Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2852 - 2876 of 3706
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... Full story
“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... Full story
(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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
Nov. 9, 2015, was the 77th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” the term applied to the night of Nov. 9- 10, 1938, when, across Nazi Germany and German-annexed Austria, 91 Jews were murdered, tens of thousands of Jews were placed in Concentration Camps, and 267 Synagogues and 7,500 Jewish owned shops and businesses were destroyed by gangs of Nazis and other anti-Semitic persons. The news of the brutalization was known around the world, but no national government was willing to help the Jews under Nazi rule. The und... Full story
This letter is prompted by a note I received from an Internet friend who chided me for minimizing the threats of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and BDS. He thinks like Caroline Glick, whose columns express the view that if things aren’t optimal, they are terrible. Ms. Glick has a substantial audience. Some view her as the best thing since ice cream. She expresses a Jewish malady we’ve known about for years. A prominent symptom is the frequent expression of oy gevalt. Or Not again, and Why us? for those whose Yiddish is less than minimal. I have str... Full story
Disagreement on the status of the Temple Mount is at the core of the recent wave of violence and terror in the region. This is a religious war, we are told, not merely a political one, and wars in the name of God are far more dangerous than those fought for earthly goals. One problem with this description is that wars in the name of God are also often motivated or fueled by political causes. More particularly, and with regard to the present conflict, political considerations affect the perceived religious significance of holy sites. This is a... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—I have visited Europe many times, but last week I looked at it through a new lens in my first trip as CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. I undertook the trip after an invitation to address the annual meeting of the CRIF, the representative body for the French Jewish community and a valued ADL partner. It was an intense learning experience, with reason for hope and cause for concern. The hope came from hearing Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve speak forcefully at the CRIF meeting about the government’s intention to provide phy... Full story
Dear Editor: Right now, I am sitting on an airplane scrolling through my Facebook feed. I am sitting here wondering how is it possible that our country is so advanced that we are able to provide in-flight WiFi (thanks, JetBlue), but we can be so primitive that people still resort to bullying and violent crime to boost their own self-confidence. I grew up in Oviedo. When I moved here from North Carolina, I experienced more diversity and inclusion in my own neighborhood than I had ever experienced in the five years I lived in Concord. On my cul-d... Full story
A few years ago, the British anti-Semitism scholar David Hirsh remarked that while Israel was the ostensible target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, first in the firing line were diaspora Jews. This shouldn’t be surprising if you consider it carefully—Jewish organizations are typically called on by the media to defend Israel, particularly during times of conflict, and many individual Jews have faced ostracism within their own professional communities for speaking in support of Israel and against the boycott. So, whe... Full story
As defenders of Israel we are constantly emphasizing that Israel promotes unconditional co-existence and would never stand for such an awful establishment like institutional discrimination. However what if I said we were wrong and that Israel does in fact actively permit prejudice to flourish? We as educators commit a severe injustice by failing to recognize this. We are so pre-occupied with convincing an obstinate side that apartheid against non-Jews does not exist in Israel that we commit the deprecating mistake of overlooking the... Full story
It is not yet clear what caused the destruction of the Russian airliner as it flew from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh over the Sinai toward Saint Petersburg. However, the betting is an explosive device. Maybe slipped on the plane by a Bedouin baggage handler doing the work of Allah and the Islamic State, carried on by a passenger with similar motives and willing to die for the cause, or shot from below. Egypt is worried about its once flourishing tourist industry, now hanging on at a south Sinai beach a long way from the heart of the... Full story
Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) head Matthew Brooks recently told The Hill, “We as a Jewish community have to take a long, hard step back and acknowledge the reality ... that today there is one pro-Israel party and that is the Republican Party.” What a boneheaded thing to say—both because it isn’t true, and because it’s a sure-fire way to hurt Israel. (Full disclosure: I’m a proud RJC member.) Let’s look at some of the ways we know the Democrats continue to support Israel: • In a survey last December nearly three times as many Democrats... Full story
CHICAGO (JTA)—At a campaign event in Virginia last week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders invoked his Judaism in response to a question about Islamophobia in the media. The exchange drew widespread attention, in part because Sanders has mostly avoided discussion of how his religion informs his politics. The contrast between his approach and that of other candidates is striking. But whatever else we might say about the merits of his candidacy, Sanders’ reticence to don the cloak of sanctimony is refreshing. Americans in gen... Full story
