Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Opposition to American antisemitism is remarkably situational: By and large, right-wing antisemites face, as they should, widespread condemnation and ostracism. Left-wing antisemites and antisemites of color almost always get a free pass, with ostensibly anti-racist progressives rushing to their defense and proclaiming the usual shibboleths about “criticism of Israel” and “taken out of context.” At the moment, the primary beneficiary of this largesse is Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has thus far served as a highly effective spearhead for the e...
(JNS) — One month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush held a prime-time news conference to update the American people on his administration’s war on terror. He said, “One month ago today, innocent citizens from more than 80 nations were attacked and killed, without warning or provocation, in an act that horrified not only every American, but every person of every faith, and every nation that values human life. The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world...
(JNS) — Over the past several weeks, the anger of the opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly elected government has reached hysterical, and even apocalyptic, tones. This should seem familiar to Americans, who have grown accustomed to the same kind of fever-pitch discourse ever since the emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene. Indeed, his presidency wasn’t merely opposed by foes; it was “resisted,” with conspiracy theories about his colluding with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election. Since 2020, many on the right are...
I have mentioned before that I volunteer twice a week at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience here in New Orleans. I love the experience of guiding people through over 430 years of the American Southern Jewish Experience. Did you know that the first Jews in America came from Spain in the 1500s? Did you know that they settled in the Caribbean Islands before coming to the U.S.? And that they came through Galveston, Texas as their port of entry some 300 years before the great Northern European Migration to New York? As I guide these...
(JNS) — Theodor Herzl has been with me my whole life. I know that is an odd statement from a Canadian who has lived his entire life in Toronto. I am not related to Herzl and, of course, I never met him. Yet I feel very close to him. My earliest memory of Herzl is of a family visit to his grave in Jerusalem in 1966. I co-wrote and performed in a play about him when I was in seventh grade and organized Herzl-related programming at summer camps in Ontario. When I go to Israel, I revisit his grave to pay my respects. I celebrated my 50th b...
(JNS) — In Mexico City last week, the president of the United States met with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada for what was dubbed the “Three Amigos Summit.” The notion that Joe Biden, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Justin Trudeau resemble Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short—stars of the 1986 cult classic comic film ¡Three Amigos!—seems far fetched. Do these politicians make you laugh? On second thought…. But seriously folks, their Declaration of North America listed “six pillars.” Topping the list (of course):...
(JNS) — The Palestinian Authority and its supporters have a new enemy: the Louvre. The world’s most-visited museum, the famous French institution that holds some of the greatest works of art and antiquities, is likely to find itself on anti-Israel boycott lists around the world. This is because among the Louvre’s storied collections is a slab of stone with an inscription that affirms the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The stone, known as the Mesha Stele, was first discovered in 1868 near the Dead Sea, but its i...
(JNS) — After two years of pointedly ignoring a problem largely of his own making, President Joe Biden finally made a brief visit to the U.S. southern border in El Paso, Texas. While there, however, he saw little of the human cost of the catastrophe, as he didn’t meet or see any of the illegal immigrants who have streamed across the border since he assumed office. But in the days before he arrived for what was little more than a photo op, Biden rekindled a controversy that has been simmering for most of the last decade. The president dec...
(JNS) — It seems that every Jewish organization claims it is fighting antisemitism. Yet, it is clear that they are failing. Many reasons account for the spread of this cancer. One is that some Jews are antisemites or have taken positions that are antisemitic. Others are enablers of antisemitism. Jew-versus-Jew is not a new story, but usually, we have managed to unite to fight a common enemy. Now we are proving the adage that we are our own worst enemies. While it is true that antisemitism is a disease of both the far-right and the far-left, w...
It is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination is impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. We Americans do not let threats of violence stop us from changing a discriminatory “status quo.” Thus, threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots did not stop the U.S. government from ending the longstanding “status quo” of segregated schools, “whites only” drinking fountains and practices that prevented Jews and blacks from living in many neighborhoods. Instead, we stood up to the racist Black-hating terrorists....
(JNS) — In their zeal to construct an academic setting that reflects the true diversity of the nation and attempts to redress past discrimination and exclusion, universities have created “protected” groups of students who are scrupulously shielded against any emotional or ideological assault via university harassment policies and codes of conduct. There is one group, however, that is absent from the accepted list of protected groups, even though, as a small ethnic and religious minority, they should be recognized as such. That group, perha...
(JNS) — Imagine if Pope Francis were to say: “Only Christians are permitted in the Vatican! No Muslims and no Jews!” The “international community” would be outraged. But the pontiff would never say that. Muslims and Jews are welcome in the Vatican. Imagine if Israelis were to say: “Only Jews are permitted on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount! No Muslims and no Christians!” The “international community” would be outraged. But Israelis would never say that. Christians and Muslims are welcome on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, the place where...
This week, much of the world got uptight over the visit of a Jewish man to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jordanian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders and entities referred to it as the “storming of Al-Aksa” and “violating its sanctity.” Itamar Ben-Gvir is a newly installed cabinet member of the Israeli government, however its not the first time that he’s visited the site, and it’s not the first time that a minister in Israel’s government has done so. So why all the fuss now? After reuniting Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel restor...
