Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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“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...
This article won second-place in the American Jewish Press Association’s annual Simon Rockower Award program. Rosh Hashanah is the time of year when we as individuals find ourselves at the center of the universe in direct communication with God. For a brief moment the present stops, the past does not recede and the future refuses to beckon us. The High Holy Days are rest stops on our journey through life; a brief respite to catch our breaths, to check our baggage and to recharge our human energy. To understand where we have been, where we are,...
(JTA) — The death 0f Queen Elizabeth II after 70 years on the throne is a devastating loss for Britain, the Commonwealth and the free world. It is hard to overstate the sense of grief that will be felt at her passing, including from within the Anglo-Jewish community. I was brought up in a typical liberal Jewish family that showed a healthy respect for the queen, and the royal family more widely. I recall marching down the Mall in London for the 60th anniversary of VE Day and catching a sight of our monarch on the steps of Buckingham Palace. Lik...
News this week in Israel included the death of two Arab journalists, in different locations, under different circumstances, and unrelated. But the circumstances, accusations, and double standards are glaring and need to be discussed. This week, months after Palestinian Arab-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed in Jenin, following a lengthy investigation, Israel has affirmed that she was likely killed by an Israeli bullet. Other than her unfortunate death, the problem with this is that before the blood had dried, before...
(JTA) — “Hey Allies: Please don’t schedule meetings or events on the Jewish holidays!” So says a meme that has circulated widely before about the dates for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Seems like a pretty harmless and potentially helpful message to post on social media in the run-up to the High Holidays, right? I’m not so sure. I, too, have often had to seek special consideration from employers and colleagues for my religious observance. Indeed, being able to live my life by the rhythms of the Hebrew calendar without hav...
Dear Editor: President Biden’s speech on Thursday evening did more to separate our divided nation than anything he did prior. If pitting Americans against each other is a tactic to unite us than he has failed miserably, once again added to his long list of failures, and the nation sees the true Biden, teleprompter and his strings. It’s hard to recall all his missteps from his first day in office and all the grief and misery he has brought to our country from 13 dead service people, to losing Afghanistan, the weapons lost, the jobs lost, the...
(JNS) — Mikhail Gorbachev is being hailed as the man who ended the Cold War, broke up the Soviet empire and freed Soviet Jewry. The former leader of the Soviet Union, who died this week at the age of 91, deserves a great deal of credit for those outcomes and as such is likely to be remembered kindly by history—or at least those histories written outside of Russia—for the foreseeable future. Yet as much as we should be grateful that it was he who succeeded a series of geriatric tyrants at the head of the nation that President Ronald Reaga...
(The Ettinger Report via JNS) — During the October 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty ceremony, top Jordanian military officers told their Israeli counterparts that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-U.S. Hashemite regime. They said it would transform Jordan into an uncontrollable terrorist haven, haunting the highly vulnerable pro-U.S. regimes of the oil-producing Gulf states, as well as Egypt. In June 1967, Israel gained control over the topographically dominant mountain ridges of the Golan Heights, Judea and S...
Recently the Florida Press Association held its annual newspaper contest, and I was pleased to learn that I won second place in the Serious Column category. The article, titled “Substance use disorder is a community problem,” (June 4, 2021), was a result of the initiative taken by many members of the community to make a difference in the fight against drug abuse. The program I talked about — B’ri’ut (Hebrew for acceptance and wellness), sponsored by the Jewish Federation and backed by several synagogues and agencies — kicked off with a meet...
(JNS) — Forget Big Brother, Big MUM is Google’s new tool for suppressing conservatives. MUM, or Multitask Unified Model, was hyped last year as the company’s new machine learning algorithm. MUM had been initially described as an innovative way to allow Google’s dying search service to answer natural language questions by drawing on multiple sources. While MUM’s applications initially appeared to be apolitical, that quickly changed. Google first unleashed MUM to fight what it considered COVID “misinformation” by making sure that everyone saw “hi...
(JNS) — You didn’t read about it in The New York Times or see the footage on CNN, but last week, yet another Jew walking near a synagogue was brutally beaten by assailants yelling “Kill the Jews!” The mob assault took place on Aug. 26, near the synagogue at Kever Shmuel, the Tomb of the Prophet Samuel, which is located close to the northern edge of Jerusalem. A cell-phone video of the attack has been shown by the Israeli media but has been ignored by the international media. It shows the screaming attackers—many waving PLO flags, piling on...
