Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1017 - 1041 of 3759
(JNS) — A 211-page report issued by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom is pouring a deeper foundation on top of an already dangerous and insidious path to delegitimize Israel. The report charges Israel “with oppression and domination of Palestinians, through cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion,” in what it further describes as crimes against humanity. Disturbingly, this report joins a malicious piling on against the world’s only Jewish state. Last April, the organization Human Rights Watch issued a 213-page repor...
Dear Editor: Good ole Uncle Joe Biden has more in common with good ole Uncle Joe Stalin than any American I can think of. When he brings up, which he does constantly, that White Supremacy is the greatest threat to our Democracy he sounds like Tokyo Rose in her hey day bragging about the Japanese victories over America during WW II. I know that he had racist animus toward Blacks and he didn’t want his children going to “hell hole” schools with them. I know that he was close and admiring friends with fellow Senator Byrd who was a Grand Wizar...
On Chanukah 2002, four Hercules planes bearing hundreds of people evacuated from Africa landed in Israel. The passengers included Israeli families who had been vacationing in Kenya — some alive, some wounded, and some children returning to their homeland in small coffins. Now, Biden has decided to release Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, an Islamic terrorist who “participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks” from Guantanamo Bay. 2002 had been a bad year in Israel. Four hundred and fifty-seven Israelis were murdered by terro...
(JNS) — The antisemitic hostage-taking in Colleyville, Texas, on Jan. 15 brought to the surface bitter memories of the Holocaust: Jews being singled out simply because they were Jews. Eighty years ago, on Jan. 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference took place on the outskirts of Berlin. In 90 minutes, the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe, calling it the “Final Solution.” They intended to wipe out 11 million Jews across Europe, including in the Soviet Union, England, Ireland and Switzerland. The host was Reinhard Heydrich, known a...
(JNS) — One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on “stolen land.” It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are “on the lands” of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent. That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on “stolen l...
(JNS) — Less than four days after a gunman held four Jews hostage inside a Texas synagogue in a doomed attempt to free a convicted terrorist, the Council on American-Islamic Relations thinks it is ready to renew its campaign to achieve the same objective. “It’s time to push back,” CAIR’s Dallas chapter director Faizan Syed wrote on Jan. 19. “The news coverage around Dr. Aafia Siddiqui over the last few days has been inaccurate, one-sided and made to paint a victim of the war on terror as a terrorist. The ‘Free Dr. Aafia Campaign’ has...
In a recent statement published on the annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, not only misrepresented and defamed Dr. King’s legacy, but he did so using some of the most vile antisemitic tropes singling out the Jewish people and Israel. In his statement, Dr. Nelson wrote of Dr. King’s legacy and overcoming societal inequities in the U.S. and all over the world. Listing a broad range of social problems, Dr. Nelson then seaml...
(JNS) — As far back as 2013, Pakistani Muslim terrorists plotted to take “foreign Jews” hostage to trade for “Lady Al-Qaeda.” In 2022, a Pakistani Muslim terrorist actually went out and did it. The hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel in Texas, ended with Faisal Akram of Blackburn — another post-industrial English town where Muslims make up a third of the population and Pakistanis account for more than 10 percent — dead and his Jewish hostages set free. Back home, the Blackburn Muslim Community page announced “Faisal Akram has sadly...
On Jan. 15, 2022, during Shabbat services, Congregation Beth Israel located in Colleyville, Texas, a suburb of Ft. Worth was attacked by an armed individual who barricaded himself in the synagogue, after taking four congregants hostage, including the synagogue’s rabbi. Fortunately, there were much fewer attendees on this Shabbat morning because of the continuing pandemic, as most congregants were participating at home through live streaming of religious services. The attack on this synagogue is the latest in a string of violent and lethal a...
I am writing this on Jan. 6, 2022. It could not wait until my usual deadline date. I was two years old in 1932. The only thing I knew about the burning down of the German Reichstag (their Parliament Building) was what I read and was taught in school. A group of disgruntled voters who had not won the election stormed Germany’s Capitol and burned down the Reichstag because their chosen leader, one Adolph Hitler had won only thirty two percent of the popular vote. They were told by the Nazi party and believed the vote had been rigged and that H...
(CAMERA via JNS) — In its coverage of Saturday’s hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, The Associated Press has advanced, intentionally or not, the absurdly false narrative that the terror attack was not connected to the Jewish community. The leading news agency has completely ignored statements by the Anti-Defamation League, the largest and most established American organization combating antisemitism, along with remarks by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other senior U.S. and British off...
(JTA) — In 1957, at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered words whose wisdom continue to resound today: “For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.” When a weekend meant to commemorate Dr. King was shattered by the hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, we called upon each other as longtime friends a...
(JNS) — Millions of people around the world, including myself, spent much of our Saturday with our thoughts and prayers focused on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. As the events were unfolding, my thoughts went toward the antisemitic mass shooting that took place on Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator killed 11 Jewish worshippers and wounded six others, including several Holocaust survivors. It was the deadliest attack to date on the Jewish community in the United Sta...
