Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(Jewish Journal via JNS) — On Monday morning, news broke that controversial, far-right, probable soon-to-be government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, while in coalition talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed support for an amendment to existing Israeli policy that would no doubt harm relations between American Jews and Israeli Jews. This change relates to aliyah—who is considered Jewish enough to move to the Jewish state. Status-quo Israeli policy welcomes converts to Judaism into Israeli citizenship, even converts who underwent the process of...
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs via JNS) — The IDF and the Israel Security Agency have inflicted heavy blows on the Lions’ Den terror group in Nablus but are unable to stop the phenomenon. The group continues to operate and announced that it was involved in a new shooting attack on IDF forces protecting a group of Knesset members during a visit to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. There is also a terrorist group called the Nablus Battalion and another called the Balata Battalion that was recently established in the Balata refugee camp in the city....
(JNS) — It’s not like me to be an alarmist, but I’ve been thinking about something for months, maybe years. As time passes, it’s become increasingly clear that the worst-case scenario is about to happen. The Jewish people outside of Israel must step back and examine their reality. Too many things are happening at once that point to the fact that the s**t is about to hit the fan. This isn’t new. It’s been going on for years, escalation after escalation. But over the past few months, it’s reached the point of no return. It’s just too much to ign...
(JTA) — Last week saw Dave Chappelle deliver a brilliant monologue on “Saturday Night Live” addressing the antisemitism controversies surrounding Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. Unfortunately, “brilliant” doesn’t inherently mean “moral” or “good.” Chappelle’s monologue was a masterclass in how to normalize and embolden antisemitic discourse, delivered in plain sight and with just enough “wink wink, nudge nudge” plausible deniability — mixed in with a sprinkle of real commentary — that one would easily almost not realize that … wait, did Chap...
(JNS) — What is the mainstream expression of Jewish power? When superstars with millions of followers like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving exhibit anti-Semitic behavior, more often than not it revolves around a sinister view of Jewish power. Jews are the bosses. They own the record labels, the movie studios and the sports teams. They run the world. These stereotypes are not just sinister and anti-Semitic, they are also insultingly materialistic. They overlook a whole other view of Jewish power, one that has little to do with material wealth and e...
(JNS) — I missed comedian Dave Chappelle’s opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, but I knew I had to watch it when the wave of social media outrage reached me. When I finally saw it, what I heard shocked me. Chappelle’s jokes about the Kanye West and Kyrie Irving controversies were not only funny, they were insightful and true, which is why they were funny and why so many were angered by them. The Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, issued a statement suggesting that Chapelle’s jokes “normalize” a...
(JNS) — If Americans thought that the midterm elections would provide a clear picture of their country’s future political direction, they woke up the next morning as confused as ever. The Democrats may have won the expectations game as the “red wave” that Republicans hoped would sweep them into control of both Houses of Congress didn’t materialize. But the stalemate the election seemingly produced is likely to only deepen the already stark partisan divide separating Americans into two warring camps that neither understands nor trusts one anoth...
(JNS) — New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has predictably described the results of Israel’s Nov. 1 election in apocalyptic terms. Of course, any government that does not share his views is anathema. The same goes for many other critics. The doomsayers predicting the demise of U.S.-Israel relations are crying wolf. Israel demonstrated again that it has a super-democracy that Americans and Jews should be proud of. Instead of being limited to choosing between two parties, Israelis had a choice of 40, giving them a better opportunity to be...
(JNS) — The elections that have just taken place in Israel and the United States each boiled down to a contest between dragons and dragon-slayers. The difference is this: Israeli Jews mostly recognize who are the dragons and who are their slayers. American Jews mostly can’t work out which is which. In Israel, the dragons are the Palestinians, who want to kill Israeli Jews and steal their land, as well as the Islamic revolutionary leaders of Iran, who want to kill Israeli Jews and destroy their land. In last week’s election, the Israeli publi...
(JNS) — New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is distraught. Nothing could be worse, he appears to think, than Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent reelection as Israel’s prime minister. Netanyahu’s new governing coalition, Friedman warns, will comprise “a rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists.” This “previously unthinkable reality,” Friedman asserts, raises “a fundamental question” that will “roil synagogues in America and across the globe.” The congrega...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Very little media attention has been given to the fact that President Joe Biden has brought the U.S. back into the U.N. Human Rights Council, arguably the most antisemitic institution on the planet. Its latest outrage is a Commission of Inquiry that is so blatantly racist it can best be described as something akin to the Spanish Inquisition. For most of the U.N.’s existence, one could be excused for forgetting that it emerged in 1945 out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Indeed, over the decades, collusion between the...
(JNS) — The Change.org petition calling on Adidas to cancel its partnership with Kanye West (aka “Ye”) flooded my inbox and social media feeds a few days ago. Many of my Jewish friends, outraged by Ye’s recent anti-Semitic comments, were rightly upset and wanted to do something. But they shouldn’t have done this. Summoning corporate America to punish those with disfavored views is a dangerous idea, especially for Jews. It leads to bans on ice cream sales on the “bad” side of Israel’s “Green Line” and the cancellation of Zionist and conserv...
