what it considers to be an “ultimate deal” between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. There appear to be two phases to the plan. Phase one will consist of “confidence-building provisions” by each side. The problem is that Israel will be expected to make new concess... Full story
While Americans have been tearing down statues that honor people who don’t deserve to be honored, Palestinian Arabs are doing exactly the opposite. A statue honoring Saddam Hussein, the notorious dictator, terror sponsor and mass murderer, was unveiled last week in the Palestinian Authority (PA) city of Qalqilya. Technically, the statue was sponsored by the Arab Liberation Front (ALF), not the municipality of Qalqilya or the PA itself. But the PA’s district governor for the Qalqilya District, Rafi Rawajba, attended the unveiling ceremony. Raw... Full story
