Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
Marjorie Taylor Greene has just been elected by the Republican Party to a position right behind Party Whip Kevin McCarthy. This puts an avowed “Christian Nationalist” and outspoken antisemite in a power position within the Republican Party. She is a wealthy Georgia citizen who is now being divorced by her husband of 27 years. She has, among other outrageous acts, made loud noises and “fooled around” like a belligerent child during the President’s State of the Union address in January of last year. She has claimed in public that the forest fi...
(JNS) Ahead of Chanukah, two students at Colgate University in New York vandalized a campus menorah. When they were caught, they explained that they didn’t mean it. They were just drunk. The incident at Colgate isn’t a big story in and of itself, because anti-Jewish incidents on campuses happen every day, all over the United States. However, the explanation the students provided for their behavior exposes a larger truth. Their thinking, apparently, was that their drunkenness made their deed understandable. Of course, if you’re drunk, you’d...
(JNS) — Liberal Jews in both the Diaspora and Israel have been hyperventilating over the “extremist” ministers in the incoming government headed by Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu. These are the rabble-rouser Itamar Ben-Gvir, the theocrat Bezalel Smotrich and the ultra-socially conservative Avi Maoz. With Netanyahu insisting that he will keep these three on a short leash, the rational position is to judge this government on what it actually does rather than wildly denouncing these men on the basis of their previous behavior....
(JNS) — As if to confirm its reputation as an institution stewing in radical anti-Zionism, anti-Israelism and antisemitism, members of CUNY4Palestine and other activists did their best to disrupt and shut down a Dec. 8 panel discussion titled “A Conversation on the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” held at the City University of New York Graduate Center. The panelists were Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network; Donna Robinson Divine, a professor of Jewish studies at Smith College; and Dr. Asaf Romir...
Months ago, President Biden nominated longtime Democrat donor Elizabeth Frawley Bagley to serve as ambassador to Brazil. At her confirmation hearing in May, she faced bipartisan condemnation for a 1998 interview in which she claimed that Democrats entertained “stupid” pro-Israel viewpoints because of “the Jewish factor” and echoed old antisemitic tropes, saying, “There is always the influence of the Jewish lobby because there is major money involved.” The ZOA opposed her nomination and noted that Bagley was among “a long list of President Bid...
(JNS) — Due to the incoming Israeli government’s declared intention of transferring civilian issues in Judea and Samaria to the relevant ministries, alarmists are coming out of the woodwork, using their security credentials to further political agendas. They are recklessly spreading falsehoods and sowing distrust of the new government before it has even started to act on the mandate it was so clearly given by the Israeli public in the November elections. I am appalled by recent statements from former senior generals regarding the ant...
(JNS) — Twice in recent weeks, Arab workers from Gaza have been arrested in Israel for terrorist activity. Can you imagine what would happen if 100,000 Gazans were being admitted to Israel every day? That’s not just idle speculation. A proposal for Israel to admit 100,000 workers from Gaza every day was promoted a few years ago by a former State Department official. It was just one in a long series of attempts by the ex-State Department crowd to pressure Israel into making risky one-sided concessions to the Arabs. In the aftermath of the rec...
(JNS) — Palestinian Media Watch recently published a report on Fatah’s Waed children’s magazine, covering every issue published over the last eight years. The messages conveyed to Palestinian children via this publication confirm that the goal of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah was always, and remains, not two states, but rather Israel’s destruction and replacement by “Palestine.” The following is an executive summary of the report, titled “Teaching Terror to Tots,” which will be released in full at the GPO’s Christian Media Summit in J...
(JNS) — J Street, a far-left organization that has done more to turn Israel into a partisan issue than any other, has joined other anti-Israel Jewish groups in an attempt to browbeat Kevin McCarthy—likely to be the next speaker of the House—into not kicking virulent antisemite Rep. Ilhan Omar off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is in keeping with J Street’s plan to make Israel less safe and turn it into a wedge issue. First, let’s examine why and under what precedent McCarthy will make this decision. The precedent was set by outgoing...
(JNS) — As far as most liberal Jewish groups are concerned, Lorie Smith is a bigot who deserves to have her business destroyed and to be driven from the public square. It’s a sentiment that may be shared by most Jews and perhaps a majority of Americans. But the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard a case this week involving her website-design business, 303 Creative, appears to be poised to issue a ruling that will defend her right not to be compelled to celebrate gay marriages. If the court rules in Smith’s favor, it will be going against the advic...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — At the start of Dec. 3rd’s Torah reading, Jacob, like his grandfather Abraham before him, leaves the land of his birth for new horizons. Along the way, he is confronted by God, who says to him, “I am Hashem, God of Abraham your father and God of Isaac.” The commentators note a difficulty with this passage. Generally, God only declares himself “the God of so-and-so” after so-and-so has died. But Isaac is still alive. Rashi offers an explanation from the Midrash: “Isaac’s eyes had become dim and he was confined to the...
In 2021, ADL reported 2717 antisemitic incidents throughout the United States, a 34 percent increase over 2020. The recent mass shooting in Highland Park, Buffalo, Colorado Springs, and Virginia, are deplorable testimonies to the level of hate in this country. More recently, the New York Times has reported on the “unsettling stream of antisemitism. (“Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism,” Nov. 4, 2022). Then why does the online behemoth Amazon continue to sell material that profits from that hate? And more...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Since I started writing about antisemitism about a decade ago, I’ve had trouble answering one question: Why are Jews, who excel in fields from science to literature to music, so bad at confronting antisemitism? Part of the answer is that antisemitism is irrational — based on conspiracy theories that morph every century. It’s also sadly the case that many Jews today in a position to create change — professors, heads of nonprofits, CEOs — prefer to suppress their Jewish identity to maintain their social “status.” B...
(Palestinian Media Watch via JNS) — Nov. 29 is the 75th anniversary of the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, General Assembly Resolution 18, which divided the geographical area west of the Jordan River into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. In its essence, the Partition Plan was a fundamental breach of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which placed that entire area under the governance of Great Britain for the sole purpose of creating a Jewish state on all of the land. The 1922 Mandate for Palestine had already taken the e...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Donald Trump went too far. From the outset of his political career, he has been accused of supporting the racist right and some of his statements in this regard have come under harsh criticism from his Democratic rivals. Despite this, Trump has long avoided any soundbite that might sound antisemitic. He has even boasted of the fact that his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism and his two grandchildren are Jewish. But then came Trump’s meeting with antisemitic rapper Kanye West—now known as Ye—and Holocaust denier...
I have written before about my dad. A two-fisted fighter who fought and fought hard for what he believed in. One thing he fell short on in his younger years was his Judaism. As I have said, his paternal grandfather was a nasty, bitter old man. He hated the Russians for throwing him out of Russia to live in a bitterly empty wasteland that today is Ukraine. He came to America to find that the streets were not lined with gold and life in America was not a paradise after all. His religion was his only escape — and he dove in head first. His son, m...
