Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The loudest Israeli message to the Biden administration was sounded by Defense Minister Benny Gantz during his appearance last week at the Israeli-American National Council Summit in Hollywood, Fla. Gantz said that he had notified his counterparts in the U.S. government that he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is far from the first indication that Israel is stepping up preparations for acting on its own to prevent Iran from attaining the status of a nuclear power. But for...
(JNS) — ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt deserves credit. On Dec. 7, he posted two tweets. He urged CAIR to condemn their San Francisco Bay area executive director Zahra Billoo for her “textbook vile, #antisemitic, conspiracy-laden garbage attacking the mainstream U.S. Jewish community” and sounding like a white supremacist. Unsurprisingly, CAIR stood by Billoo. They condemned Greenblatt instead. Days later on Dec. 12, Greenblatt expanded, tweeting about Billoo’s “classic conspiratorial antisemitism,” noting that Billoo’s sp...
B(JNS) — The Oct. 9, 1982, Palestinian terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome, in which two-year-old Stefano Gaj Tachè was killed, and the blood of 37 others who were wounded flowed on the stones of the building that should have been the safest refuge for Jews in the Italian capital, was a double slap in the face — not only by the murderers, but by those who didn’t lift a finger to defend their victims. According to a front-page story in the left-leaning Italian daily, Il Riformista, Italian authorities had been warned that an attack...
(JNS) Diaspora Jews have a collective history of constant migration. Ethnically cleansed hundreds of years ago from their ancient homeland in Israel, they wandered between continents that periodically persecuted them, threw them out or barred them altogether. How, then, should Jews approach today’s phenomenon of the mass migration of peoples? All over the world, millions are on the move from the impoverished and violent developing world to the West in search of a better and safer life. On America’s border with Mexico, tens of thousands are try...
(JNS) — A Knesset committee headed by Meretz Party member Moshe (“Mossi”) Raz recently sounded the alarm — sirens, even — over a supposed rise in settler violence against innocent Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. The figures provided by Yesh Din, which calls itself a non-governmental organization, do seem alarming. Of course, Yesh Din only deals with violence against Palestinians, not against Israelis. The organization has counted over 1,400 acts of violence since 2012 — 416 of them in the first half of this year. However, neither the...
In October, I wrote about the president’s announced shift from a foreign policy strategy of military intervention to a policy of “relentless diplomacy”; and the challenges he will face in dealing with Iran and with increased Palestinian intransigence toward any concessions in the conflict with Israel (“Everywhere,” Oct. 22, 2021) I also opined in that column, that the president conveyed a subtle message of reluctance to back up his “relentless diplomacy” with hard power coming on the heels of the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan....
Recent reports have slammed Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert for comments that were offensive to her colleague, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Boebert shared a security-related incident in the U.S. Capitol, quipping that she saw Congresswoman Omar, noticed she didn’t have a backpack, so everything would be fine. Since her comment, Boebert has been slammed by the media, other congressional members, and more. There have been calls for her to be censured. Omar herself called out Boebert for “real consequences” of her “anti...
In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s-hole of a city.” The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger. Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times, but thought little of it. Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder — the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Ang...
Dear Editor: It is not surprising that anyone who subscribes to all Democratic narratives would advocate that all high schools should receive the Critical Race Theory — the pseudo-intellectual formula for anti-white racism and continuation of the war on the American Experiment that motivates the “progressive” element of the Democrat Party. This “theory” is the brilliant condemnation of our historical development by tenured professors in social sciences whose teaching careers featured Marxism for students from wealthy homes in elite colleges...
(JNS) — Though Palestinian leaders are sworn enemies of Israel—and have vowed to destroy the Jewish state — they still have many supporters among radicals on the far left in the United States and Europe. Much of this support comes not from a factual analysis of the issues surrounding this hundred-year conflict, but rather from sympathy for the perceived “underdog.” In many cases, Israel’s enemies are misinformed; others cynically support the Palestinians by telling lies about Israel’s “apartheid,” “genocide” or “occupation of Palest...
The major instigators of antisemitism today come from the radical right, radical left and radical Islam. Even though these three major groups despise each other, and would like to destroy each other, they are united in their irrational hate of the Jewish people. These haters of Israel and Jews, are distorting and manipulating the important concepts of advancing human rights, fighting foreign occupations, pursuing peace and equality, in order to make them fit into a new narrative of “intersectionality.” Meaning, antisemites and ant...
(JNS) — Renewed negotiations over a return to or revision of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 — kicked off in Vienna on Monday with feigned fanfare. The Islamic Republic has made it clear that no agreement can be discussed, let alone reached, unless all sanctions hindering the regime’s operations are removed. It has also been engaging in double-speak, bragging about its strides in uranium-enrichment, on the one hand, while i...
(Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security via JNS) — Ahead of the return to nuclear talks in Vienna, the Biden administration declared that the United States would not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and that the preferred way to achieve that goal was through a diplomatic solution. If negotiations fail, the United States has “other means” at its disposal, according to the administration, but unfortunately, it has not elaborated. These statements by the administration have hindered rather than encouraged efforts to block Iran...
(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) — When Elmer Davis, director of FDR’s Office of War Information, observed that “ … you cannot do much with people who are convinced that they are the sole authorized custodians of Truth and that whoever differs from them is ipso facto wrong,” he may well have been speaking about those well-meaning but misguided college students who rail against a world in which their dreams of social justice for the oppressed and weak are not being realized, despite their best efforts. That same tendentious behavior now seems to be exploited by editors of...
“We recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.” So spoke Texas school superintendent Lane Ledbetter, apologizing for North Texas school administrator Gina Peddy’s remark, surreptitiously recorded by someone among a group of teachers, that they should “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has opposing, that has other perspectives.” “How do you oppose the Holocaust?” an unidentified and understandably puzzled participant was heard to ask. Well, you don’t, of course. Which is what Ledbetter felt the n...
(JNS) — Chanukah is a joyous time, as it should be. But many Jews celebrate it superficially, merely by eating latkes and sufganiyot, spinning dreidels and exchanging gifts. While some light a menorah to commemorate the miracle of the last pure jar of oil that lasted eight days, most don’t appreciate the full story of the holiday or its modern-day implications. Though Jews like to quip about this holiday and others that “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat,” the real Chanukah story is one of incredible bravery, commitment, determina...
(JTA) — Allegations of child sexual abuse against Chaim Walder, the author of children’s books beloved in the haredi Orthodox market, and the uncharacteristically swift and harsh community response, have left many wondering if this case could mark the turning point in how the community addresses sexual abuse. As an abuse survivor who supports and advocates for victims of sexual abuse in Orthodox communities, it’s a question I’ve been asked many times over the last week. That was when Mordy Getz, owner of Eichler’s of Boro Park, a Judaica s...
(JNS) — Ever since President Thomas Jefferson first coined the phrase in 1802, Americans have debated exactly how high the “wall of separation” should be between religion and state. The debate continues to this day. These discussions reflect a basic truth about the central role that faith has always played in the public square of the republic since it first came into existence. But if there is any point about the intersection between religion and state that is settled and not open to disputation, it is the one about whether the United State...
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof …” It is not just by chance that these profound words were chosen to be the very first words of the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The first colonists to escape to the New World were motivated by a desire to escape the rigid and mandated religious practices and domination of the Church of England. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century replaced rigid Catholic Church domination of the political and religious life in Europe in areas wher...
Up until about six months ago “CRT” was an abstract for me. I had been hearing about “CRT” for more than a year. I did not know what the letters “CRT” stood for. Now I know. They stand for “Critical Race Theory.” It professes to teach the role of race in our lives since the Civil War to high school students. I really finally found out this fall, during the run for governor of Virginia what effect CRT is having politically. It CANNOT have an effect on education because it is NOT being taught in ANY school district in the U.S. politically? In...
(JNS) — Many critics of Israel have joined Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in denouncing Israel because courts have determined that a group of Palestinian families are illegally living in homes owned by Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Rather than accept a compromise offered by the Supreme Court that would have allowed them to stay in their homes, the families turned it down and now face eviction (As of Wednesday, one of the families that did not appeal the eviction order reached a deal with the property owners that w...
(JTA) — I live in one of the most concentrated Jewish communities in the United States, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and I no longer have a daily morning minyan to attend in person. It seems that in my neighborhood, as well as many others, COVID-19 snuffed out the live morning minyan — the daily prayer service that needs a quorum of 10 Jews — in non-Orthodox settings. Pre-pandemic I had a choice of multiple minyans I could attend in a variety of egalitarian Jewish settings — synagogues and schools — but none of them is operating in-person...
(JNS) — Many of us know the themes of the Chanukah story: pride in being Jewish; the few against the many; the defeat of our enemy; and the rededication of the Jewish Temple. Or perhaps some have only learned of the miracle of the oil and how it burned continuously for eight days. While these are important themes, there is much more to the Chanukah story that is at the heart of why we celebrate the holiday and why it’s so relevant today. Looking at the story of Chanukah, which happened in the second century BCE, we know that many Jews of tha...
“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand cease to function. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy!” (Psalm 137:5-6) There’s no place that’s more central to Jews and Christians than Jerusalem. It’s the city of the kings, prophets and where Jesus preached, worshipped, and was crucified. As central as Jerusalem is to our history and our faith, Jerusalem is facing a threat to be redivided today, a threat to Israel’s sovereignty. Sadly, the threat is not from on...
