Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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On Monday night I clicked over from a nail-biting, extra-innings Mets game to CNN’s coverage of the crisis in Israel. In short: Mets win, Israel loses. While SNY.tv kept showing a did-he, didn’t-he replay of a disputed play at second, CNN looped a video of the beating of an Arab-American teen by two Israeli police. It’s awful to watch: The boy is being held down by one helmeted cop, his hands apparently cuffed behind his back, while another aims swift kicks at his torso and head. It’s painful to admit that this wasn’t even the worst blow to I...
Readers might recall that the Jewishly owned New York clothing chain Syms (which once merged with Filene’s Basement but ultimately folded in 2011) had a clever marketing campaign for “the educated consumer.” In Sy Syms’ famous radio and television ads, his salesmen were really “educators” who taught the public about quality, fabric, and price. What the Central Florida public really needs to be educated about, however, is how Israel is framed in the media. Readers of the Heritage need to be better versed in journalistic uses and abuses. Bec...
Washington Jewish Week “Hard Choices,” the title of a recently released foreign policy memoir by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, comes across as surprisingly ironic. While dedicating a chapter of her 656-page autobiography to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace negotiations, Clinton, even in her own words, appears to be a passenger in peace efforts rather than a driver of them. As with most U.S. politicians aspiring to high office, Clinton is diplomatic on the subject that for more than a half a century has bee...
Among the many heartbreaking images associated with the kidnap-murder of three Israeli teenagers was a televised interview on June 29 with the mother of one of the Hamas terrorists named as a prime suspect in the killings. “If they [the Israelis] accuse him of this [the kidnapping], and if it is a true accusation, I will be proud of him until Judgment Day,” she declared. “If the accusation that he did it is true... My boys are all righteous, pious and pure. The goal of my children is the triumph of Islam.” Not that she is the first Middle...
Dear Editor: July 28, 2014 marks the 100-year anniversary of the official start of WWI. A local newspaper reader asked me to write about WWI and the impact on the Middle East. The problem in doing this is complying with the typical 200-word limit of many newspapers, but I decided to do it anyway since I owed it to my wife’s father, Alton Jones and her uncle William Howard Jones, both WWI Marines who fought in France and Belgium in Maj. Gen. Lejeune’s Second Marine Division. They fought in many WWI battles, including Belleau Wood, the Ver...
By Gary Bretton-Granatoor NEW YORK (JTA) — The Jewish world has been shaken by the decision of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from three companies that it claims “further the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” The denomination has placed itself squarely on the side of the divestment movement that seeks to hold Israel solely to blame for the plight of the Palestinian people. It did so, furthermore, over the opposition of many Presbyterian pastors and lay leaders. Despite protests to the contrary by the denomination’s leaders, the chu...
One of the most important, but least-reported stories connected to the recent kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian terrorists is the discovery of numerous terrorist tunnels and weapons depots in areas ruled by the “peaceful” Palestinian Authority. The conventional wisdom is that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a “moderate” who opposes terrorism and wants to make peace with Israel. PA spokesmen have assured Western reporters that they oppose the Hamas terrorists and were “cooperating” with Israel in the search...
Things have escalated in the south to the point where the IDF is now pursuing an “operation.” The Hebrew word touches more buttons than the official English translation, “Protective edge.” Alternative translations that might touch different buttons, are “Strong rock” “Impregnable rock,” or “Impregnable fortress.” In IDF parlance, a named operation is less than a war, but more than a limited response to a limited attack. Yesterday saw more than 80 missiles fired toward Israel. As usual, the vast majority landed on empty land. IDF responses--more...
Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba... May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified How do parents standing at the gravesite of teenage children say this in the spirit in which it is meant? Having been there myself the only option is to draw strength from the three Fs, family, friends and faith so that in the face of indescribable tragedy one can still sincerely affirm one’s faith in the Almighty. b’al’ma di v’ra khir’utei... in the world that He created as He willed. Is this really the plan that God had for the world he created and willed? Or...
After receiving the bitter news about the murder of the three kidnapped boys, a cloud of mourning has descended upon the entire Jewish nation. The only bit of consolation is that probably they did not suffer much, and that now they are attached to the Almighty’s mantle, in a closeness of everlasting fondness and permanent remembrance before Him. They are now in eternal rest, but we are here with our grieving and our questions. Many ask: What about all our prayers and supplications to God that now we know were said in vain, since they were alrea...
Dear Editor: In the last few hours, it has come to light that Jewish criminals were behind the brutal murder of Mohammed Abu Khedair. While they have admitted their crime and are cooperating with the investigation, it is now clear that this was a clear act of terrorism and their shame and dishonor is our own. We, Israelis and members of the Jewish People worldwide, must look at this as a watershed event that causes us to redouble our efforts at education to actively and absolutely eradicating the kind of thinking that might lead others to...
Dear Editor: I was instrumental in establishing the “Israeli National Skin Bank,” which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for everyday needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations. This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza , who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Ara...
The recent kidnapping of three Israeli teenage boys by terrorists in Judea and Samaria is an appalling reminder of the cruelty guiding radical elements in the Middle East and of the need for vigilance and solidarity by all those who cherish the sanctity of human life and fundamental values of human rights. I was in Israel the week when the boys were abducted. In fact, I passed very near the spot where it took place the following day. The stark contrast between the humanity and benevolence visibly on display on my visit to Israel and the open...
