Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The tenth anniversary of Israel’s retreat from Gaza has occasioned a number of interesting commentaries. Perhaps the most innovative comes from Shmuel Rosner, of Haaretz and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, who views the withdrawal as a kind of triumph for Zionism, surprisingly enough. We should “rejoice” over the fact that Israel “chose” on its own to leave Gaza, Rosner contends. “We took our fate in our own hands...The Jews were not evicted... We were not driven out.” He is alluding to the classic Zionist concept of Jews taking their fate into...
When it comes to the deal agreed to a fortnight ago in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program, there’s a pattern evolving that should be worrying the Obama administration: the more you know about it, the less you like it. A new opinion poll conducted by the organization I work for, The Israel Project, reveals that an increasing number of Americans are anxious about national security—after the economy, it’s the issue voters take most seriously—and that the Iran deal has exacerbated their concerns. More than 75 percent of Americans say they have...
On the surface lies and jokes may appear harmless. Many of the lies about Jews are so absurd it’s hard to imagine that anyone would believe them. But they do. Anti-Semitism and hatred for Jews are fanned by lies and jokes dating back centuries. In the 14th century, a sickening lie “Blood Libel” made the claim that Jews kill Christian children for their blood to make matzo (unleavened bread). To this day it is still circulated. Also in the 14th century Jews were blamed for poisoning wells across Europe causing the Black Plague. The Proto...
Commentators have long noted that Israel is a western outpost in the Muslim Middle East, and suffers accordingly. This note accepts such a designation, but begins with a slightly different perspective, and seeks to learn what is relevant for the here and now. The Middle East is not only Muslim, or nearly entirely Muslim. It is also the Third World. This designation has its social, economic, and political elements, irrespective of religion. Traits of Mexico are similar to those of Palestinian areas of the West Bank, Gaza, and just about...
“Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv,” President Obama warned on Aug. 4, claiming that if his Iran deal is rejected, military conflict will inevitably ensue. Mr. Obama seems to be betting that the rest of us have forgotten that Iranian rockets already fell on Tel Aviv last year. If rockets fell when there was no agreement in 2014, why should Israelis be frightened by warnings that rockets will fall if there is no agreement in 2015? There was a time, not so long ago, when Tel Aviv seemed immune from the dangers brewing in Gaza. Sure, border towns suc...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—This past month, as our attention was focused on watching the developing Iran deal, the situation in Israel has taken a deeply troubling turn. First, a woman wearing a kippah was detained by the police for attempting to worship at the Western Wall. Then David Azoulay, the haredi Orthodox minister of religious affairs from the Shas political party, called the largest movement in Judaism, Reform Judaism, “a disaster for the State of Israel.” He then followed up with an even more disturbing diatribe, saying he couldn’t even call ad...
Dear Editor: I was not surprised to read the position statement by the JFGO published in the Heritage last week. In my opinion, it basically is said nothing. While it mentioned some concerns about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there was no definitive statement either in favor of or against the implementation of the action plan. The fear of offending anyone seems to have been the primary objective. After searching what other Federations or Jewish communities stands were, I found the JFGO’s stand to be a namby-pamby, neither h...
The recent announcement of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran has sparked deep concern and even outrage in the Jewish community. In an almost unprecedented moment for American Jewry, the majority of prominent Jewish organizations have lined up in order to combat this deal. This includes AIPAC, the ADL, and various Jewish Federation chapters, including those in Boston and Miami. This historic display of Jewish unity comes because of a clear belief that Israel and the Jewish people have been placed in a life-threatening situation. But the J Street...
By Ira Sharkansky Israel is currently facing two especially delicate issues. We’re hearing about a New Middle East. This is not the one that Barack Obama and his supporters saw coming out of his Cairo speech and Arab Spring, but a post-Arab Spring alliance between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It looks promising in terms of mutual antagonism to Iran and its clients, and joint opposition to the American-brokered deal with Iran. One suspects that there is already considerable cooperation between the three, in terms of high level meetings b...
Jews stood up to the U.S. government 40 years ago, and should again on Iran. These days, like many Israelis and American Jews, I find myself in a precarious and painful situation. Those of us who believe that the nuclear agreement just signed between world powers and Iran is dangerously misguided are now compelled to criticize Israel’s best friend and ally, the government of the United States. In standing up for what we think is right, for both our people and the world, we find ourselves at odds with the power best able to protect us and promot...
(Kveller via JTA)—For four years, my children attended Community Day School, Pittsburgh’s independent Jewish day school located in Squirrel Hill, the city’s historically Jewish neighborhood. The school’s mission is to “educate Menschen: young people who are academically strong who grow to be good people, knowledgeable Jews, contributing citizens of the people of Israel, the United States, and our world.” Essentially, CDS promises not only a rigorous secular education, it promises to partner with me to raise my children. Last summer, how...
Israel’s Channel 2 recently dedicated a full 15 minutes to the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Reporter Danny Kushmaro brought to an Israeli audience awareness of “the Jews that stand behind the boycott of Israel.” For me, a longtime “student” of JVP, as well as many Americans, there would be little surprise to hear the venomous rhetoric disgorged by JVP activists. For an Israeli audience that never heard of JVP, however, the reaction had to have been nothing short of shock and a profound sense of betrayal. For decades,...
