Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese probably didn’t imagine that one week after his interior ministry abruptly canceled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a member of Israel’s Knesset, his government would be enveloped in a major dispute with Israel’s arch-foe, the regime in Iran. Unlike Iran, Israel has not carried out any terrorist attacks in Australia. It has not encouraged hate crimes against that country’s growing Muslim population. It is not boycotting goods produced in Australia. Had Rothman been permitted to go ahead with his...
(JNS) — The history of Jew-hatred can be understood as the systematic perpetuation of defamatory rumors strategically deployed to demonize Jews. These myths have repeatedly produced lethal consequences, claiming Jewish lives across centuries and geographies. The recurrence of these claims makes them difficult to refute before violence ensues. From the medieval blood libel to contemporary accusations of genocide and colonialism, each new fabrication presents itself as unprecedented. In reality, each libel constitutes a continuation of a long a...
(JNS) — The Jewish community of Australia has long served as a model of integration, resilience and commitment. For decades, it has stood in constant solidarity with Israel, nurturing a relationship defined by deep emotional bonds and shared historical memory. Many Holocaust survivors rebuilt their shattered lives on Australian shores, laying the foundations of communities that remain among the strongest Jewish centers in the Diaspora. Despite the vast physical distance from Israel, the connection has never been a matter of miles, but of h...
(JNS) — You can see it in online exchanges and hear it in casual conversations. The accumulated weight of nearly two years of media stories claiming that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, murdering journalists to cover up those misdeeds, deliberately starving its residents and thus responsible for “genocide” has had an impact on public opinion across the globe, as well as in the United States. This has created a growing consensus about the war that ensued after the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli communities that took...
(JNS) — Low voter turnout in local primary and general elections has allowed a determined and militant group of outsiders to infiltrate and effectively the takeover the Democratic Party’s political machinery in certain cities. The most striking recent example is in New York City, where state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won the Democratic Party mayoral primary, with fewer than 470,000 first-round votes out of the slightly more than 1.07 million votes cast. To put this in perspective, more tha...
The outpouring of thousands of Israelis into the streets of Israeli towns and cities, demanding that the Israeli government make a deal with the butchers of Hamas for the remaining hostages, no matter what the cost to Israel, is not in Israel’s best interest. These demonstrations against the government were the result of incitement by many of the hostage families critical of the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to bring the remaining hostages home. Despite the severe pressure exerted by the former Biden a...
(JNS) — Israel drew a firestorm of international criticism recently when it announced its plan to defeat Hamas once and for all by taking full control of the Gaza Strip. While Hamas’s command and control has been devastated, it is still a deadly enemy that refuses to surrender or release the estimated 50 hostages it holds captive, and it remains deeply embedded within Gazan society. French President Emmanuel Macron described Israel’s latest plan to achieve victory over Hamas as “a disaster of unprecedented gravity waiting to happen.” Likewise,...
(JNS) — U.N. members held a conference last month to discuss the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.” It was spearheaded by France and Saudi Arabia and sought to define the conditions that the Palestinian state must meet to be recognized. Regardless, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he will recognize a Palestinian state in September. Among those countries participating in the conference for statehood were Great Britain, Canada, Norway, Qatar, Spain and Turkey. Yet decla...
(JNS) — When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently approved some 3,400 new housing units in Area E1, global condemnation was swift. Kaja Kallas, the foreign-policy chief for the European Union, denounced the move as “illegal under international law” and a mortal threat to the “viability of a future Palestinian state.” But there’s a glaring omission in this outrage: For years, the European Union has sponsored Palestinian construction across Area C, including E1 itself, without permits and in direct violation of the framework of the...
(JNS) — It’s time to acknowledge that in its 77-year history, Israel has made some critically painful mistakes. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, during which as many as 2,800 Israeli soldiers had lost their lives, the Agranat Commission was established to investigate Israeli intelligence failures. It was found that the military and intelligence community failed to establish the gravity of the Egyptian military build-up along the Chaim Bar Lev Line. They also felt that they failed to establish that Syria would enter the war, assuming it would onl...
(JNS) — I’ve never been much of a flirt with people, but ideas? I flirt shamelessly. I don’t fall head over heels, but I linger. I’ll bat my lashes at a seductive concept, maybe take it out for coffee, but I rarely commit. One of my life mottos (possibly from Stephen Colbert?) is “Don’t believe everything you think.” It has served me well, especially when it comes to the thoughts that won’t leave me alone. Take “child of a Holocaust survivor.” My father was born in Germany in 1928. His teacher was a Nazi. He witnessed Kristallnacht in No...
(JNS) — I recently had the chance to speak with Kobi Samerano, the father of 21-year-old Yonatan Samerano, who was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, by an employee of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and held in Gaza for 627 days. His body was found by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza and returned to Israel. Kobi Samerano permitted me to share his story with the world. His words are not mine to keep; they are for all Jews to hear. During our exchange, he told me something that will haunt me forever: “Burying my son was a rel...
(JNS) — How is a two-state solution to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians like a cure for cancer? Consider the following: • Rational people of goodwill wish that there truly were “Y” today. • Rational people of goodwill hope that someday in the future there truly will be “Y”. • Rational people of goodwill understand that, notwithstanding their wishes and hopes, “Y” is not a reality today. If you substitute “Y” for either “a two-state solution for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians” or “a cure for cancer,” you will ge...
