Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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By Ben Cohen JNS.org Belgium’s justice minister came in for a fair bit of stick this week over some injudicious observations regarding the Nov. 13 Islamist terrorist massacre in Paris. “It’s no longer synagogues or the Jewish museums or police stations, it’s mass gatherings and public places,” said Koen Geens, as he tried to encapsulate the deadliest security dilemma that Europe has faced since the height of the Cold War. Of all the obvious terrorist targets that Geens could have picked, he chose two that were distinctly Jewish among a list of...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Every time Palestinian leaders sit down at the negotiating table, or give a public speech, they never fail to raise the plight of the 700,000 Arab-Palestinians displaced when they refused to accept Israel’s existence in 1948. For too long, the State of Israel and the global Jewish community have done too little to memorialize and honor the other side of that story—the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. For many Jews, these are personal stories, family accounts told around the Shabbat table. It is now our duty to ensur...
John Kerry is seeking to top up his several efforts to deal with the Middle East by joining the Israeli and international left in warning that Israel will have to accommodate itself to a single country, with a Palestinian majority, if it doesn’t make peace with a Palestinian state. As my late mother used to say when pressed, “Horse shit.” We are used to Mahmoud Abbas’ threats, more or less weekly, that if he doesn’t get what he wants he will have no choice but to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and present to Israel responsib...
It is almost hard to believe that it has been just a year since the horrific events of Paris in January of 2015. The painful memories of the attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, followed by the murderous strike on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, persist when we are forced to contend with all that has happened since. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the times we live in are more tumultuous and uncertain than any that we have seen since the end of World War II. Rarely does a day go by where another innocent person doesn’t lose h...
In an interview on CBS-TV’s “This Morning” last week, President Obama outlined his theory of the causes of terrorism: climate change is straining natural resources around the world, and “when people are not able to make a living or take care of their families,” they become “desperate,” and “as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen.” The next day, a middle-class Muslim couple who were not under any evident financial strain and were perfectly capable of taking care of their six-month old daughter, decided to massacre fourt...
There are many issues one can debate in the Jewish community—endorsing a boycott of Israel is completely out of bounds. Yet, there remain strong voices who are simply opposed to Israel. Founded in 1940 by the sons of John D. Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund claims to be a “private, family foundation helping to advance social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.” This organization who wants “peace” gave $140,000 in June to the Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that openly endorses BDS and suppo...
I was telling a friend this week that of all the topics I write about, the global campaign against Israel’s very existence is the one that just won’t go away, no matter how much I might wish otherwise. After all, it’s an issue that’s consumed a good deal of my attention for more than a decade now. Anyone who writes about a particular subject for that length of time faces the prospect of becoming inured to it, not to mention bored. (Take it from me; anti-Zionists are, on top of everything else, deeply boring folks who repeat the same discredited...
Dear Imam Abdul Rahmam Ahmad: I read the text of the condolence letter that you wrote the Jewish community of Boston following the recent murder of 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz by Palestinian terrorists. As the father of a young woman who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Israel in 1995, I appreciated the fact that you, as the imam of the Islamic Center of New England, spoke out. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of your expression of “great sadness” that Ezra “had his life brutally cut short in Israel...” I am glad to know that, a...
It’s not exactly the story of Sisyphus, with Israel always pushing a stone but never getting it to the top of the hill, but it’s close. Currently we’re at another of the upticks in violence. We’ve lost count as to how many of these have occurred in the last century or more, or when we should start counting. We hear from some of the experts that it is almost all individual actions, lots of them by teenagers or even pre-teens. They are said to be excited by the Internet, preachers in the mosques, kids at school, or what they hear in the family ab...
He cannot move to Israel for at least five years. The reason reeks of hypocrisy. After 30 long years of imprisonment, unprecedented punishment for the crime of spying on behalf of an American ally, Jonathan Pollard is at last a free man. Almost. Pollard’s incarceration in a maximum security prison which he spent in solitary isolation for lengthy periods of time is finally over. Even those appalled by his offense must surely find sufficient compassion in their hearts to be gladdened by his long-awaited release, having more than paid for his u...
Examining America’s response to the Holocaust can help us avoid repeating the mistakes of that era, so applying the lessons of the Nazi years to contemporary concerns—including the plight of the Syrian refugees—certainly is appropriate. But those who are invoking the memory of the Jewish refugees are choosing the wrong analogy for today’s Syrian refugees. One problem with the analogy is that it distorts the nature of what happened—and what is happening now—to the victims. The Jews fleeing Hitler were the targets of religious and racial pers...
Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertion that the Palestinian Arabs are in a “very dire situation” is not only absurd but also very revealing--about the fantasies that guide the Obama administration’s Middle East policy. Emerging from a meeting with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Nov. 24, Kerry declared: “I know that the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza is, at this moment, very dire, that there are extraordinary concerns, obviously, about the violence,” he added. “Dire”? Is he kidding or just...
Charles Bronfman and the other kings, queens, princes, dukes, duchesses, lords and ladies of the American Jewish community need to wake up to the impressive accomplishments of the passionate, strategic, creative and loving serfs and vassals of Chabad who commitedly serve the Jewish people globally, with all their hearts and souls. It is outrageous that Mr. Bronfman told the attendees of the Reform Movement at its convention two weeks ago to “take back Birthright from Chabad.” Imagine if the tables were turned what kind of indignant outcry the...
