Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 751 - 775 of 3672
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Something remarkable, perhaps even miraculous, is happening halfway around the world. For more than 43 years, post-revolutionary Iran has been forbidden to the millions who escaped from the country. But today, due to the unbelievable courage and sacrifice of thousands of Iranian protesters, the prospect of the regime actually crumbling has Iranians in the diaspora bursting with anxious anticipation, wondering if they’ll be able to return to a free Iran. There’s so much at stake. In the words of one Iranian American fr...
(JNS) — For more than 50 years, Israel’s critics have claimed that if Israelis would just agree to create a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would live in peace with them. Well, last month, Israel’s prime minister offered to create a Palestinian state. How did the Palestinians respond? Is the long-promised peace at last dawning upon the Middle East? Not quite. At the United Nations on Sept. 22, Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced his willingness to create a non-terrorist Palestinian state. Did the Palestinian Arab leadership respond by an...
(JNS) — Should Israel align with the West and aid Ukraine its fight against the ongoing Russian invasion? Should Israel remain neutral because it needs to coordinate with Russia in Syria in order to defend Israel’s northern border? Perhaps the most important question, however, is should Israel consider Ukraine and Russia’s treatment of the Jewish people and Israel in making its decision? Ukraine, to say the least, has a problematic record in regard to the Jewish people and Israel. During World War II, one-fourth of the Jews murdered in the H...
(JNS) — At what point does a rise in antisemitism stop being viewed merely as a series of isolated, troubling occurrences and start being treated like an emergency? When mass- media programs mainstream hatemongers who target and seek to delegitimize Jews? When elite academic institutions behave as though it’s acceptable conduct? When Jews are attacked in the streets? The ongoing epidemic of violence against Jews in New York City is mostly ignored, both by the media and much of the organized Jewish world. This is not only because the vic...
(JNS) — Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022 was the 40th anniversary of the 1982 Palestinian terror attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome, in which a two-year-old child, Stefano Tache, was killed and 37 others wounded. Stefano’s brother Gadiel, also wounded in the attack, has just published his memoir, “The Shouting Silence,” in which he deals with the Italian government’s complicity with the terrorists. The whole of Italy must thank Gadiel for his strength and determination, and for telling the story of his suffering and that of his whole family, especially...
(JNS) A movement is now afoot in the United States to drive Jews out of higher education — both teachers and students. The movement, using the poisoned spear tip of anti-Zionism, is gaining momentum. It is reminiscent of nothing less than the movement to expel Jews from the educational system in Nazi Germany. In 1933, Germany’s new civil service law excluded Jewish university professors as well as Jewish elementary and secondary school teachers from the profession. In the same year, Germany’s Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Unive...
This week in 1986, U.S. President Ronald Regan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met at a summit in Rekjavik, Iceland. With the nuclear threat of Vladimir Putin today, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had world leaders who could sit down and debate over a few words regarding nuclear disarmament as was done in Rekjavik, rather than brash statements in response to Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. I wasn’t in Rekjavik but made my presence felt. My issue was not nuclear weapons, but rather saving Soviet Jews. In that con...
In an interview with Maariv last week, former Israeli Air Force commander Amir Eshel made several startling admissions about the role he and other IDF generals played in scuttling former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most significant strategic policies. His most startling admissions related to former U.S. president Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In 2019, then-Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz appointed Eshel to serve as his interlocutor with the Trump administration and its Middle East peace plan. In this pos...
On the eve of The Day of Atonement, “Erev Yom Kippur”, it is traditional for Jewish families to recite the Kapporeth prayer in the morning before Yom Kippur as part of our atonement, asking G-d to forgive our sins of the past year; and to give charity in support of our request for forgiveness and to be written into the Book of Life. This year I recited the Kapporeth prayer on behalf of 19 relatives. Among these 19 relatives are one Holocaust survivor, two second-generation Holocaust survivors, five third-generation Holocaust survivors and six...
(JNS) — On Sept. 21, U.S. President Joe Biden addressed the U.N. General Assembly. In his speech, he referred to a negotiated “peace between the Jewish and democratic State of Israel and the Palestinian people.” He added that such a peace is “the best way to ensure Israel’s security … and give the Palestinians the state to which they are entitled.” Entitled? The pernicious political fantasy of the “two-state solution” has been so thoroughly inculcated into the minds of most Western leaders that it is almost axiomatic. It leads to the assu...
(JNS) — It has often been said that the media is a pillar of democracy because it keeps our politicians honest. Lifting the veil of secrecy in which authorities like to cloak themselves, revealing inconvenient truths that expose the inadequacies and worse of government actions and subjecting all politicians to forensic questioning without bias—this is how the media acts in the public interest. But when the media doesn’t deliver, truthfulness goes out of the window, propaganda and ignorance take over and democracy stumbles. We see this in much...
(JNS) It is an article of faith among European leaders, the political intelligentsia and the Biden administration that “two states for two peoples” is the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Failure to achieve this goal is usually blamed on Israel, with many accusers going so far as to assert that Israel has no right to exist and accusing it of being an apartheid colonial entity perpetrating ethnic cleansing against the indigenous population of “Palestine.” With Israeli elections set for Nov. 1, the public debate is heating...
