Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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In the The New York Times (May 14), U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an essay entitled “The U.S. Must Support an Evenhanded Approach in the Middle East” (and, unusually, 24 hours later, retitled “The U.S. Must Stop Being an Apologist for the Netanyahu Government”). Whatever the title, the thrust of the senator’s comments remains exactly the same. Given the timing, this presumably means an appeal to the United States to move to the 50-yard line in the latest round of Hamas-triggered conflict with Israel. Forgive me, an evenhanded approach?...
By Jim Shipley Did it start with George Floyd? Back to Michael Brown? Has it been hidden in the police files of dozens of municipalities for years? Statistics are proving as they have for decades that, yes, we are still a racist society at heart. Decades of ignoring it, shoveling it under tons of paper work, claiming that we are better, all turns out is nonsense. Black men, women and even children are being gunned down by uniformed policemen throughout the country. The police forces, specifically in major cities are under tremendous pressure....
As Hamas creates a war crime with every rocket it fires into Israel solely for the purpose of killing civilians, a biased media, along with supposedly creditable human rights organizations, BDS backers, Students for Justice in Palestine and naive progressives including many progressive Jews, are accusing Israel of provoking the current breakout of hostilities by another false accusation of Israeli apartheid of Arabs This latest provocation, according to these purveyors of false accusations against Israel is the alleged attempt to arbitrarily ev...
(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) — So tell me, what should Israel do? You, who march through the streets of Italy, the U.K. or Germany with Palestinian flags and shout slogans accusing Israel of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, as well as being an apartheid state. You, who defend Hamas in Paris, Berlin, London and Rome, hurling countless accusations against Israel on social media, including demented conspiracy theories that suggest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the diabolical Prince of Evil, started the current war — in agreement with Hamas — i...
For the first few days after Hamas started raining thousands of rockets on Israel — all of them aimed at civilians — Biden kept silent. Finally, on Wednesday, Biden said “my expectation and hope is that this will be closing down sooner than later but Israel has a right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.” Saying this ought to have been a no-brainer, but it was obviously an effort on Biden’s part. Biden instantly caught flak from the Squad. Even though, thanks to the influx of Ethiopian Jews, the...
(JNS) - Journalists are expressing their outrage that the 12-story Al-Jalaa building housing the Gaza headquarters of Associated Press and Al Jazeera was targeted during retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on Saturday. Al Jazeera Jerusalem bureau chief Walid al-Omari said that by striking the building, Israel was acting "not only to sow destruction and killing, but also to silence those who broadcast it." Not exactly an objective assessment. AP CEO Gary Pruitt released a statement expressing that...
I have been hosting a variety of briefings and doing media interviews this week, putting into perspective many of the complicated, frustrating, and scary things that Israel is undergoing and enduring this week. Today I read a vile comment that Israel’s goal is “dead Palestinians and bombed out buildings.” There are abundant ways that this malice is not the case. If that were the case, rather than only 69 casualties (according to the terrorists in Gaza who typically like to inflate their suffering), there would be 6900, or 69,000 deaths. Israel...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas have a surefire strategy to win over the world’s sympathy: fire rockets into Israeli territory, trigger an Israeli response and wait for the global outrage against Israel’s response. The strategy is effective because Israel is so darn good at protecting its citizens from missile attacks, thanks to ubiquitous bomb shelters and a sophisticated Iron Dome missile defense system. So, if the terror rockets don’t kill any Jews, but the forced retaliations kill Palestinians, anyone...
(JNS) — Throughout the month of Ramadan, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been inciting Arab Israelis in Jerusalem and throughout the country to attack Jews. And so it happened that at the outset of the month, Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and beyond found themselves beset by gangs of Arab thugs who beat them on the streets and light-rail cars just because they were Jews. Last week, Hamas’s leaders announced their detailed plans to open a new campaign against Israel on May 9. May 9 was a conflation of three events: Jer...
I watched the tragedy in Meron on Lag Ma’omer in the wee hours on Friday morning on on-site video broadcast on the Internet from Israel. I grieved and agonized over the loss of life and the enormity of the tragedy, and then it hit me: young members of my family in Israel, could be there. Being religious and very observant, they would go to the place considered to be the grave of the second century Tana, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, for spiritual enrichment and prayers. It was very early for a telephone call, so I sent a message to my brother a...
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies via JNS) — Rarely do politicians have the opportunity to test the implications of their policy within a day. In Israel, the land of miracles, such an opportunity occurred on May 9-10, when the Israeli government and its more than willing officialdom decided on Jerusalem Day to follow in the footsteps of the 1930s British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: total appeasement of an implacable enemy. This began with the acquiescence of the judicial branch — one that famously doesn’t bow to external press...
As I sit here writing this, my phone keeps buzzing with red alert after red alert. Red alert - incoming rocket! As I check to see where it is, I selfishly breathe just a small sigh of relief that it's not in Jerusalem or Beit Shemesh since that's where some of my kids are (the others are with me). I am grateful that it is not where I am sitting, but the sigh is very small, almost half a sigh. The reality is that no matter where it is, I still feel angry for the people who have no more than 10 se...
