Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 651 - 675 of 3706
(JNS) — Israeli judicial reform must pass in order to secure Israel’s future as a democratic state. Over the past four months, the public’s trust in its officials and democratic elections has fallen due to the uncompromising campaign against the reform. Thus, the right-wing coalition needs to enact the policies it was elected to pursue, though compromises will need to be made and the unity of the country preserved. The political landscape of developed countries in Europe and the U.S. is similar in many ways to Israel’s and underst...
(JTA) — Last week marked Yom Haatzmaut, our beloved Israel’s 75th birthday — the day on the Hebrew calendar when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate” by establishing a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Together with countless Jews around the world, we express our gratitude to be alive at this moment in history when the Jewish people have sovereignty and a nation to call their own. But on this anniversary, Yom Haatzmaut’s special prayers and festive afternoon barbecues f...
(JNS) — It will be 30 years in September since a grim Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn with a beaming Yasser Arafat following the signing of the Declaration of Principles that marked the beginning of what many thought could be a five-year road to peace. Plenty of people were skeptical and now are happy to say, “I told you so.” There will be plenty of time for the rehash on the anniversary of the Oslo Accords, but I was struck by a statistic that really tells you all you need to know about why the cynics proved right. A mothe...
(JNS) — Words cannot describe the pain I feel, the silence I go through. I would do anything to go back a month to the days before the tragedy, before all of this happened, before our lives took a turn for the worse. I can’t digest that the whole world knows my face because of this horrific event. I can’t believe that I sit as a VIP in all the ceremonies. This is not what I want at all, it makes me feel ill. How much more pain is possible? I sit and hear about more terror attacks around me, it’s not over. Arriving at the ceremony and standin...
(JNS) — Amid the latest wave of Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks, international condemnations of Israel and assorted other controversies, a significant recent development has received scant attention—the attempt by Palestinian Arab terrorists to shoot down an Israeli plane. It happened on April 2, when an Israel Air Force cargo plane flew over the city of Jenin. Terrorists on the ground shot at the low-flying Hercules C-130J aircraft. Video posted on social-media networks was adorned with the boastful caption, “Soldiers firing on a Zioni...
There seems to be a zealous increase in the United States of the banning of certain books from both school and general libraries. From what I’ve read and researched it seems that the overwhelming reason for this is that certain conservative Christian groups have decided that the material in these books are “not acceptable” for certain groups, basically young readers. This may be so but I do not believe many books of any kind are taken out of libraries by 10 year olds. Their parents – yes. And I am sure that some of these books are indeed...
(JNS) — We are fast approaching Sept. 13, 2023, which will mark 30 years since the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn under the auspices of then-President Bill Clinton. It was one of the worst mistakes Israel has made over its 75 years of statehood. The Accords elevated arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat into a statesman, but he never changed his stripes. Israel has suffered immensely since Arafat and his minions were given diplomatic status and legitimized. Since the Oslo Accords were signed, at least 1,661 Israelis have been murdered...
(JNS) Gallup’s headline was attention-grabbing: “Democrats’ Sympathies in Middle East Shift to Palestinians.” The trend has been clear and seemingly inexorable since support hit its second-highest level of 58 percent in 2014 (the peak was at the time of the 1991 Gulf War when support for Israel hit its high for the first time—64 percent —and Democratic support was 62 percent) and steadily fell to 38 percent in 2023. During that period, sympathy for the Palestinians increased from 23 percent to 49 percent. Meanwhile, Republican support has...
(JNS) — My wife and I left South Africa for a trip to Israel on Tuesday. As we were going through the security checks at the El Al departure area, we suddenly heard the soft hum of a siren. There and then, in middle of the busy Johannesburg International Airport, a moment of silence was observed for Yom HaShoah by Jewish staff and travelers alike. Heads were bowed in reverence and memory before we got back to the business at hand. I found it a particularly moving moment. We Jews are somewhat obsessed with remembering. Memories are profoundly i...
(JNS) — The central theme of Holocaust Remembrance Day this year is “Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Marking 80 Years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Resistance encompasses a wide range of actions and, contrary to popular belief, does not necessarily involve taking up arms. Jewish resistance during the Holocaust could be a Shabbat Kiddush, staging a play in the ghetto, or even applying a little rouge to the cheeks—any action, simple or complex, that preserved the human spirit in the face of the Nazi German extermination plan that sou...
Throughout the streets of Efrat, the Judean mountain town of about 12,000 in which I live, on Sunday afternoon, thousands of people stood silently, in reverence and grief, to provide comfort. Praying. We had been asked to line the streets as the Dee family drove from their home in my neighborhood to the cemetery just a few miles away, to bury Maya (20) and Rina (15) who had been murdered in a terrorist attack two days earlier. Entire families stood silently, even with children too young to know why they were standing there. Among the thousands...
(JNS) — In a social-media post on Friday night, Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (res.) Tal Russo urged fellow anti-government activists to skip the demonstrations scheduled for the following evening. “In light of the difficult events throughout the country, security and police forces are on high alert and deployed in central locations from the Gaza Strip to the northern border,” he tweeted. “I therefore call on my comrades-in-protest against the coup to cancel tomorrow’s countrywide rallies. The situation demands it!” Russo, who served in v...
