Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — When I heard the news that Henry Kissinger had died, the only thing I could think was “There goes the smartest man in the world.” This is hyperbolic, of course, but one cannot read any of Kissinger’s books without feeling that one has encountered an extraordinary intelligence. In a world that despises anything resembling intelligence, this is not easily dismissed. Many, however, do dismiss it. Even the more positive eulogists have hedged their bets, attempting to head off the inevitable fusillade of invective from the progres...
(JNS) — It is common to think that despite the extensive political, religious and cultural differences between different identity groups in Israel, on really important matters—such as survival in the face of enemy attack—they can all come together. Indeed, it seemed that this was illustrated by the total mobilization of Israeli society after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. Yet recent days have shown that this is not entirely true. There is one very important matter that has not enjoyed total consensus: The hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas...
(JNS) — Polish educator Janusz Korczak once wrote: “If I were a boy again, I’d want to remember and know everything that I know now. Only I wouldn’t want anyone to find out that I was already a grownup once. I would pretend as if nothing were the matter; that I’m the same kind of little boy as all the others.” Over the past two months, understanding the world as an adult has not been a great privilege. One could be forgiven if, for the past two months, one had been envious of the naivete of children, even if just for a fleeting moment. Of...
By Clifford D. May (JNS) — “Swaps of captives resume after brief protest by Hamas,” read the top headline in The Washington Post on Sunday. But the “captives” set free by Israel had all been arrested or already convicted of such crimes as stabbing, shooting and attempted suicide bombing, while the “captives” released by Hamas are all innocent women and children dragged from their homes in flagrant violation of international law. In what legal or moral universe is there any equivalence between the two? The Israelis are releasing three terrori...
In the Academy Awards, no one has ever heard of an award recipient standing before a jubilant and envious audience, and say, “No, thank you, I really didn’t make this film and I do not deserve your recognition. I am rescinding this honor you have bestowed upon me.” Of course not. People who don’t win an Oscar, the most prestigious award in the Hollywood film industry, repeatedly claim that it’s just an honoree to be nominated. They’d never return the coveted award. It sounds absurd even to think it. Unlike Miss Universe and other such beauty...
(Gatestone Institute via JNS) — The Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group and its supporters are disappointed that the Arab countries did not come to the rescue of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the war which erupted after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. At least 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 4,500 wounded in the attack. Another 240 Israelis, including toddlers, children, women and the elderly, were kidnapped to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. This is not the first time that the Palestinians have voiced disappointment with their A...
(JNS) — Much of the Hamas enthusiasm we’ve seen has been at a distance—shaky camera shots of mobs of rioters, some quick clips of a poster-ripper or a few tweets or videos gleaned from the madness of social media influencers, but here they are given a full forum to speak at the Oakland City Council. The issue on the table is whether the Oakland City Council will just demand that Israel stop attacking Hamas, misleadingly described as a “ceasefire,” or whether the resolution will also at least condemn Hamas’s mass murder of Israelis. That brough...
(JNS) — Every Jew, both inside and outside of Israel, has been held hostage for 40 days. In the Holy Land, Israelis—Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze—have been bombed, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, forced into bomb shelters and cast into internal exile. Because Israel has dared to fight back, Jews around the world are being “punished” for Israel’s alleged “crimes.” Jews everywhere are being verbally harassed, demonized, threatened, physically attacked and sometimes murdered. Visibly Jewish students no longer feel safe in their classroom...
This essay originally appeared in Kveller. (JTA) — It was a slow trickle, each long press of the finger and ensuing quick tap was days and sometimes weeks apart (it’s hard to comprehend that a whole month has passed since Oct. 7), but I am here to tell you that I — a former social media manager — have removed each and every social media app from my phone. In fact, as I was writing this very esssay, I realized I still had Threads downloaded, opened it for a minute, saw a Thread that said “Zionism is antisemitism,” and promptly deleted tha...
(JNS) — In the latest controversy surrounding media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, the BBC was forced to apologize for reporting grossly false information. One of its presenters declared that IDF soldiers “were targeting people including medical teams and Arab speakers” at Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which would be a war crime. The presenter repeated this statement twice, citing a Reuters news report. As the BBC later admitted, this was an outright lie. It quickly emerged that the Reuters report in question had quoted an IDF statement that...
(JNS) — It is crystal clear now that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is exploiting the war against Israel to destroy the existing State of Israel by using pressure, threats, blackmail, leaks, the media, diplomatic backstabbing, the Arab states, the E.U. and the U.N. Read this paragraph from Blinken memo: As I said in private and in public, we believe Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza. We believe in Palestinian-led governance of Gaza, with Gaza unified with the West Ban...
(JTA) — When I saw the photos and videos posted by Hamas murdering entire Israeli families, raping women and killing young people at a music festival on Oct. 7 — I was horrified and shocked. These images ignited the flames of a dormant trauma I suffered 82 years ago in Baghdad, Iraq, when I was just 10 years old. On June 1 and 2, 1941, two months after a pro-Nazi coup that plagued Baghdad, mobs — aided by the police and soldiers — broke into Jewish homes, raping women and girls and murdering Jews mercilessly in a rampage that came to be know...
(JNS) — In the Western mind, proportionality in war is simply a numbers game. The side that inflicts more casualties is acting disproportionately, is in the wrong and may even be committing crimes against humanity. This has no basis in international law, but it is useful as a rhetorical weapon. Israel’s enemies make prodigious use of this numbers game, which is no surprise. After all, when Israel is fighting a terrorist entity that uses civilians as human shields in order to increase body counts, which are then used to manipulate jou...