Dear Editor: I am writing in response to the letter recently published written by William J Levy from Ormond Beach, Florida (May 7, “Why aren’t we fighting back against anti-Semitism?”). While I can appreciate Mr. Levy’s concerns, I have to get additional information regarding to whom he is referring. Is he referring to the “run of the mill” antisemites or to the less obvious anti-Jewish sentiment expressed over the last 1,500 years by the Muslims. It does make a big difference in how one should respond. Is he referring to the late Rabbi Meir...
(JNS) — As ecstatic songs rang through the hills, I tried to enter the stadium around the grave of the Mishnaic sage and spiritual luminary, Shimon bar Yochai. It was packed rock-solid with people. “That’s OK, let’s listen outside,” I sighed to my staff. Earlier, as our bus of gap-year students climbed toward Mount Meron, I was constantly receiving Shabbat meal request messages. For 39 years, this has been my life; I quickly arranged as many connections as I could, while yearning to return to the festive atmosphere in the bus. Who knew that man...
I was at a social gathering recently. In Israel, social events can easily become political events, or even indistinguishable from one another, especially in the turbulent period in which we find ourselves, hovering on the verge of a potential broad coalition government, or another, fifth, national election in 2.5 years. In the course of conversation, someone I was standing with referenced “Likud backstabbers,” clearly referring to Gidon Sa’ar and Naftali Bennett and their respective parties, New Hope and Yamina. The implication was that by ab...
The word “folly” has become associated with only one policy decision in all of our nation’s history. That policy decision was to purchase Alaska from Russia immediately after the end of the Civil War. The primary advocate of the purchase for $7,000,000 was then Secretary of State William H. Seward. After much heated public debate and opposition, the sale was ratified by the U.S. Senate and consummated by Mr. Seward who was ridiculed and heavily criticized at the time in the American press. The purchase, coming so close to the end of the Civil...
(JTA) — Do you want to know one small but powerful way we could make Jewish life more inclusive? Stop telling fat people about your diet and asking if they’d like to join you. Last year I launched Fat Torah, with the aim of confronting weight stigma in Jewish communal life and deploying Jewish tradition in ways that are liberatory for all bodies. At the time, I assumed that I would be providing advice to individuals who were eager for an opportunity to “Ask the Fat Rabbi.” And you, my dear Jews (mostly Jewish women) have not disappointed. It ha...
Shavuot is a mysterious holiday. This commemoration of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai isn’t given a specific date for its celebration; instead we are told in the Book of Exodus to schedule it seven weeks from the second night of Passover. The tradition is to enjoy four sumptuous meals over the two days of the holiday and ensure that at least a few of them feature dairy foods. Evidently, at Mount Sinai, we received the laws of kashrut but didn’t have time to master proper slaughtering practices, so eating dairy was safer. Another reason for...
Once only found on the extreme fringes of society, Holocaust denial, revisionism and antisemitism have seeped into our communities, houses of worship and, sadly, into our schools. When the principal of a public school in Boca Raton told a parent that, “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened,” it made international headlines, and he was fired. It also led many parents and School Board members to ask how the Nazis’ systematic murder of 6 million Jews was being taught in our schools. The K-12 Floridian Holocaust Standards are curre...
(JNS) — It was telling that J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby, would invite to its annual conference Mahmoud Abbas, the anti-Israel, anti-peace, Holocaust-denying president of the Palestinian Authority. The lobby, whose hallmark is gullibility, soaked up the familiar propaganda from Abbas and joined him in castigating Israel while ignoring the tyrant’s intransigence and persecution of his own people. Both Abbas and J Street are hoping to return to the heyday of the Obama years when Israel was expected to make one-sided concess...
(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) — A March 29 article in the online news magazine Tablet titled “Are Educated People More Antisemitic?” reported that a carefully crafted survey of Americans by authors Jay P. Greene, Albert Chang and Ian Kingsbury found that the more highly educated did exhibit a greater level of antisemitism. The authors note that this result runs contrary to the widely held assumption linking intolerance, including intolerance of Jews, to ignorance and viewing greater education as the solution. It refers to commonly cited studies supporting that convi...
(JTA) — When do you call the rabbi? Sometimes to complain. But usually, a life-cycle event has taken place. A birth, thank God. An impending wedding. An illness. Too often in the last year, a death. Over the past 13 months, tragedy has demanded that rabbis step forward to provide a steady shoulder, open ears and a guiding hand. It’s been deeply painful, but it’s been a privilege. The calamity of COVID represents a challenge that rabbis are seen as uniquely equipped to help confront. Even more so than in normal times, we’ve walked with our com...
Iranian eyes will be on Washington, D.C., while looking over their shoulder at home. The Iranians are looking over their shoulder because a series of attacks attributed to them and their puppets in the Middle East are targeting Israeli commercial ships and firing rockets at Israel from Gaza and Syria. This is coupled with Israel’s reported retaliation against Iranian military ships, and explosion deep underneath an Iranian nuclear facility, raising eyebrows as to Israel’s reach and Iranian vulnerability. Iranians are eying Washington, D.C...