(JNS) — A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what happens when that picture contradicts the very article it accompanies? That’s what the editors at The New York Times should be asking themselves in regard to their Oct. 26 article concerning Israel’s recent counterterrorist operations. Times correspondent Isabel Kershner reported that the IDF has targeted “the Nablus-based militia known as the Lions’ Den, which emerged this year.” Well-organized, heavily armed terrorist groups do not suddenly “emerge.” Moreover, the Palestinian Aut...
(JNS) — Kanye West’s descent into antisemitic hysteria has been a clarifying moment for American Jews. We have found out who our friends are from their reaction or non-reaction to Kanye’s appalling statements. Unfortunately, not enough conservative and Republican leaders have spoken out. The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens’s incoherent defense of Kanye, who is a friend of hers, was disappointing. Hopefully she will reconsider and put some distance between herself and Kanye. Much worse, however, is the case of Jason Whitlock. A black Christian...
(JNS) — It was a bad joke that flyers used to announce an anti-Israel conference entitled “Jerusalem Is Ours”—featuring Italian Senator Tino Magni—included photos of various Palestinian activists, some of whom are tied to the terrorist group Hamas. Other left-wing Italian politicos were featured, as well as Mohammad Hannoun, a staunch friend of Hamas, who not only organized the conference, but has been hosted in the Italian Chamber of Deputies by some of those same leftist politicians. All involved in the conference, of course, are convinced...
(JNS) — Countless people across the world have publicly condemned Kanye West’s anti-Semitic tirades in recent weeks, including his threat to go “Death Con 3 on Jewish People’’ and his statements blaming the “Jewish media” for various personal grievances. If the latter smear sounds familiar, that’s because it was recently used by Miloon Kothari, a member of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI) targeting Israel, who claimed over the summer that “the Jewish lobby” controls social media. In its recently released report on Israel’s...
(JNS) — The saga of Kanye West’s antisemitism is not without irony. Even after he had engendered controversy by engaging in anti-Jewish rants, West, who now calls himself “Ye,” boasted that his status as a rap music star and fashion mogul rendered him exempt from facing any real financial consequences for spreading hatred. The Adidas brand, in particular, would, he said, stick with him. “I can literally say antisemitic s*** and they cannot drop me,” he said. A few days later, he found out this wasn’t true when Adidas dropped him, on the ground...
(JNS) — This month, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong reversed the previous government’s decision to recognize western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The question that should be asked is why that recognition was controversial at all. No fair-minded person who believes in two states for two peoples thinks Israel should not be entitled to at least the western part of Jerusalem in any future settlement with the Palestinians. This principle has been part of every peace proposal in recent memory and the area has been in possession of the Jewis...
(JNS) — Vladimir Putin is slaughtering Ukrainian men, women and children. Xi Jinping is committing genocide against the Muslims of East Turkistan. Ali Khamenei is murdering Iranian girls for wearing their hijabs in what he considers a provocative manner. What is the United Nations doing in response to these crises? It’s going “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” That quote, of course, is from a recent tweet by Kanye West. “DEFCON,” an acronym for “defense readiness condition,” is how the U.S. military indicates states of alert, ranging from on...
Last week, Jews around the world read the Torah portion about Noah (Genesis 6:9-10). Noah is fascinating. God doesn’t say he was a great guy. What happens after the ark comes to rest, after the floodwaters subside, planting a vineyard and getting drunk, is a great example. The Torah says he was righteous in his generation, which means he was better than others, deserving of being saved along with his family, and reliable enough to gather every species of animal to repopulate the world. Even though God made a covenant never to destroy the world...
(JNS) — Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, the head of Israel’s falsely dubbed “center left” Labor Party, doesn’t even bother these days to temper the radicalism that makes her indistinguishable from Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On. This isn’t the sole reason that the outspoken feminist — who has boasted of carrying on the legacy of the late (assassinated) prime minister Yitzhak Rabin — is polling so poorly in the run-up to the Nov. 1 Knesset elections. Her drawing of such a comparison would be merely comical if it didn’t serve a purpose b...
Dear Editor: I was saddened to read of Tess’ death. She was a very special lady — a true Eishet Chayil. The Orlando Jewish community benefited greatly and will continue to benefit greatly for many future decades from Tess’s commitment and efforts. I’d like to expand on this one sentence in the Heritage article: “What began with her “Holocaust Project” in the early 1980s with small conferences and discussions about extremism and terrorism, stands today as the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida.” As with Hy Lake, Tess (...
(JNS) — The latest brouhaha surrounding former U.S. President Donald Trump pertains to comments he posted on Sunday about—and directed to—American Jews. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” All true, other than the “surprisingly” part. The majority of Jews in the United States wouldn’t support a Republican if their...
While almost every federal election is generally perceived as “the most important election the American people have ever faced.” this year’s midterm elections should accurately be described as one of the most confusing and potentially dangerous ever faced by Jewish Americans. For starters, there have never been so many candidates in this year’s national, state and local elections who believe the elections are rigged and fraught with fraud. These candidates and their supporters are continuing to persist, in spite of the overwhelming evidenc...
I have been a Ken Burns fan for years. His technique and artistry have taken everything from Country music to the Civil War, from disjointed history to present day entertainment and handled it superbly. His loving treatment of Country music was praiseworthy. From the Civil War to Jazz, he has documented American history in an entertaining, frank and historically accurate manner. In undertaking “The Holocaust” he has tackled a major challenge. This sensitive subject, written about, discussed, argued over and never forgotten is at the same time e...