(JNS) — Paul Kessler went to a pro-Hamas demonstration in the Los Angeles area waving an Israeli flag to stand down the crowd gathered to support the genocide of Jews. A pro-Hamas demonstrator, who tracked the 69-year-old before he approached him, clubbed Kessler in the head with a megaphone. Kessler fell to the ground and died of cerebral bleeding. Forty-eight hours after Kessler was killed, his murderer was still free, even though the police know who he is. Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryoff hadn’t arrested him because he couldn’t decid...
(JNS) — There’s a theme that emerges when defending the atrocities of Hamas and its supporters: “You made us do it.” And the next step beyond that is the suggestion that the crimes committed by Hamas and its supporters were really a form of entrapment by Israel. You see this argument in the suggestion that Israel deliberately lowered its guard to allow Hamas to kill, rape and kidnap Israelis. And you see it in Linda Sarsour, a politically influential Islamist and the godmother of Islamist antisemitism in America, arguing that the kidnap...
By Remember Haman? The book of Esther tells the story of this horrible man in the king’s court who planned to kill all the Jews in the Persian/Medes kingdom — a kingdom that stretched from India to Ethiopia. Haman gave 10,000 talents of silver to the king and asked to be able to destroy all the Jews in the land. The king took the money and then gave it for the use of the genocide of the Jews. Of course, we know the rest of the story, Esther called for a fast and then went to the king and revealed Haman’s plan. Haman was hung and the Jewis...
The other day, I was reading my grandson the Dr. Seuss classic, “In a People House.” It was a needed respite for me, a break from incessantly following the news of the war in Israel, albeit that the Red Alert app on my phone sounded throughout, indicating continued rocket fire from Hamas terrorists in Gaza at Israeli towns and cities. Just another day and another war crime in case you’re keeping score. Try as I might to separate myself from the war, even with the unadulterated pleasure of reading to my grandson, I just couldn’t. Between...
(JNS) — After 75 years of a successful Israel, it’s hard to imagine that in its early years, Zionism garnered less than 10 percent of global Jewry’s support. Many Jews preferred to assimilate into the nations in which they resided. Others were afraid that advocating for their own state would inspire antisemitic attacks. It was only after the Holocaust that global Jewry, especially American Jewry, came around to supporting Zionism. As Germany transformed into an antisemitic killing machine, world Jewry witnessed the great powers refuse to admit...
(JNS) — The former Israel bureau chief of The New York Times has discovered who is really to blame for the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7: Israel. This vile bit of slander comes from the pen of Ethan Bronner, who spent 26 years at the Times posing as an objective journalist. That included the years 2008 to 2012, when he served as its Israel bureau chief. Bronner’s pro-Palestinian bias over the years has been well documented. (For dozens of examples, see camera.org). Unfortunately, that troubling record didn’t stop Bloomberg News from making him head...
(JNS) — In times of crisis, the public looks to its most revered leaders for insight and wisdom. But in the case of Barack Obama, what passes for wisdom is not only unwise but amoral. After weeks without saying much of anything about the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, the 44th president has weighed in on the subject while appearing on a podcast hosted by former staffers Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vieter. In the wake of the greatest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the most brazen example of t...
(JNS) — A month ago, all the sirens in Israel were not enough to warn of the descent of Hamas barbarians on the communities of Israel’s southern border. Now, fog has enveloped the future of the entire world, and only one certainty remains: We are disoriented, in shock. We now realize that there are many essential things we do not know: We do not know if there is a limit to human cruelty, after having witnessed live, through the cameras of the terrorists themselves, the atrocities committed against children in front of their mothers, against mot...
“Jews worldwide haven’t been this fearful in living memory” Jewish media outlets worldwide call for combating the surge in antisemitism Two decades ago, the former British Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, astutely likened antisemitism to a constantly evolving virus. One that, in the modern era, specifically targets the Jewish nation-state. He aptly described this prejudice as a deeply ingrained malignancy, perpetually lingering beneath the surface of society. For many of us in the global Jewish community, the great man’s words were not mer...
(JNS) — We hear repeatedly from Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden himself, that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. I beg to differ. There’s a big part of the Palestinian people who consider Hamas their representative—not only in the Gaza street but even in Judea and Samaria. Hamas represents a very important part of the Palestinian people, something to bear in mind when we speak of “the day after” the war. On the ground, many civilians in the Gaza Strip followed Hamas operatives into Israel to loot and murder, w...
Dear Editor: It is not widely known that Yahya Sinwar, one of the top planners of the massacre on Oct. 7 was once a prisoner in Israel for murdering Israelis. While in prison he developed a cancerous tumor on the brain. And yes, you guessed it. He was successfully operated on, had the tumor removed and in gratitude for saving his life he planned the murder of as many Israelis as possible. He was released from prison in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a former IDF soldier who had been abducted and was released in a prison swap in 2011. Another...
(JNS) — In the past weeks, anti-Israel protests on college campuses and in the streets of major cities have continued and grown in size. In Europe, the numbers of those expressing “solidarity with Palestine” are even greater as hundreds of thousands marched as Israel began its ground offensive inside the Gaza Strip. The images of massive throngs of individuals waving Palestinian flags and yelling insults about Israel and Jews have been widely published and broadcast. So, too, have accounts of incidents in which Jews were subjected to intim...