(JNS) — Currently, there are a number of essential questions not being asked of nations that will recognize a planned Palestinian state. Journalists should pose these questions to the foreign ministers of France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. • Will the planned Palestinian state abolish the Palestinian Charter, which mandates the destruction of Israel? • Will the planned Palestinian state revoke the law that guarantees salaries to anyone who murders a Jew? • Will the planned Palestinian state remove texts t...
(JNS) — Over the years, I must have read tens of thousands of pages devoted to the topic of antisemitism, and I’ve yet to find a better explanation for its persistence across the centuries than this one: “Everything seems impossible or terribly difficult without the providential appearance of antisemitism. It enables everything to be arranged, smoothed over and simplified. If one were not an antisemite through patriotism, one would become one through a simple sense of opportunity.” The author of those words was himself an antisemite — Charl...
Dear Editor: Congratulations for your front-page news of the Arab League condemnation of the Oct. 7 attack and call on Hamas to disarm (Aug. 8, 2025). That news escaped the attention of most public “news sources” which usually reflect only the “information” provided by Hamas’ propaganda machine. Unfortunately, the same issue described in detail how mostly female “rabbis” wrestled with the Israeli war response in Gaza as to its “morality” in their Friday night sermons (“As images from Gaza spread, US rabbis wrestle with war’s morality from...
(JNS) — The long-running reality show “Survivor” is built on a simple, but ruthless premise: Outwit. Outlast. Outplay. In the end, the one who adapts, strategizes and executes wins. It’s not about who complains the loudest, writes the nicest letters or manages the most polite meetings, it’s about who has the will and the skill to take the prize. That’s not just a television concept. It’s the formula the Jewish people must embrace right now. We live during a time when antisemitism is not only resurgent but mainstream at a pace we have not seen...
(JNS) — From the “Israel is starving Gazans” hoax to the “settler violence” hoax, Hamas and other terrorist groups are playing Jewish leaders like a fiddle. And the Jewish community is paying for it. The impact of Hamas propaganda is on full display in “A protest letter to PM Netanyahu from world Jewry,” signed by more than 5,000 people, including “leaders of world Jewry from 20 countries.” The letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “facilitated” by the London Initiative Action Group. Signatories include philanthropists such...
Traditionally, international diplomacy was conducted with a semblance of integrity, logic, truthfulness and sincerity. Diplomatic discussions and other interactions between and among nations was conducted in a formal, serious, thoughtful manner. Even when diplomatic treachery was the goal, a facade of adhering to these qualities was attempted. News and other media reporting on the affairs of nations, historically also followed these professional characteristics to a large extent. More often than not, critical-issue diplomacy, such as...
(JNS) — Since its establishment, life in Israel has resembled a grim trade-off. In return for the right to live as Jews in the one and only Jewish state, we have been expected to surrender something far more basic, our right to live in safety. From birth, Israelis enter into an unspoken agreement, one that demands we normalize existential threats. We are told it was our fate. That there is no alternative. That is the cost of living in the Jewish homeland. And so, we become desensitized. A stabbing in a supermarket parking lot no longer s...
(JNS) — Here’s a question that I’ve heard posed on occasion, often from rabbis on Friday evenings: How did our people, displaced from our homeland for two millennia, scattered to the winds, maintain their inherent, recognizable, collective Jewishness? Was it the mamaloshen of Yiddish? Or keeping Shabbat (inevitably, the rabbis’ favorite answer)? Or perhaps even direct influence from Hashem, confirming once again that we are chosen? All of these are worthy options and likely played a role in our survival as a people. And yet, cynic that I am, I...
(JNS) — As reports grow more harrowing of Israeli hostages starved, emaciated and forced to dig their own graves, the painful truth must be confronted: The “Bring Them Home Now” campaign has not only failed to free our people; it has served to entrench their suffering. What began as a unifying cry of anguish transformed into a moral and strategic disaster. The campaign’s well-intentioned, emotionally driven message quickly lost sight of the enemy — Hamas — and turned its fury inward, at the Israeli government. By doing so, it handed Hama...
My mother used to tell a story about how when she was in college, she believed that she had a professor who liked her so much that her papers were never checked but just given an “A” automatically. Of course, that’s a better problem than a teacher automatically failing a student without looking at their work, but it bothered her all the same. To prove it, one day she submitted a paper having inserted a full type-written page from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” in the middle. The teacher didn’t look, and my mother got an A. I learned from...
Recently, Hamas released horrific videos depicting two Israeli hostages, Evytar David and Rom Braslavski, who have now been held in captivity in inhuman conditions for more than 670 days. One particularly harrowing video shows David, visibly emaciated, being forced to dig what appears to be his own grave in a Hamas tunnel beneath Gaza. These images evoke painful historical parallels to the Holocaust and the brutal conditions of Nazi concentration camps. Jews were rounded up throughout Europe and forced to dig their own graves before they were...
(JNS) — As reports grow more harrowing of Israeli hostages starved, emaciated and forced to dig their own graves, the painful truth must be confronted: The “Bring Them Home Now” campaign has not only failed to free our people; it has served to entrench their suffering. What began as a unifying cry of anguish transformed into a moral and strategic disaster. The campaign’s well-intentioned, emotionally driven message quickly lost sight of the enemy — Hamas — and turned its fury inward, at the Israeli government. By doing so, it handed Hama...