A form of amnesia must be affecting the Obama administration’s former chief Mideast negotiator, Martin Indyk. It is, however, a very selective kind of amnesia—he forgets only concessions that Israel has made. Speaking recently at a conference in Tel Aviv, Indyk declared that the only reason there are no peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians is because of Israeli construction in Judea-Samaria. Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas would “become a partner tomorrow for the deal you’d like to make if there was a settlement freeze,...
Routines are everywhere, with everyone. Almost all our waking hours we are employing one or another. How we brush our teeth, fix our breakfast, drive to where we’ve been before, get ready for bed. They are crucial for government and politics. Just as an individual cannot be bothered to ponder at length what to do in most situations, officials, politicians, and activists generally do what they have done in similar circumstances. Routines simply life, make expectations more predictable, and serve well in most cases. They are also limiting. R...
A memorial ceremony was held at Ben Gurion Airport just before the body of 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz was flown to the United States for burial last Saturday night. William Grant, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, was in attendance. Yet if the ceremony had taken place at the site of the attack in which Ezra was murdered, U.S. diplomats would have boycotted the event. That’s because the attack took place in Gush Etzion, and believe it or not, the policy of the U.S. government is to boycott the funerals of American victims o...
Our revulsion at the Paris attacks and subsequent Isis violence was palpable, and our reaction almost universal. We want action. But are we prepared to accept the difficult truth? The only answer to brute force by evil and depraved fanatics is brute force by the good guys—working with some of the not-so-good guys. The French wasted no time launching counterstrikes against ISIS targets in retaliation for the brutal slaughter of 129 citizens at multiple Paris locations. At the same time, the Russians, once confirming their airliner was brought d...
From the attacks in Paris to the deadly toll of terror in Israel, events of the past week have reminded us of the wide gap between Jews and the rest of the world. As if we needed any reminding. Following the rampage in Paris, which left over 140 dead, Jewish organizations, Israeli officials, and everyday Jews rushed to condemn the murders and express their solidarity with the people of France. Friends adopted the Tricolorefilter on their Facebook pages; the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City were illuminated in blue, white, and red. But even in s...
One of the most memorable scenes in the 2010 film “Four Lions,” a dark British comedy about a group of the most incompetent jihadis imaginable, takes place as the aspiring martyrs climb into a van for the long nighttime drive down to London, where their plan is to bomb the annual marathon. As they set off in the dark, the four jihadis are silent and pensive, listening to a somber recording of chanted verses from the Qu’ran. But as dawn breaks on the outskirts of London, they swap out the Qu’ran for the irrepressibly joyful song “Dancin...
Clearly in 2015, in Israel, there has been a noticeable increase in violent attacks on civilians by Muslims. In Israel, almost every day, there are reports of attempts to murder Israelis. On Oct. 3 two Israeli men were stabbed, in Jerusalem, and killed by a Palestinian. On the same day a mother and her 2-year-old child were attacked. While on Oct 12, in three separate stabbing attacks in Jerusalem, six were wounded. One victim was a 13-year-old Israeli boy riding his bike. On Oct. 13, in four separate terror attacks, three Israelis were killed...
In 1948 I was in high school. Okay, now you have a pretty good idea of how long I’ve been around. Point is—I was in a high school of 1500 kids, of whom about 12 were Jews. When the State of Israel declared its independence, let’s just say there was not dancing in the halls. I was plumb ignorant of the situation. Ours was not a kosher home. My family was not active in the Jewish Community and while we had been impacted by the Holocaust as every Jew alive had to be, we had not lost any family members of whom we were aware. Two years later we move...
“This is an act of war,” French President François Hollande proclaimed after convening his security cabinet on Saturday. Hollande said the Islamic State terror group was responsible for Friday night’s appalling series of terrorist attacks, in which at least 129 people lost their lives, and that the attacks were planned outside of France. “France will be merciless toward the barbarians of the Islamic State group” and “will act with all the means necessary…on all fronts: interior and exterior, in coordination with our allies who themselves are...
(JTA)—The international outrage over the barbaric terrorist attacks in Paris is absolutely on target. But the absence of an outcry over the weeks of attacks against Jews in Israel—stabbings, shootings and car rammings are among the most common tactics—is equally outrageous. More than a dozen Israelis have been killed during the past month. Yet these terror attacks against Jews have largely drawn silence from the civilized world, or worse, questions about whether Israel deployed “excessive force” to defend itself. If people were being stabbed i...
Dear Editor: My name is Rachel Huss, and I grew up in a Jewish community. Having gone to a Jewish school and having been surrounded by Jews my entire life, I never experienced any form of anti-Semitism firsthand. My name is Tamara Zishuk and I grew up in a secular town, but I was constantly involved in Jewish life. Even so, my town has always been very welcoming, and I was never targeted on the account of being Jewish. Now, the two of us are a part of a separate community, the University of Central Florida. It’s a place where we live and l...
Last week marked the 40th anniversary of one of the worst instances of anti-Semitism since the end of the Second World War. On Nov. 10, 1975, the United Nations—a body created out of the ashes of the Holocaust—passed General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, with racism and racial discrimination. That resolution was the culmination of a lengthy campaign by the Soviet Union to turn Israel into the only state within the U.N. system to have its legitimacy questioned. Soviet Jews had been per...