(JNS) — Can a documentary on a low-rated network broadcast at a time when few were watching make much of a difference? Maybe not. That’s especially true when you consider that the program aired directly opposite one of the most ballyhooed shows of the year—the premiere of the new “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon”—on an evening of the week when all cable-news programs get terrible ratings. CNN correspondent Dana Bash deserves credit for pushing her network to allow her to do an edition of its “Special Report” series “Rising Hate...
(Palestinian Media Watch via JNS) — Every year the United States gives the Palestinian Authority tens of millions of dollars to support its security forces. This aid is not affected by any of the provisions of U.S. law that limit such aid, either as a result of the P.A.’s terror-rewarding “pay-for-slay” policy or its promotion of an investigation against Israel at the International Criminal Court. The E.U. not only supports the P.A. security forces but has also plowed tens of millions of euros into the P.A. court system. But do the U.S. and the...
(JNS) — The Biden administration is claiming that Israel has not provided evidence that the seven NGOs whose offices it closed down last week were tied to a terror group. Yet there is a mountain of publicly-available evidence proving the existence of such ties—and some of it comes from the U.S. government itself. The administration was clear in its support of the NGOs. U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the administration “voiced our concern” about Israel’s actions. Disputing Israel’s assertion that the groups were connected t...
(JNS) — Some people are surprised that the terror regime in Iran has been more conciliatory of late in the negotiations to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. Because the process has taken so long, they assumed that the mullahs were serious, rather than bluffing, with their prolonged intransigence. It’s only when the West recently held their ground that the mullahs softened their demands and made a deal closer at hand. Why? Because the mullahs need the moolah. The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, pro...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The international community under the leadership of the U.S. appears to be closing in on signing a new nuclear deal with Iran. On both sides of the negotiating table, there are those who are taking care to create a thick smokescreen to “confuse the enemy.” Sadly, the enemy, in their eyes, isn’t Tehran, but those who oppose a deal with it—primarily Israel. But the fog of battle eventually clears. Over the past few days, it’s become clear that, despite reports that both sides of the talks were digging in their heels to th...
(JNS) —Jewish life in America is under assault. Ideological and political campaigns that defame and demonize Jews are now fashionable in the media, academia and too many Christian and Muslim religious institutions. This demonization naturally incites physical violence, as it has throughout history. The simplistic and short-term response is, of course, increased physical security — armed guards at Jewish venues and events. Wise leadership would recognize that we cannot provide physical security for every Jew and that unless we deal with the root...
With the U.S. recently authorizing $1 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine and persistently opposing the Russian invasion, it is difficult to imagine the prospect of American leaders aligning with the Kremlin on any particular issue. But that is precisely what Sen. Marco Rubio (R) did last week vis-à-vis the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan — and that development should make Florida’s Jewish community aware that double standards extend beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Rubio is known as a strong supp...
Ya know, just when we think we have successfully dealt with antisemitism and the threat of the “Proud Boys” etc. here comes a new/old threat to the Jewish People: Christian Nationalism. This theory, pushed by the far right organizations active in our political landscape today, states that America was founded as a Christian Nation and all other religions have no place in American life and/or American philosophy. It states in the Declaration of Independence that the United States is “One Nation Under God.” So, what does that mean? As Jews we...
(JNS) — The families of the Israeli athletes massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics have announced a boycott of an upcoming 50th-anniversary commemoration in Germany. They’re protesting the inadequate level of compensation provided by the German government, and I fully support their position. But let’s not forget that one of the masterminds of the massacre heads a regime that is currently receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect aid each year from the United States, Germany and numerous other countries. I am refer...
(JNS) — Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once famously said, “When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we’ll be a state just like any other.” Ben-Gurion’s vision of Zionism was to “normalize” the Jews. His “normal” meant having a country with a Jewish flavor that is still a state like any other, with all the vices inherent therein. This was a great aspiration at the time given the urgency of restoring the Jewish people to sovereignty in the Land of Israel. However, it would have been nice if Ben-Gurion had referred to other s...
(JNS) — We are swiftly approaching the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Even after the passage of decades, the wounds have not healed, and the atrocity remains as emotive and fraught as it ever was. In particular, the German government, which botched its ambush attempt on the terrorists, allowing them to murder the athletes they had taken hostage, recently offered further compensation to the families of the victims. It was refused, with one survivor c...
