Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
University of Miami’s J Street U chapter recently shared an Instagram post about Masafer Yatta, a region in Area C of the West Bank. The group’s post promotes the narrative that the Israeli government is “carrying out a mass eviction of Palestinian communities” in Masafer Yatta, a campaign that J Street National began promoting heavily this January. However, this campaign is founded upon baseless claims that paint Israel in a malicious manner and overlook the history that proves J Street’s statements inaccurate. Although J Street labels it...
After several hours of rest and regaining my composure from my encounter with the beautiful Vistula River and its ugly past as the depository for Jewish ashes, I met the group I would be traveling with at our organizational meeting. Several of us had already communicated via e-mail, introducing ourselves to each other and sharing personal thoughts, anxiety and anticipation of what we were about to experience. The group was a cross-section of American Jews from coast to coast, non-Jewish partners and a Jewish couple from Winnipeg, Canada. An Isr...
Israel’s former Prime Minister, Golda Meir, once said that there would only be peace when the Arabs loved their children more than they hated ours. Unfortunately, that is still true. However, there is an early 21st century addendum made no less true by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent diatribe at the United Nations: There will only be peace when the Arabs change their narrative so theirs is not mutually exclusive to, a rejection of, and in existential conflict with ours. Conflicting narratives are one thing, but when one...
(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and the Biden administration seem to harbor the delusional belief that China cares more about improving relations with the U.S. than China’s long-term plan to replace the American-led world order. Burns recently told Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang that America seeks to improve its “lines of communications” with the Chinese Communist Party. Gang told Burns that China would discuss better relations with the U.S. if we stop supporting Taiwan and end our efforts to “contain” China. In other words...
(JNS) — For many years, I have spent Friday mornings reading through a stack of newspapers reflecting a wide spectrum of editorial positions in Israel. It used to be amusing to count the differences in news coverage between them, as if each newspaper came from a slightly alternate reality. Recently, however, these differences have grown into chasms of ill will, cynicism and dehumanization of “the other,” making it difficult to understand how all streams of Israeli society might continue living together. This problem is not unique to Israe...
(JNS) — We know it’s coming. We can write the script in advance. Yet it never fails to sicken and to shock. Israel was once again forced to take military action to defend itself against increasingly deadly attacks. As ever, Western media presented this as if Israel wakes up in the morning and decides to bomb Gaza through some insatiable lust for violence. Once again, such media outlets omitted or downplayed the crucial context for this military action. Once again, questions asked by some interviewers were framed through a maliciously dis...