The Presbyterian Church (USA) symbolically voted in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against the State of Israel. The Presbyterian Church’s ideological support of anti-Israel sanctions and divestments is so strong, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke publicly supports the Presbyterian Church’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish trajectory. The Presbytery of New Covenat, 221st General Assembly (2014) voted 310-303 to divest their substantial assets from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard because of the...
Israeli governments have long recognized the need to tread carefully in pursuit of national security. Greater powers have a limited tolerance for Israel daring to approach what they do in defense of their own interests. Part of the balance is the considerable power of the Israeli military that can threaten any state that would overstep vaguely defined lines. The latest examples of Israeli balance between its security and others’ tolerance have been emerging as Israeli forces seek the three kidnapped young civilians, and do what they can to w...
We are indeed one family. And one that dwells alone. More than two weeks have passed. Naftali Frankel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, are still in captivity and all we can do is continue to pray—to pray that they are still alive and to pray that they will soon be reunited with their families, their friends and all those who love them. Initially, I thought my pain was greater than most. Naftali is a cousin. Just a few short weeks ago I celebrated the traditional Yom Ha-Atzmaut Bar-B-Q with him at his home, together with our f...
The newest nonsense from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is its declaration of victory in convincing the Metropolitan Opera to cancel plans for a worldwide simulcast of its production of the American opera The Death of Klinghoffer. Under the terms of the ADL’s compromise with the Met, the show will only be seen by those few who happen to be in New York for the live version and can pay hundreds of dollars per ticket. ADL director Abe Foxman acknowledged that the work, which deals with terrorism, the murder of a Jewish cruise passenger, and t...
The Algemeiner) The State Department’s demand that Israel “exercise restraint” in its search for the Hamas kidnappers makes a mockery of President Obama’s pledge two years ago that he “will always have Israel’s back.” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declared on June 20 that the Obama Administration is “urging all parties to exercise restraint and avoid steps that could destabilize the situation.” That phrase “all parties” was a thin veneer of even-handedness. Everyone knows the call for “restraint” was aimed at Israel. In fact, Psaki ma...
During the war in Iraq, when I was still living in London and coordinating news coverage of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein for various international media organizations, I was in regular contact with a brave Iraqi Kurdish journalist named Ayub Nuri. When Ayub and I finally met in person, several years later in New York, we spent a couple of hours talking about the region generally, and specifically about whether Israel had a natural ally in the Kurds. So it was with some pleasure, in the midst of a horrible news week for the Middle East, that...
Life on the borders of cultures has been brought again to the fore in the crisis of three boys. We are seeing how far apart we are from Palestinians who celebrate the kidnapping, compare it to Israel’s imprisonment of their heroes who we see as murderers. And how far apart we are from Americans and other westerners who criticize us for overreacting against Palestinians, and cannot see what we do in the preaching and actions of Muslims. Cultures are fuzzy, and the borders between them are not impenetrable to some degree of understanding and s...
Today I want to write about the three kidnapped teenagers in Israel. That’s today. However, by the time this is printed, the crisis may well be over, for good or evil. This act, however it plays out, is terror, plain and simple. For the three sets of parents in Israel, it is of little concern whether just these three or another 100 were kidnapped. Terror of any kind is really a personal experience. When terrorists blew up the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, most of the dead were teenagers. Koby Mandel was 13 when he and a friend were b...
In a rare quiet moment, John Ruskay, who is stepping down at the end of the month after 15 years as CEO and executive vice president ofUJA-Federation of New York, sat in his office on East 59th Street and described his feelings these days as “running in a relay race, trying to hand the baton” to his successor, Eric Goldstein, as seamlessly as possible. That baton, in effect, is the world’s largest local charity, a complex organization with a staff of 475 people, which raises more than $140 million a year for a wide range of local, natio...
What does it mean to be a member of a “tribe”? I get an inkling during weeks like these, when the majority of the world is consumed by a quadrennial soccer tournament, and a small slice is convulsed over the abduction of three teenage boys. L’havdil, I know. But somehow both events — one celebratory and somewhat artificial, the other horrific and as real as it gets — turn disparate, even feuding individuals into a unified mass. The impulse is to gather with others like ourselves, wrap ourselves in the symbols of our tribes, and celebrate...
The World Jewish Congress solidarity mission I led to Brussels on June 2 demonstrated an ancient Jewish principle that we at WJC strive to accomplish every day: Kol Yisrael arevim ze le ze – all Jews are responsible for one another. Organized in mere days, the mission brought 38 senior Jewish leaders from 16 different countries to the Belgian capital, where we were greeted with an outpouring of emotion from this community stricken by the heinous anti-Semitic terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium. At a ceremony on June 2 at the museum...
I’ve long argued that any proper understanding of the Palestinian conflict with Israel’s legitimacy is compromised by not taking wider regional factors into account. The school of thought that describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “the Middle East conflict” is dangerously misguided, because it ignores other factors that are far more important, such as the historically violent schism between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, Iran’s renewed assertiveness in Syria and Lebanon, the shared strategic interests binding Israel and the conservativ...
