Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) recent statements essentially criticizing the election victory by Donald Trump and Mike Pence are inappropriate and harmful. The front page of the ADL’s website features a blurb and link to an ADL blog post titled “White Supremacists Celebrate Trump’s Victory” (Nov. 10) that deceptively seems to tie President-elect Trump to former KKK leader David Duke and Jew-hating neo-Nazis—while never mentioning Trump’s repeated repudiations of David Duke and neo-Nazis. The ADL post also never mentions that the Trump/Pen... Full story
Dear Editor: I am not surprised that David Cicilline is circulating a petition around. As Jew, who went to religious school for 12 years, I support Mr. Bannon. Mr. Bannon worked for Jewish businessman Andrew Breitbart. Recently he has taken a key position in the Trump Presidential Campaign. In that capacity he worked alongside Mr. Trump, Ivanka Trump—herself a convert to Orthodox Judaism—Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner—a key Trump Advisor, and Eric Trump—whose wife is also Jewish. If Mr. Bannon was really anti-Semitic why would he work for...
Donald Trump is now America’s master. As improbable as that outcome might seem to metropolitan Americans, it is actually quite consistent with the pattern of politics during the last decade. Many of Trump’s fundamental beliefs—his aversion to foreign engagements, his portrait of long-standing American allies as free-loaders, his deferential attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin—have been on prominent display during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office. Since politics is never smooth and is chock-full of unintended consequen... Full story
Professors at a number of American universities have found a new cause: demanding the release of a terrorist who murdered two college students. This disturbing story begins on Feb. 21, 1969. That was the day a powerful bomb exploded in a Jerusalem supermarket. Two Hebrew University students (and roommates), Edward Jaffe and Leon Kanner, were killed. “They had been buying canned food for a botanical field trip when they were blown to bits,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. “Many housewives brought bouquets of flowers to the employees of [... Full story
The United Nations Security Council devoted a recent session to bashing Israel, criticizing its policy of building Jewish communities in the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria, known to some as the “occupied territories.” At that meeting two weeks ago, the Israeli nongovernmental organizations B’Tselem and Americans for Peace Now (APN) gave testimony critical of Israeli policy. While Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin wrote the preeminentresponse, condemnation of these groups’ perfidy was relatively broad. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former head of the Union... Full story
(JTA)-Using his M-16 assault rifle as a pillow, my father awoke abruptly from a dreamless sleep by the pleading voice of a young woman outside his tent in the Sinai. The woman, a uniformed volunteer, was urging reservists like him to forego shuteye to hear a musician whose name she did not know, but who had come from far away to perform for Israeli troops on the southern front of Israel's traumatic 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. Stumbling out of the khaki tent, my father and 12 other soldiers... Full story
Americans who opposed Donald Trump have awoken in a stupor, shocked that his victory was no mere nightmare. For those who cannot envision living under a Trump regime, “I’m moving to Canada” or elsewhere no longer feels like election-year blather. But where would you go? If five million Americans, alarmed by a reckless, ruthless chief executive, decided to move north tomorrow, Canada would not have the desire—or the ability—to absorb them. No country in the world would absorb that magnitude of American expats. Well, there is one country.... Full story
You probably haven’t heard of Karlheinz Kopf. He’s one of three Austrian politicians currently sharing that country’s presidency following the departure of the previous incumbent in July. Kopf just returned to Vienna from Iran, where he distinguished himself by calling on the United States to ditch those sanctions against the Tehran regime that have remained in place since the Iran nuclear deal was signed last year. And that wasn’t the half of it. Frankly, Kopf’s statements during his visit might have been drafted by his Iranian hosts. As... Full story
My father, Haim Hendrick Roet, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands, addressed the United Nations General Assembly in January, during its annual Holocaust memorial ceremony with this poignant cri de coeur: “Looking back 70 years,” he said, “it is heartbreaking that as a world, we did not learn enough from the Holocaust.” Eight months later, speaking from the same U.N. podium, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani embodied all that my father had decried, demonstrating once again that Iran failed to learn past lessons. “Zionist pressure groups,... Full story
We don’t live in a world of clear contrasts, whether we call them blacks and whites, or good and evil. Israel’s relations with its neighbors have evolved over the course of 70 years to something that is far more subtle and nuanced than what is expressed by intense nationalists or far leftists here, Arabs or Palestinians of various shades, or by overseas friends and antagonists, each with their favorite solution. We should start from the realization that there is no solution. Peace is not on our doorstep, no matter what we do. There is no cha... Full story
In one of the immortal lines of “Godfather 2,” mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer. “I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said. Message received. The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral. Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the U.S. will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council bef... Full story
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA)—At a summit meeting held last week at the National Museum of American Jewish History, several hundred communal professionals, rabbis, scholars, philanthropists and young intermarried couples gathered to discuss engagement of interfaith families in Jewish life. There is widespread communal agreement that intermarriage has reshaped the landscape of American Jewish life, but a lack of consensus regarding how best to respond to this development. At the forefront of the controversy has been rabbinic officiation at intermarriage... Full story
