Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
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...