The Obama administration’s weak response to Iran’s latest belligerent rhetoric is reminiscent of how the U.S. responded to one of Yasser Arafat’s most infamous speeches—and illustrates one of the main dangers of the Iran nuclear agreement. Just four days after the nuclear deal was signed in Vienna, with the ink on the agreement barely dry, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denounced America’s “arrogance” and vowed that despite the agreement, Iran will continue “supporting our friends in Palestine, Lebanon” and elsewhere. In oth...
For those who have been confused by the incredible amount of verbiage that has surfaced on the Iran nuclear agreement since it was signed, the best analysis I have read appeared in this morning’s Ha’aretz written by Ari Shavit, titled “The Iran deal: From Thriller to Horror Story.” While I often disagree with Shavit’s politics, his analysis, which is totally bereft of political commentary but is based on his detailed reading of the entire 159-page document, is worthy of perusal and a short précis follows: The good news: The Iranians agreed not...
Despite years of our warnings, the United States and the P5+1 powers reached a nuclear agreement with Iran. As we had feared, the deal is indeed extremely dangerous. Billions of dollars will soon flow into Iran and quickly make their way to the rockets and missiles of Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, the arms embargo that has stopped Iran from further developing its ballistic missile program will be lifted, threatening not just Israel, but also Europe and the U.S. Most importantly, in 10 years, when my daughter is called up for duty in...
This week, a bunch of journalists, foreign policy wonks, and assorted pundits received an email from the White House that began with the legendary words, “Hey, I’m Ben Rhodes, a Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. For the past few years, I’ve been working closely with America’s negotiating team, which was tasked with finding a way to achieve a diplomatic resolution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Don’t you just love that “Hey,” greeting? So informal, so accessible, so confident, so quintessentiall...
The history of Jewish democracy is scattered with congresses, parliaments, unions, councils, sejms, and kahals—all attempts to govern or speak for an unruly body of people who shared a common culture but lacked genuine political autonomy. Various groups claim to speak for the “community,” but they tend to be membership organizations that can only pretend to be broadly democratic. Federations, the North American Jewish fund-raising umbrellas, stake a claim to this territory, with some justification: Like governments, they collect revenue (in t...
Dear American Jewish leadership, I have read your statements on the Iran nuclear deal, and as a Jew, I am deeply disturbed by your response. A combination of reticence, apathy and naivety seem to be all at play, and as the beacons of our people, I find that wanting. You talk of mobilizing and urging Congress to fulfill their mandate. You talk of ensuring that elected representatives hear our concerns. You organize rallies for “peace,” such as the one in New York on July 22. Are these real concrete steps that will protect the Jewish people fro...
Dear Editor: This letter is in response to Andres Silow-Carroll’s op ed, “Should Federations wade into the Iran nuke debate?” (in this issue of Heritage). In the days when the federations REALLY understood there responsibilities, and when there were strong national umbrella organizations like UJA and CJF, this question would never have even been asked. The Feds would have, alongside AIPAC, pulled out all the stops to block this deal. How can any Jew, or Jewish organization support this deal ESPECIALLY since both the Israeli prime minister AND t...
Last week—and please forgive me for the graphic nature of this metaphor—Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled down his pants and urinated over the graves of the 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys exterminated by Serb forces in the enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. Twenty years after Bosnia was torn apart by the genocide committed by both Serb and Croatian forces, the Russians—who were the main backers of the regime of the late tyrant of Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic—are still playing the insidious role of denying the most monstrous crime t...
There aren’t any in the realms of politics or public policy, except in the books written for children, or childish adults. The world is too complex. We know too much to be heroic. There may be heroes on the field of battle, some of who survive their heroism, but that is a different story. Wise people, and perhaps most of those elected to high office, do not aspire to solve the big problems. They’ve learned to cope. That is, managing the problems, doing little things that make the big things less threatening. That leaves a lot of work for the...
By what form is a nation born? What makes its nationhood and citizenry stand out from all the others? Having just celebrated a birthday on July 4th, I am acutely aware of the rebellious group of British Subjects who declared independence from England and how and why they did it. Jews have a national identity that goes back a bit farther than 1776. Near as we can tell, we were a people almost six thousand years ago. We formed a nation a little over two thousand years ago (sorry, creationists). We built our capital city from the ground up on the...
By Alan Kornman The role of man in this world is to work, create, innovate, accumulate wealth, and elevate the material world while caring for those in need. Israel and Jews have a long-standing tradition of extending aid to alleviate hunger, disease and poverty, in the wake of natural disasters and terrorist attacks beyond its borders. Israel’s 200-strong relief team was the first on the scene after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, saving thousands of lives. In March 2011, Israel was one of the first countries to set up field c...
By Chava Shervington NEW YORK (JTA)—When I was 24, an Orthodox matchmaker tried to set me up on a date with a man older than my parents. When I objected, she told me, “Stop being so picky. Not many guys are willing to consider a black girl.” As an African-American Orthodox Jew, this was hardly my first encounter with the questionable treatment I and my fellow Jews of color endure. “Why is the goy here?” one black Jewish parent overheard when taking her child to a Jewish children’s event. At one yeshiva in Brooklyn, the mother of a biracial st...
An Israeli soldier who shot back at an Arab who was trying to murder him is now under investigation, following protests by self-described human rights activists. Given the focus of the activists’ concern, perhaps it would be more accurate to call them terrorists’ rights activists. The activists, from the B’Tselem non-governmental organization, have released a highly edited five-second piece of security camera footage (from a nearby gas station) that shows part of the incident. Even with the selective editing, you can clearly see the terro...