After months of dithering, the Obama administration has finally taken some action against the Lebanese Islamist terror organization Hezbollah. The U.S. Treasury Department has applied sanctions on four Hezbollah operatives reportedly planning terror attacks, as well as a company, Al-Inmaa Engineering and Contracting LLC, controlled by a senior Hezbollah financier. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has sanctioned Hezbollah commander Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i, also known as Abu ‘Ali Al-Tabataba’i, under U.S. counterterrorism rules. He has lea... Full story
Not much politics here. A long national holiday begins a few days before Rosh Hashanah and extends till two days after Succot. In Jewish tradition, there is a day after a holiday, perhaps to provide for recuperation. All told, that’s close to a month without politics. When things get going again in a few days, we may hear how the greats and near greats are responding to the UNESCO decisions about the lack of a Jewish claim to the Temple Mount, and the expansion of a regional war with new atrocities from Nigeria, across Libya and Egypt, and o... Full story
It is pointless to argue with those who happily pervert reality in the service of their profoundly held prejudices. Is there no limit to the United Nations’ willingness to ignore every readily verifiable fact and provable source of historic truth in order to give expression to its obsessive and all-consuming hatred of Israel and the Jewish people? The resolution passed by UNESCO last week replaces more than thousands of years of recorded history with a version of the story of Jerusalem and the site of the holy Temples of the Jews which is far m... Full story
Archaeologists have uncovered yet more evidence of the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem—the very same week that UNESCO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were declaring that Jews have no ties to Jerusalem. Talk about irony. The latest discovery of a site where the Roman army assaulted Jewish forces guarding the outer walls of Jerusalem, during the Second Temple period, explodes the lies of the U.N. and the PA. Consider this. The Romans were attacking Jewish forces. No evidence was found of any Palestinian forces in the area. The assault t... Full story
Dear Editor: It seems that the American Jewish community has been largely silent about the July 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this deal a “historic mistake.” The deal made it possible for Iran to have access to $150 billion in frozen assets. It did not end their nuclear weapons program. It did not require any nuclear facilities to be destroyed. It allows them to acquire nuclear weapons in about a decade, assuming they don’t cheat on the deal. In addition, the administration “secretly” authorized a $1.7 bill... Full story
Dear Editor: With unlimited funds, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters can place full-page ads, even in The Heritage, providing her sound bites ostensibly favorable to Jewish concerns as expressed to AIPAC. However, with millions contributed to her “charitable” foundation by all the Arab potentates, her sincerity concerning Israel is most dubious. As to Mr. Trump’s pledge to be “neutral” in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, it merely confirms his acknowledgement that those deliberations must be bilateral and not imposed by anyone else. Then there is th... Full story
You have to wonder if the barbarians fighting under the flag of the Islamic State still believe that 72 virgins will be waiting for them in paradise once they become “martyrs.” I say this not because the leaders and foot soldiers of ISIS have suddenly woken up to the possibility that this belief is based, according to several scholars, on a mistranslation of the relevant verse of the Qu’ran; that would be expecting too much of them. I say this because they have already had a taste of that paradise here on earth, as a result of their campa... Full story
Last week, the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to declare that this millenniums-old site was not Jewish at all, but exclusively Islamic. This outrageous vote is an affront not just to the Jewish people, but to all those who value the vital role of historical truth in navigating current global issues. And yet, two dozen countries voted in favor of the resolution, with only six opposing—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia. Many other countries abstained, i... Full story
Israeli politicians and Jewish activists here and there are calling for unity, typically behind whatever point of view they are supporting. In extremis, we hear that it is essential for the survival of Israel or the Jewish people. Yet it never takes long before we hear other Israelis or Jews demanding unity behind something quite different. God Himself gave us the label of a stiff-necked people, in the 32nd chapter of Exodus. The meaning since then has involved antagonism, stubbornness, argumentative, and going into minute detail in order to... Full story
Off the coast of Yemen and at the UN Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty. Since Oct. 9, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked U.S. naval craft three times in the Bab al Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately control the Suez Canal. Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply green lighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strik... Full story
Great suffering is occurring in Iraq and Syria. The region is ravaged by terror. Millions have been forced from their homes. Christians and other ethno-religious minorities have suffered genocide at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS). The shutting down of U.S. military operations in Iraq created political instability that left a power vacuum filled by terror groups bent on destroying Western civilization. ISIS has forced millions of Iraqis and Syrians from their homes destabilizing the surrounding nations and exporting the problems of the Mi... Full story
For years during the High Holidays my family sat with my mother (of blessed memory) near the front of our synagogue. If you knew her you knew her generosity, and she cut no corners with either her family or shul. She was always a “dues plus” member, someone who gave more than the required dues for membership, and so she had cushy reserved seats near the front on the left hand side. The view was great. We were surrounded by our friends, and close to the bimah. It was immersive, and won... Full story
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas suffered chest pains last week and was rushed to a hospital in Ramallah. The episode was an important reminder of the dangers and risks Israel will face if it heeds demands for the quick creation of a Palestinian state. In recent weeks, the S. Daniel Abraham Center has been sponsoring full-page ads in The New York Times calling for a Palestinian state. The Obama administration this week issued an overheated condemnation of Israel for approving the construction of a handful of houses for Jews, because that constr... Full story
