Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(JNS) — This November, Iraq is hosting a celebration to honor 90 years since the British gave it independence. Iraq will be joined by Jordan, which will mark 76 years since the British Mandate for Transjordan ended. In attendance at these ceremonies will be United Nations officials. A keynote speech will be delivered by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who will reflect on Britain’s role in the creation of two major Arab countries. Except this won’t happen. After World War I, the League of Nations created five mandates in the Middle East:...
(JNS) — Much is being made of Donald Trump’s recent dinner at Mar-a-Lago with celebrity antisemite Kanye West (now known as “Ye”) and Ye’s friend Nick Fuentes, who is an outspoken white supremacist, Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi. Much of the commentary on this incident, however, is wrong. It is too easy and glib to say that it proves Trump is unfit for office because he is a Jew-hater. How does one reconcile that allegation with the fact that his administration was arguably the most pro-Israel in American history? Moreover, the apple of his ey...
(JNS) — My Iranian Jewish friends who live in the United States are telling me that regime change in Iran is a distinct possibility. Could the Biden administration do more to make this happen? You bet it could. The continued attempts to salvage a nuclear agreement with Iran along the lines of the 2015 JCPOA deal only make regime change less likely. In fact, the talks strengthen the hand of the ayatollahs. This is precisely the opposite of what should be done, given that the current protests in Iran—which began when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was...
(JNS) — A curious thing occurred at the end of 2020. A program that had been promoted by the organized American-Jewish community was proven to be a tremendous success. But not everyone was happy about it. So, the news that this program is now having budget problems will probably prompt mixed responses from a community that is clearly ambivalent about measures undertaken to ensure that it both survives and thrives. The program in question is Taglit-Birthright Israel. Founded in 1999, it was created to ensure that every young Jew who wanted to g...
(JNS) — “Democracy is at stake” was a major theme voiced by President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party throughout the recent U.S. midterm elections. For instance, during a Nov. 2 speech entitled “On Standing Up for Democracy,” in which Biden accused “MAGA Republicans” of voter intimidation, the president asserted: “Democracy is fundamental. … Democracy is on the ballot for all of us. … Autocracy is the opposite of democracy. It means the rule of one: one person, one interest, one ideology, one party. … Democracy is under attack because … [of...
(JNS) — Since there is no chance of implementing the two-state solution, why support it? It has some advantages, but it is also dangerous. The idea of a two-state solution was created by Israeli politicians Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin as part of the Oslo Accords, which recognized the PLO as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” giving it the exclusive right to determine what would happen as a result of negotiations. The Oslo Accords, however, do not refer to a two-state solution. The idea was part of secret agreements made...
(JNS) — Can Israel break its dependency on the United States? The question has always been widely dismissed as unthinkable. But recent events are prompting it to be raised with increasing urgency. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has been far from friendly towards Israel. Despite continuing to fund its defense needs and support it against the relentless malice of the U.N., the Bidenites’ reckless appeasement of the Iranian regime has increased the Islamic republic’s capacity to attack Israel. At the same time, the U.S. has repea...
(JTA) — A few days after the comedian Dave Chappelle appeared to justify the never-ending appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories, this sentence appeared in the New York Times: “Bankman-Fried is already drawing comparisons to Bernie Madoff.” I’ll explain: Sam Bankman-Fried is the 30-year-old founder of FTX, the crypto-currency exchange that vaporized overnight, leaving more than 1 million creditors on the hook. Bernie Madoff, is, of course, Bernie Madoff, the financier who defrauded thousands of investors through a multibillion-dollar Ponzi s...
(JTA) — I don’t find Dave Chapelle’s “Saturday Night Live” monologue funny, unlike my classmates who draw inspiration from him. About a year ago, in my eighth-grade English class, I was listening to my classmates talk about Holocaust denial. Some of them were joking, sure, but that didn’t make it any better. We’d been reading “Maus,” Art Speigelman’s autobiographical graphic novel about the Holocaust, whose characters are depicted as mice. Because of this, people began saying how it was fictitious. And then, it devolved into how the Holoca...
(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...
