Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2358 - 2382 of 3736
(JTA)—I was in Charlottesville on Saturday. I felt called to go because white supremacy is a hateful ideology that has murdered millions throughout history and continues to kill. I went because my family and ancestors suffered at the hands of anti-Semites throughout history, because I bear their scars on my DNA, because the Jewish day school where I teach received a bomb threat this spring, and I cannot let Nazi flags fly in my state without response. I needed to go as a rabbi because I am tired of conservative white Christians controlling t... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—There was a moment in his “neo-Nazi, neo-Shmazi” news conference where you might have found yourself thinking, maybe President Trump is right. On the narrow question of who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, a prosecutor might note that punches were thrown by white supremacists and left-wing activists, neo-Nazis and members of the Antifa resistance. “I think there’s blame on both sides,” is how Trump put it in his news conference Tuesday in New York. It’s the right answer if this is the question: “Who threw pu... Full story
On Aug, 11, an estimated 100 white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus with their tiki torches full of citronella and their hearts filled with hate. They were recorded shouting racist, anti-Semitic Nazi slogans—such as “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” The next day, counter protesters showed up to face the over 4,000 white supremacists who were gathered. The situation devolved into one of the saddest days for American democracy. Citizens were beating each other bloody, and the National Guard was ultimat... Full story
The newly appointed Middle East director at the State Department has a long record of criticizing and pressuring Israel. Isn’t anybody at the White House paying attention to who’s being hired over at Foggy Bottom? David Satterfield, who is slated to become assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs next month, played a significant role in U.S. policy and diplomacy concerning Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A look at some of his comments from that period reveals he repeatedly suggested a moral equ... Full story
As far as they are concerned, the U.S. Congress is just doing what it always does: pandering to the “Israel Lobby.” That’s how the foreign policy establishment and the left regard the bipartisan support for the Taylor Force Act, a bill named after a non-Jewish U.S. Army veteran slain in a Palestinian terror attack last year. The legislation would cut off American aid for the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless the PA stops funding terrorism. The bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Aug. 3 in a 17-4 vote, with all the commi... Full story
The latest acts in the long running saga of Elor Azaria emphasize the deep divisions among Israeli Jews. There are also sharpening gaps between Israeli Jews and those of the Diaspora. Especially prominent are those separating us from the large Jewish community in the United States. The Azaria problem is closer to home, but it’s not without overseas Jews signing on to one or the other side in our verbal warfare. Azaria is the young man, who when stationed with his IDF unit in Hebron, shot and killed an inert Palestinian who had been severely inj... Full story
We are now two years into the deeply controversial Iran nuclear agreement that roiled our community. And, like everything connected to the deal and the Mideast, it’s complicated, as even Jared Kushner would attest. During the many months leading up to the historic 2015 agreement between Tehran and the U.S. and its P5+1 partners—United Kingdom, France, and China, plus Germany—I was deeply critical of President Barack Obama’s approach, which I thought was too narrow and timid. I felt the U.S. wasn’t acting like the superpower it is in the negot... Full story
The Israel angle on McMaster’s purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds. McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews. Many of you will remember that a few d... Full story
Imagine eating stomach lining on your first date, served up by your future mother-in-law hoping to impress you with her choice of protein. That was David Shapiro’s introduction to my Sephardic family in the late 1970’s, as he began dating my sister Kathy. For many decades after that, he would remind me of that first date. My mother had served him a Moroccan delicacy– tripe seasoned in a spicy tomato sauce– and he would joke that he should have brought a blow dryer to handle the weird dish. For a straight-laced Ashkenazi Jew whose idea of a go... Full story
As much as President Donald Trump enjoys taking a metaphorical sledgehammer to even the merest of slights against him, there is no reason to repeat the commander-in-chief’s behavior in judging his administration. That there is so much darkness around Trump, his character and his intentions should not obscure the occasional rays of light emanating from his administration. In foreign policy, one can list a few achievements on this score. There was the appointment of Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In a few short months, s... Full story
As a child, I spent my summers at Camp Solomon Schechter, a Conservative Jewish camp in Tumwater, Wash., set on the shores of Lake Joshua Stampfer. My experiences at Camp Schechter were central to the development of my Jewish identity and eventual decision to immigrate to Israel. Each day began at “the flagpole.” Kicking off every morning, hundreds of sleepy-eyed campers and counselors from all around the Pacific Northwest strolled to the flagpoles, where we would circle up around the American, Canadian and Israeli flags. Just as everyone cir... Full story
It’s not yet clear that the commotions surrounding the Temple Mount and the incident in Amman are behind us. An optimist’s view is that two weeks of demonstrations, nastiness from the pinnacle of the Jordanian government as well as the Palestine National Authority, a few deaths and perhaps a couple of hundred injuries were nothing more than blips on a troubled history, now seemingly back to what’s been the normal range of manageable tensions. Those few days also invite some comparisons with minorities elsewhere, and especially African Ameri... Full story
When presidential adviser Jared Kushner said in a recent private discussion that “there may be no solution” to the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, he was just stating the obvious. For nearly a century, self-appointed wise men have been claiming to have the solution, but every such proposal has proved to be a mirage. The British thought they had the solution in 1922, when they sectioned off the eastern part of Mandatory Palestine—78 percent of the original mandate territory—and set up an Arab kingdom there, which came to be k... Full story