(JTA) — Picture a cute-looking, 6 1/2-year-old girl with curly braided hair. She is standing on a sidewalk, on a cold, dreary day in Leipzig, Germany, together with her parents and my wife and me. My granddaughter Vivi is staring intently at a 75-year-old worker, kneeling on the ground. He is digging a hole through the pavers to install several 4” x 4” brass plaques mounted on cement cubes — memorials to relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis more than 80 years ago. In February, we traveled 9,500 miles round-trip to dedicate 12 Stol...
(JNS) — Many years ago, I was stuck in a New York City traffic jam. When I finally got to the source of the bottleneck, I discovered it was caused by a group of young demonstrators. Most looked like classic hippies and they were protesting the plight of the world’s whales. “Save the Whales!” posters and placards filled the intersection. Later, I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker in which two whales were having a conversation and one says to the other, “But can they save themselves?” There are 27 conflicts going on in the world today. Ukraine is...
(JNS) — Over 3,000 years ago a slave revolt took place that has been repeated every year since. It was not just a rebellion against a long since vanished pharaoh whose dynasty and people have been consigned to dust along with his treasure cities that the Jewish slaves had labored over. The revolutions of the past come and go. Nations rise and fall, and then fall further into the history books. Passover, however, was a remarkable revolt not just against an empire, but paganism, and it remains relevant even all these thousands of years later. In...
(JNS) — In a tactic straight out of Barack Obama’s playbook, President Joe Biden has put serious daylight between the United States and Israel with his decision not to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. During previous administrations, such an invitation was a customary gesture when a new Israeli prime minister assumed office. Netanyahu has met with Britain’s prime minister in London and traveled to Germany to meet with the German chancellor, but has no meetings scheduled with the leader of Israel’s closest all...
(Gatestone Institute via JNS) — An anti-Israel group called Palestinian Solidarity Forum (PSF) on March 20 invited officials from the Iranian-backed Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to speak at an event at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The two terror leaders, Khaled Qaddoumi of Hamas and Nasser Abu Sharif of PIJ, addressed students during the annual “Israel Apartheid Week,” a one-sided propaganda event smearing Israel that takes place every year on a number of university campuses in the United State...
(JNS) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff had never shown any interest in his Jewish identity until his wife, Kamala Harris, was elected vice president of the United States. But though it would be an exaggeration to treat him as the Biden administration’s point person on anything, he has, almost by default, become one of its leading spokespersons on Jewish issues. It was understandable that he emerged from Harris’s recent trip to Eastern Europe with some Jewish anecdotes along with his comments seeking to bolster the administration’s stand on the wa...
(JNS) — After months of increasingly strident mass protests against his government’s plans to reform Israel’s out-of-control and highly partisan judicial system, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have given in to the pressure. He said he was going to be “delaying judicial reform to give real dialogue a chance.” But it’s highly doubtful that this will merely be a timeout that will help his supporters regroup and enable opponents to calm down and accept a compromise on the issue. On the contrary, Netanyahu is waving the white flag...
(JNS) — We have just seen an insurrection that shut Israel down being hailed as a “peaceful” pro-democracy movement. A movement that is proud of having used BDS/antifa tactics against their own state in order to further “de-Judaize” the country. Israel is the one and only Jewish state, but what does that mean? What is “Jewish” about Israel? Is it protecting gay rights, trans rights, Arab rights, women’s rights, refugee rights, the rights of a Supreme Court over and above the rights of a democratically elected government? Is this what is me...
One of the disturbing things about watching the judiciary food fight in Israel is that the supporters of the most extreme reform proposals act as though those changes were inscribed on a tablet by God that Bibi brought down from Sinai, and that all of the protesters are worshiping a golden calf. I’m not concerned that Israeli democracy is in danger, because what I am watching is the best of the democratic nature of Israel in the streets, where hundreds of thousands of citizens believe they are acting to protect their democracy. Bibi’s loy...
(JNS) — Whatever one thinks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any true Israeli patriot will surely react viscerally to U.S. President Joe Biden’s outrageous attack on Israel’s right to govern itself without foreign interference. On Monday, Netanyahu announced he was suspending his coalition’s judicial reform legislation in order to negotiate a compromise with the opposition. The next day, Biden told Netanyahu to “walk away” from the legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy. Warn...
(JNS) — Israel is undergoing many challenges since the new government was formed, internally and externally. Terror has accelerated, and on the international scene, Israel’s internal judicial reform initiatives have been met with criticism from around the world. Many of these challenges have been created by extreme left-wing Israelis who understand the international political landscape and are abusing it to take away legitimacy from this new government and its plans. Immediately coming off the right’s election victory, Israel’s politic...
(JNS)— I can no longer keep silent. I may be sitting in Manhattan, but my heart is in Jerusalem and my heart is very heavy. I may not be a lawyer or a legal scholar, but I have been an organizer, an activist, a leader who has acted on behalf of civil and human rights — especially women’s rights. But I have never acted in the way that Israeli rioters are now acting: Not stopping, threatening to continue until they’ve brought down an entire country. These leftists/progressives/“good people” (my former people) seem to be behaving the same way th...
(JTA) — Earlier this month the New York Times convened what it called a “focus group of Jewish Americans.” I was struck briefly by that phrase — Jewish Americans — in part because the Times, like the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, tends to prefer “American Jews.” It’s seemingly a distinction without a difference, although I know others might disagree. There is an argument that “American Jew” smacks of disloyalty, describing a Jew who happens to be American. “Jewish American,” according to this thinking, flips the script: an American who happens to...
