Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — “If necessary, just as we prevented the fall of Assad, we will prevent the fall of Putin.” This brazen claim was posted to a Telegram channel linked with the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps last Saturday, as an amazed world watched a mutiny unfold in Russia that was quickly snuffed out before any significant violence unfolded. The IRGC has every reason to remain loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has deepened his military alliance with Iran in tandem with his aggression against Ukraine. Russia has bee...
(JNS) — In response to former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from his predecessor Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden announced that, if elected, he would reenter the deal and “work with our allies to make it longer and stronger.” This, Biden claimed, would curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and moderate its malign behavior. He was and is wrong. The mere fact that Biden claimed to be seeking a “longer and stronger” deal puts the lie to Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry’s repeated claims t...
As we stepped through the entrance gate of Auschwitz I, marked with its overhead sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” “Work shall set you free,” I was trying to figure out how I was going to emotionally handle what I was about to experience. Our group was not alone, dozens of other visitors were already there when we were introduced to our personal docent, an English speaking, albeit difficult to understand, middle-aged Polish gentleman at least one generation or more removed from World War II and the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, his explana...
The “Tonys,” the awards for the Best of Broadway, were really interesting this year. Their diversity, their power and their depth showed a rather new attitude on Broadway towards the acceptance of reality. Most interesting to me was the winner of best Musical. The Tony was awarded to the revival of a show from 1998. It tells, with strong musical accompaniment, the story of Leo Frank, a young Jewish factory manager in Atlanta who was accused of raping and killing a 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan, at the pencil factory he managed. Let...
(JNS) — “Al-Sharif [the Arabic/Muslim name for Jerusalem’s Temple Mount] belongs exclusively to the Muslims,” proclaimed Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at the United Nations General Assembly on May 15. Notwithstanding a preponderance of biblical, historical and archeological evidence, Abbas, UNESCO and other Israel-haters steadfastly deny any Jewish connection whatsoever to the Temple Mount. Although Israel recognizes centuries of Arab-Muslim presence in the Holy Land, research provides overwhelming proof of a millennia-old Jewish...
(JNS) — Results from a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll released this year confirmed that Americans are deviating from religious faith. The study found 39 percent percent of those surveyed said that religion was “very important” to them, a sharp decline from the 62 percent who felt the same 25 years ago. A schism within the Jewish community appears to be emerging as a result of this trend. According to the Pew Research Center’s latest analysis of Jewish Americans, young adults are much more likely than those 65 and older to identify as either Orth...
(JNS) — In a decidedly unsurprising verdict, the man who murdered 11 Jews in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh has been found guilty. Now, Robert Bowers faces a second judgment: The court must determine whether he will receive the death penalty. Three congregations were using the Tree of Life facility at the time of the massacre—New Light, Dor Hadash and Tree of Life itself. According to The New York Times, “There has not been agreement among the three congregations or within them about whether Mr. Bowers should be sentence...
(JNS) — In New York, this week’s deadline for submitting changes to individual voter ballots is renewing pressure on Jewish Republicans to switch their party affiliation. New York is one of 12 “closed primary” states in which primary voting is limited to those registered with a specific political party. New York’s reputation as a bastion of deep blue liberalism leaves many conservatives struggling to explain the logic behind backing candidates whose chances of winning, particularly in left-leaning enclaves, are slim at best. Jewish Democrats...
(JNS) — What does Jew-hatred feel like? A punch in the gut. Literally. Let me explain. On May 13, a “Nakba Day” rally was held in Raleigh, N.C. It was only one of many such rallies held throughout the United States, including in Washington, D.C., and New York. These events are notorious for promoting Jew-hatred and genocide, so much so that Berlin banned “Nakba Day” demonstrations this year. Nakba is Arabic for “catastrophe.” The word reflects Arab anguish over the establishment of the State of Israel and the Arabs’ failure to slaughter the J...
(JNS) — Despite their noble-sounding title, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in American universities and colleges exclude and often attack Jews, already the single most persecuted minority in the United States. Worse still, evidence shows that despite the vast budgets and bloated bureaucracies dedicated to DEI initiatives, they have proven to be ineffective at improving the campus experience of marginalized groups. Studies show the prevalence of antisemitism — largely its anti-Zionism form — is skyrocketing on U.S. college and unive...
(JNS) — We are witnessing a strange and troubling historic inversion. It has become part of the lore of the Israeli left that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the victim of growing calls for retribution and punishment due to his perceived sin of signing the Oslo Accords, ultimately leading to Rabin’s assassination. The left holds that the unindicted abettors and provocateurs of this act were, of course, those on the right, especially Benjamin Netanyahu. That political figures were implicitly responsible for the assassination, the left bel...
(JNS) — While the United States and Iran have denied ongoing negotiations for a temporary nuclear agreement, Jerusalem isn’t buying it. It is believed that two Arab countries, including Oman, are mediating between Washington and Tehran. Israel is deeply concerned about the potential outcome of these negotiations, even if they take a long time to materialize. According to senior officials in Jerusalem, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer expressed their concerns following their recent meeting wit...