(JNS) — The latest exchange in the ongoing battle between Yeshiva University and the YU Pride Alliance, a student LGBTQ club, allowed for at least a temporary ceasefire between the two sides. But the case continues to generate controversy, as the status quo of other recognized groups continuing to operate on the campus, while the gay club still seeks equal treatment, remains. YU stands a good chance of eventually prevailing if, as expected, a decision on the merits of the case is decided by the U.S. Supreme Court at some point. But even if i...
(JNS) — It’s impossible not be astonished and humbled by the bravery of the Iranian people. From bus drivers to university teachers, once again a cross-section of Iranian society has taken to the streets of Tehran and other cities in a fresh round of protests against the brutal Islamist regime that has ruled them since 1979. The immediate trigger for these latest demonstrations was the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Amini was arrested in Tehran by the regime’s so-called “Morality Police”—uniformed thugs whose job would correctly be...
(JNS) — “We stand with Israel.” That is the sign in front of my Conservative synagogue and many other synagogues. What could be less controversial? What could be more fundamental to Jewish identity? Alas, at too many synagogues, standing with Israel is too much for some. On Rosh Hashanah, my rabbi felt compelled to defend the sign after a congregant complained. He later admitted to me that he’s not sure such a sign could be put up in the Bay Area where he previously lived. Even worse, the problem is no longer surprising. A year ago, while t...
In May 2019, Governor DeSantis went to Jerusalem to sign a law that makes religion a protected class with respect to discrimination in public education, equating antisemitism with racism. In signing the bill, protecting students from discrimination based on religion at all grade levels, K through college, Governor DeSantis said “…antisemitism has no place in our state and our educational institutions will not tolerate discrimination against the Jewish people. … Florida is the most Israel-friendly state in the country and as long as I’m Governo...
(JNS) — Something disturbing happened in Jerusalem earlier this week, and the story is not yet over. Temple Mount activists Yehuda Glick, a former MK and president of the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation; Tom Nisani, executive director of Beyadenu; and Emanuel Brosh, a board member of Beyadenu, went outside the Eastern Wall of the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 19, to pray and blow the shofar in observance of the month of Elul. The Eastern Wall, near the Golden Gate, is on the eastern side of the Temple Mount. Two Arabs approached them w...
(JNS) — What do you do if Israel’s prime minister makes a speech that includes some statements you don’t like? If you’re the left-wing lobby J Street, you just edit out the parts with which you disagree, thus fooling the public into thinking that the prime minister never said them. That’s what happened with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s speech at the United Nations on Sept. 22. J Street loved his line about “two states for two peoples” and immediately issued a press release “welcoming and commending” Lapid for using those “extremely im...
(JNS) — The ongoing discrimination against Jews on the Temple Mount needs to change. Currently, Jews are not allowed to bring prayer books or a Torah to the site, and cannot wear tefillin. Only recently have small groups of Jews been able to pray quietly during the five hours a day that the Mount is open to them. Despite the restrictions, 50,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount over the past year, approximately double that of the previous year. This is believed to be the highest number of Jews to visit the Mount since the Bar Kochba revolt a...
Through the course of American history and two centuries of developing constitutional law, two great principles have emerged, both of which have become increasingly ignored by many good and patriotic Americans. The first of these principles was hammered out after much heated debate at the constitutional convention in the formative years of our nationhood by our founders, most if not all of whom were members of various Christian denominations. That principle is the doctrine of “separation of church and state”. This principle separating religious...
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...
“Follow the money” is a cliché in politics. It shows how knowledgeable people expect an officeholder to act. For Congresswoman Val Demings, a Democrat, who is running against Florida’s incumbent Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, the facts show that liberal, progressive donors in California and big labor unions expect her votes to be aligned with their interests and agendas, not necessarily Florida’s. Moreover, Demings’ voting record in Congress confirms her alignment with the policies of liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from California...
(JTA) — Seventy-eight years ago this week, David Ben-Gurion rose before the Asefat Hanivcharim, Palestine Jewry’s elected assembly, and delivered an explosive “j’accuse” against the Allies for abandoning Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. The words of the man who would soon be Israel’s first prime minister take on added significance in view of the upcoming release of Ken Burns’ three-part, six-hour PBS documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” Its official website says the film “dispels” the “myth” that America “looked on with callous ind...
(JNS) — On Sept. 13, a beautiful 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested in Tehran and brutally beaten by “morality police” for wearing her hijab “too loosely,” perhaps allowing a few strands of hair to show through. She was overwhelmed by both male and female brutes and thugs, beaten mercilessly, thrown into a van and driven to some unknown place—most probably the notorious Evin prison, where she was undoubtedly raped and tortured. Next thing we knew, she was in a coma. As I write this three days later, we know she is dead. Her f...
(JNS) — For four months, no one could explain the Biden administration’s seeming obsession with forcing Israel to accept responsibility for the death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11. Abu Akleh was killed in Jenin during a gun battle between Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, with whom she was embedded, and IDF forces. The battle occurred in the aftermath of a spate of murderous terror attacks in Israeli cities that took the lives of 17 Israelis. The U.S. demand that Israel accept the blame for Abu Akleh’s death was stran...