(JNS) — At a time when antisemitism is on the rise around the globe, the office of the U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy for Combating and Monitoring Antisemitism ought to be filled. Indeed, the Biden administration seemed to signal its interest in the subject when it decided to upgrade the post by expanding the office’s staff and conferring the title of ambassador on the envoy. President Joe Biden also named someone that was considered eminently qualified for the job in Emory University professor and historian Deborah Lipstadt, a widel...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz must have known that hosting Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at his home in Rosh Ha’ayin would arouse the ire of the right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cloaked the outcome of his tête-à-tête last Tuesday night with the octogenarian honcho in Ramallah in typically euphemistic language. Following the meeting, Gantz tweeted that he and Abbas had “discussed the implementation of economic and civilian measures, and emphasized the importance of deepening security coordination and preventing...
(JNS) When COVID-19 struck the United States, I thought that it would become a unifying force. I naively reasoned that the coronavirus pandemic would bring people together. I believed that the bitter polarization that began with the crash of the stock market in 2007-08 would finally end. I was wrong. COVID has caused a greater rupture. It has brought health-care workers closer together, but few others. It has socially distanced society even further. The political divide that used to be a significant crack has become a huge chasm. It has also...
(JNS) — The Jewish communities of North Africa and the Middle East are often inaccurately represented in academia and the mainstream media. Their rich, complex history is purposely obscured to undermine Zionism. Indeed, professors, anti-Israel student organizations, and influential figures have denied the unique indigenity of Jews in the Middle East. Moreover, these groups have minimized the widespread historical subordination, persecution, and exile of Jews under Arab and Muslim rule. Unlike the harmonious depictions of an interreligious c...
This letter from ZOA was sent to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Deputy Prime Minister Benjamin Gantz, Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, State of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel Re: URGENT Request to stop Minhal Ezrahi’s immoral and discriminatory planned destruction of terror victim Ezra Schwartz vineyard and Jewish families’ livelihoods at Arugot Farms Dear Prime Minister Bennett, Deputy Prime Minister Gantz and Justice Minister Sa’ar: The Zionist Organization of America urges you to use your good offices to stop th...
At the UN General Assembly last week, a large majority of member nations voted to lavishly fund a permanent inquisition against the Jewish state. The member states funded the operation of an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry,” against Israel. The commission, run by outspoken haters of Israel with long records of demonizing the State of Israel and its people, was formed by the UN Human Rights Council in a special session in May. Its purpose is to deny and reject Israel’s right to exist, its right to self-defense, its r...
There are bad people in this world who do bad things. Sometimes they’ll blow up buildings or shoot people in schools or burn down a police precinct or even violently riot at the U.S. Capitol. When these horrible crimes are committed, some of the questions we ask, especially with assaults on public buildings, are: How could we have prevented it? Was our security sufficient? Did we take the proper precautions? And yet, no one seems to be mentioning any of these crucial concerns as we review and analyze the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol by T...
News of prominent NYC business woman and Jewish philanthropist, Helene Fortunoff’s death brought back memories of working in the Fortunoff family business during my college years in the 1960s. Helene was the last of the second generation of matriarchs of a very successful family of retailers who created a mini-retail empire, a model and forerunner for the Walmart and Target stores, which today dominate the big box retail business Soon after graduation from high school in June 1960, I landed a summer job in a warehouse and housewares store o...
David Leonhardt wrote an opinion article in the New York Times Morning Newsletter on Tuesday titled “No Way to Grow Up” in which he posited that “Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.” This ‘sacrifice’ is precisely the attitude that the Israelites had when sacrificing their children to the Canaanite diety Molloch an Israeli rabbi charges. “American children are starting 2022 in crisis,” Leonhardt wrote. “I have long been aware that the pandemic was upending children’s lives. But until I spent time pu...
By now, Dr. Fauci’s Covid “fearspeak” has become background noise. Yes, the new “Omicron” variant is making its way around the world. Fortunately, reports from South Africa as well as other studies indicate that Omicron’s illness is milder than Delta. Even Fauci-friendly public health physicians have cautioned that there is “absolutely no reason to panic.” In 2022, we should panic because opioid overdoses took the lives of 100,000 fellow Americans from April 2020 to April 2021—an increase of 28 percent from the same period the year before....
(JNS) — The campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel has recently moved into a higher gear with the increased use of one particularly vicious falsehood. This is the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. The claim is as fatuous as it is pernicious. Apartheid was the name given to South Africa’s systematic oppression of its black inhabitants, who were denied political, civic and human rights. By contrast, Arab Israeli citizens have fully equal rights. They study in Israel’s universities; enjoy Israel’s beaches and parks; receive equal trea...
(JNS) — First, some background: Israel’s current government is a leftist-Islamist coalition that includes some former conservatives “out front” as stalking horses. One of those is serving as the current prime minister. Another was Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party. Dani Dayan, a former consul general and Yesha council leader, ran on the New Hope party list. The only purpose of New Hope was to tear away enough conservative votes to create this leftist hybrid government. Now it’s expected to be wiped out in any future elections. Former Israeli Prime...