(JTA) — I was first introduced to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, in the late 1980s when he was visiting Jerusalem. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, was eager for me to meet with the cardinal, telling me that I would discover a very different person from the image portrayed in the general media. He was so correct. That image was in no small part the result of Pope John Paul II having made him the head of the Vatican Office for Doctrine and Faith, to enforce orthodox Catholic teaching. In addition, the fact that Ra...
In the midst of all the New Year’s reveling in the streets of Orlando, high above on an office building on Orange Avenue and Washington Street antisemitic messages “Vax the Jews,” “Honk if you hate Jews,” “Hitler was right” streamed over and over across the building’s top. According to clickorlando, no one below reacted to the sign. But news outlets and politicians across Central Florida and the nation soon began talking out against it. Channel 6 reporter Eric von Ancken was right on top of it. I’m glad to see that our local news is bringing at...
We need to feel empowered, not scared. In 2020, my TV show “Skin Decision: Before and After” premiered on Netflix. In it, I helped people bring out their best selves through performing life-changing plastic surgery procedures. I quickly gained a huge following online. Suddenly, I had over a million people who wanted to hear what I had to say. At first, I kept the conversation light. I talked about my work and showed pictures and videos of surgeries I was doing and the incredible transformations my patients made. But when the 2021 Isr...
Dear Editor: I find the undated photograph of the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law with a yard sign reading “Jews Not Allowed” on the front page of the Dec. 30, 2022, issue to be both disturbing and outrageous. Yet, the more I look at the picture I suspect it is not a photograph at all but a “photo-illustration” which is a euphemism for a doctored photograph. The caption under the picture does not tell us whether it is an accurate photograph or someone’s photo-shop illustration. At a time when technology now allows publication...
(JNS) — The campus war against Israel, now some decades old, has been unrelenting in its vicious assault against the Jewish state, but now, an important new report from the AMCHA Initiative has systematically exposed this war as not simply anti-Israel but viciously antisemitic. The report, “Campus Antisemitism and the Assault on Jewish Identity,” describes an “insidious phenomenon that has taken root on college campuses of late: a pervasive and relentless assault on Jewish identity that is likely to have dire consequences for the Jewish...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — As members of the progressive Jewish left continue to raise their fists while marching on behalf of movements that largely hate Jews and despise Israel, a beachhead of cultural pride and resuscitation was erected in lower Manhattan at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The annual festival “Yiddish New York” opened right before Christmas and closed out 2022 with a sampling of the old-world Jewish culture of Eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement (what is now Ukraine). It will involve the new world too. Yiddish made...
(JNS) — The European Union’s secret Palestinian building plan for Area C of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) disqualifies Europe as a fair and professional mediating body in the Middle East conflict, as determined by the 1995 Oslo Interim Accords. The E.U. plan to help the Palestinian Authority build in Area C is an egregious violation of the Oslo Accords and an abrogation of the European Union’s mediation role as witness guarantors of signed agreements. Its actions in unilaterally advancing a Palestinian state in Area C represent a violation...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Last week’s White House meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy conveyed a clear message to the Kremlin of conviction and continued U.S. support for Ukraine. The meeting also sent an important message to the Iranian regime, which is supplying Russia with advanced weaponry. During the meeting, Biden announced an important change in U.S. policy, stating that Washington would send advanced Patriot air defense systems to protect Ukraine from the constant barrage of aerial str...
(JNS) — On the front pages of newspapers around the world, we are now privileged to witness the extraordinary strength of women oppressed by fanatical forms of Islam. In Iran, these women are emerging as our heroes. Young and old, they are willing to expose themselves to imprisonment, violence and potential death in order to achieve liberation. In Iran, they are leading the charge for regime change and thus the end of one of the evilest dictatorships of this century. There is no sign that these women are slowing down. Yesterday, Vida M...
(JCPA via JNS) — Palestinian human rights activist Nizar Banat was brutally murdered in Hebron by Palestinian Authority security personnel on June 24, 2021, because of his criticism of P.A. corruption. The family’s lawyer, Hakan Kamoz, recently appealed to Karim Khan, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, demanding an investigation into the circumstances of Banat’s murder. The unusual move of the Banat family against the P.A. reflects their anger and frustration; the 14 defendants in the case were released fro...
(JTA) — Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, and even if you’re not Jewish, you can’t miss the fact that antisemitism is back in the news again: Kanye West, Kyrie Irving, Nick Fuentes; extremists returning in droves to Twitter; President Donald Trump kowtowing to antisemites over dinner at Mar-A-Lago; “Saturday Night Live” opening with a monologue trafficking in antisemitic tropes; members of the Black Hebrew Israelites intimidating Jewish fans coming to Barclays Center, and an endless feedback loop of antisemit...
(JNS) — In a social media post on Sunday, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu blasted the Gray Lady for its gall. “After burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades on its front pages, The New York Times now shamefully calls for undermining Israel’s elected incoming government,” he tweeted, in response to a weekend editorial titled: “The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy.” He was right to fight back, as the piece not only asserted that his coalition-in-fo...