Fifty years ago this week, two prominent figures in the American Jewish community startled their colleagues by calling for democratic elections to choose Jewish leaders. The occasion was a two-day conference in New York City, in November 1965, on “Planning for the American Jewish Community of Tomorrow—1975.” Jewish organizational professionals, rabbis, and scholars came together to discuss what should be done to ensure the wellbeing of American Jewry 10 years hence. Most of the speakers confined themselves to generalities and platitudes. But t... Full story
By Stephen M. Flatow JNS.org Another American victim of Palestinian terrorism was buried this week. Does it matter that he was an American? Why should the American government, or American Jews, take any more interest in the latest victim than in any other victims? Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old former Connecticut school principal, died Oct. 26 of wounds he suffered in a recent Palestinian terrorist attack in Jerusalem. He was the 137th American citizen murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the 1960s. Since he was an American citizen,... Full story
The death of any Jew at the hands of Palestinian terrorists should make American Jewish organizations sit up and take notice. But the death of U.S. Jewish peace activist Richard Lakin poses a special challenge to left-of-center advocacy groups such as J Street. Lakin, 76, a retired Connecticut school principal, was a passenger on a bus in Jerusalem’s Armon HaNatziv neighborhood when two Palestinian Arab terrorists attacked with guns and knives on October 13. He passed away on October 26, from the injuries suffered in the attack. Lakin family fr... Full story
We are seeing in recent events the advantages of a state, as well as reasons to doubt the wisdom of creating a Palestinian state. It’s not a simple issue. A state can discipline its people, via decisions of a government, police, and courts. However, Palestinians speak and act in numerous ways, with no leadership capable of imposing its will, reaching agreements with others, and likely to implement those agreements. We can’t be certain they’d do better with a state. Various claimants of leadership—Palestine National Authority with ostensi... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—By now it should be obvious how absurd it is to call President Barack Obama Israel’s “best friend” ever, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times has claimed. A Blame Israel Firster, Obama won’t use his moral authority to try stopping the instigators of this latest spate of violence, the Palestinians. Unfortunately he never learned from his Democratic predecessor how to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the Middle East. While Bill Clinton also endorsed a Palestinian state, and also felt frustrated with Prime Minister... Full story
Last week, Israel commemorated the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, a prime minister of Israel and hero in the eyes of the Israeli people. I was struck by how significant the day is for Israelis and what this means in the context of ongoing conflict in the Jewish state. The way that Rabin is revered as a hero truly shows the extent to which the Israeli people desire peace. Born in Jerusalem, Rabin predates Israel by more than a dozen years. As a young man, Rabin witnessed and even led in various wars in which Israel was attacked by its... Full story
Secretary of State John Kerry met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the latest wave of Palestinian terrorism. Since the Obama administration has been saying that “all sides” need to take steps to end the violence, we can presume that Kerry demanded that Israel make some new concessions. Here are a few ideas as to what Kerry might have asked for: • Reduce Checkpoints: For years, the administration has been saying that Israeli security checkpoints in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) are “humiliating” to the Palestini... Full story
“There’s no stoppin’ the cretins from hoppin’,” sang the legendary Ramones, in one of their two-minute barnstormers that enters my head every time I see U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry getting on a plane. And never more than when his destination is Israel. If Kerry receives a frosty welcome in the Jewish state, it shouldn’t come as a shock, at least not to someone capable of empathizing with the ugly situation Israelis are currently facing. Part of the anger lies in the moral equivalence that Kerry’s State Department has molded to exp... Full story
In 1967, shortly after the Six Day War, Yigal Allon, a respected Israeli archeologist and at the time, Minister of Immigration, offered a plan for creating the borders of the Third Jewish Commonwealth. He drew a convoluted map, dividing the Jewish homeland north and south, but keeping Jerusalem what it had always been, the capital of the Jewish State. It was revised by the Knesset, but never executed. The reasons were many, including the fact that getting over a hundred Jews in an assembly to agree on something is a massive undertaking. But,... Full story
The alleged division of Jerusalem has brought forth a prolonged singing of our national anthem, oy gevalt. In order to deal with the recent wave of violence coming from the most restive of the Arab neighborhoods, exit roads have been staffed with police who search those leaving. Large concrete blocks have been used to narrow the exits, and there are mobile concrete walls several meters in height along roads of Jewish neighborhoods bothered by frequent stonings and fire bombs. Critics are claiming that these actions violate the principal that... Full story