(JNS) — I understand why universities boast about their most famous graduates. But should a university boast about a graduate who has claimed that members of U.S. Congress are “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby?” Brandeis University, where my daughter Alisa was a student when she was murdered in a suicide bombing in Israel in 1995 and where another one of my daughters graduated a few years later, recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Sunday New York Times headlined “University Quotas Were a Polite Way of Telling Jews Where The...
(JNS) — Have you noticed how many of Israel’s loudest defamers are women? And women from cultures or families that have either forced them to or rewarded them for wearing hijab? (And here I include the Western academic and media world, which has increasingly upheld a politically correct version of Sharia law). I am thinking of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), political activist Linda Sarsour and Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who delivered a hate-filled, anti-Israel speech at the May 12 graduation ceremony at CUNY Law School. What these three women have in...
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp complex is located in the city of Oświęcim about 70 km. (43.5 miles) east of the city of Krakow. It was initially built as a prison camp in 1940 by the Nazis for Polish prisoners. In 1941-1944 it was expanded and designated as the primary slave labor camp and Jew-killing facility as the “Final Solution” because of its convenient central location and good railway links to the main population centers of the Jews in Eastern Europe. This allowed the Nazi regime to “relocate” the large Jewish po...
(JNS) — “Death solves all problems — no man, no problem” Josef Stalin is quoted as having said. A significant number of influential people are now applying the Soviet dictator’s logic to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Their formulation is as simple as it is homicidal: “No Israel, no problem.” Iran’s rulers express their genocidal intentions forthrightly. “We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter,” Brig.-Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the regime’s armed forces has vowed. Hezbollah and Palesti...
(JNS) — Apparently recognizing my intelligence, Google has named its artificial intelligence service after me. Given the current interest in antisemitism generated by the new strategy of the Biden administration which I have found wanting, it seems appropriate to see what Bard would suggest. Here is what (A)I recommend for dealing with the campus: • Increase awareness and education about antisemitism. Many students are unaware of the history and nature of antisemitism, or they may not understand how it can manifest itself in different ways. By...
(JNS) — With the barrage of untruths emanating from Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas and his underlings, it is always a welcome and refreshing phenomenon when world leaders recognize and speak the truth about Israel and the Jews. Pat Robertson, who passed away last week, was one such leader. He was a great friend of the State of Israel and will be sorely missed. I am always grateful when leaders clearly state that the Jews are the rightful heirs to the Land of Israel, which was promised by the Almighty to the Jewish people. I a...
(JNS) — While the Palestinian Arabs are determined to memorialize and perpetuate their displacement as a national emblem of victimhood, tens of millions of people who were displaced in other modern wars have bravely moved on to create new lives in new lands. Now 75 years on, the Palestinians repeatedly make the false claim that Israel expelled 700,000 of them en masse and stole their homeland. The truth is that most Palestinians who left their homes in Israel during the country’s War of Independence in 1948-49 did so voluntarily. Fur...
A realistic goal must be three things: specific, measurable and achievable. Will the proposals outlined in the White House’s first official strategy to counter antisemitism, released with much fanfare this week, pass this test? Or are they more political pablum? The report, which followed conversations with more than 1,000 community leaders, distills the challenges American Jews face. It is a thoughtful and comprehensive effort that should be applauded. But understanding a problem and fixing it are two very different things. And reducing a...
(JNS) — From April 3-7, Students for Justice in Palestine hosted their annual “Palestine Liberation Week,” also known as “Israeli Apartheid Week.” SJP is a campus group supported by the radical American Muslims for Palestine, an anti-Israel organization many of whose members support Hamas. Each spring, SJP leads a propaganda campaign on UCLA’s Bruin Walk, spreading misinformation about the Arab-Israeli conflict. This year, this campaign was held during the Jewish holiday of Passover. Many practicing Jews went home for the holidays and could n...
(JNS) — The Mishnaic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai spoke 18 centuries ago about a group of people in a boat. One of the passengers brandished a hand drill and began to drill a hole under his seat. When the others panicked, he asked why they would care if he confined his drilling to the space where he sat. To his fellow passengers, the answer was obvious: He was causing the entire boat to sink. Last week, the White House released its unprecedented U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. There is much to commend in this comprehensive s...
(JNS) — There were many expectations for Biden’s “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” among the usual organizational types, but anyone with common sense could have seen this coming a mile away. The “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” fails to address Muslim and leftist antisemitism. It briefly delves into campus antisemitism but does not address its source, has a single throwaway line about the attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York City and gives the pro-Israel IHRA definition of antisemitism nearly equal billing wit...
Dear Editor: Thirty-three centuries ago, G-d gave Moses the 10 Commandments and Moses gave them to us. One of them — “Thou shall not commit murder,” Exodus 20:13 — can be either with the tongue or physically. Antisemitism fits that commandment. In the United States there is freedom of speech. The “N” word was finally forbidden to be mentioned because it was always frowned upon and finally, finally not mentioned anymore. This is what has to be done with antisemitism. Any mention of it should be violently attacked verbally and physically...
(JNS) — On May 14, 2018—exactly the same date and even the same hour that David Ben-Gurion announced Israel’s independence 70 years earlier—I presided over the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of the State of Israel. Apart from family milestones, it was the greatest day of my life, and an experience I will never forget. Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem was, of course, deeply meaningful to Israel’s citizens and all of world Jewry. It was a firm rejection of the false claim that Jerusalem co...