PARIS—It took too long for the French people to recognize the Jewish victim of a brutal April 4 murder by name. After weeks of indifference by media outlets and politicians, French President Emmanuel Macron demanded publicly that the judiciary shed light on the nature of the crime. Significantly, Macron spoke of Sarah Halimi during the ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv, the roundup of more than 13,000 French Jews during the Holocaust in 1942. “Despite the denials of the murderer, our judiciary must bring total clari... Full story
The last two weeks was not a good time to be prime minister of Israel. A series of unfortunate events led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make decisions that wound up being blasted from both the left and the right. Those decisions were, at best, debatable. But the resulting tsunami of disparagement that accused him of simultaneously being intransigent and a weakling may tell us more about the nature of the conflict between Israel and its enemies than it does about his shortcomings. Though he deserves criticism, the most important... Full story
The monthly salary of approximately $3,000 that the Palestinian Authority will pay to terrorist Omar al-Abed could be a powerful spur to a pending U.S. legislative bill that would slash aid to the PA over its “martyr payments” policy, a leading Middle East expert told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “This is definitely going to put wind in the sails of the Taylor Force Act,” said Jonathan Schanzer, an expert on Palestinian politics at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank. Named in memory of former... Full story
The pressure has begun. The State Department’s “evenhanded” statement regarding the Temple Mount. The U.S.-backed Middle East Quartet’s call for “restraint.” The announcement that President Donald Trump’s international negotiations representative is going to the region to “mediate” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). It all adds up to one thing: American pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. The July 14 terror attack that killed two Israeli policemen at the Temple Mount is a clear-cut case of Palestinian ag... Full story
An article by a former Israeli Ambassador to Greece details the breakdown in peace talks meant to reunite the Island of Cyprus, and suggests a parallel to frustrations at brokering a peace between Israel and Palestinians. In both Cyprus and Israel, the status quo is neither war nor formal peace. There remain unresolved issues of property ownership, and families who left, and cannot return to what they used to call home. Movement between the two sections, whether on Cyprus or Israel-West Bank has at times been easier for foreign tourists than... Full story
Chaya Salomon was murdered at a Sabbath dinner with her family. The 46-year-old Jewish woman was stabbed to death alongside her 70-year-old father Yosef and her 36-year-old brother Elad. Photos show the kitchen of the Salomon house in the Israeli village of Neve Tsuf covered in blood. The youngest Salomon daughter had given birth to a new member of the family. The bottle of Glenfiddich on the table was never opened. Instead an Islamic terrorist burst in and stabbed the new grandfather. Tova, the new grandmother was badly wounded. Elad’s wife ru... Full story
He drew a circle that shut me out—Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in! —Edwin Markham According to the Bipartisanship Policy Center, our country’s history of working across the aisle can be traced back to as early as 1787. Our founding fathers, struggling with congressional representation regarding the populations of the colonies, reached what later was know as the Great Compromise. It was decided that our new government would exist with a proportional House of Repre... Full story
Dear Editor: Jewish identity is one of the most important qualities we can help our young to develop. Study after study shows that as Jewish identity slips because of intermarriage, the Jewish community in the United States suffers. So too does the connection between young Americans and the state of Israel. If we hope to see a continued Jewish future including continued support of Israel, we must take positive steps to assure it. Significant research on the American Jewish community shows that Jewish day schools, (in Orlando that would be the... Full story
To an objective observer, the crisis that erupted in the aftermath of a bloody terror attack near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount makes no sense. Three Arab terrorists used guns they had smuggled up to the compound July 14 to kill two Israeli policemen, both of whom happened to be Druze rather than Jewish. In response, Israeli authorities set up metal detectors to prevent a recurrence of the crime. The response to this from Palestinians was general outrage, violence and a promise of mass riots if the offending machines were not immediately removed. U... Full story
There is an interesting documentary on YouTube about a recent archeological expedition in Iraq and Iran—what was ancient Persia and before that Babylonia. In ancient texts and evidence in excavations there are stories about Sodom, Gomorrah and the big flood. That area of Persia/Iran was and is susceptible to flooding. They use round bottom boats of the type described in Torah in the story of Noah. But, there is no history of a great flood—plenty of floods, but not one big enough to bring penguins from Antarctica and giraffes from Africa. A lot... Full story
It was best not to write about this right away. Need to see how it would percolate. It could have been massive or a momentary blip testing the level of accommodation between Israel, the Palestinians, and other Muslims. Truth is, that it is still tense, with Friday prayers posing a challenge to all sides. The initial story made the international news, and monopolized what Israelis were hearing for a day. Three Israeli Arabs, from the Galilee city of Um al Fahm, exited the Old City from the area of the Temple Mount and shot three policemen. They... Full story
Journalists and pro-Israel activists often share a tendency to see current events as the beginning of history. I’ve been reminded of this lately by apocalyptic stories regarding anti-Semitism in the United States, the situation on college campuses and American public opinion. I’ve been perusing my archives of articles that I and others have written in the past and thought I’d share some historical observations in the next few columns to put present concerns in context. I hear people claiming the situation on campus today is worse than ever, but... Full story
