Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Despite managing to raise $160 million in New York on Thursday, at a pledging conference of the Ad Hoc Committee of the U.N. General Assembly, the head of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was not pleased. Trying to sound grateful for the ill-deserved windfall, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini simultaneously boasted about the international community’s “firm commitment” to the organization and bemoaned that the funds pledged were far from sufficient to keep the place running past the end of the...
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe v. Wade, the five justices of the United States Supreme Court who voted in favor of the reversal embraced Mississippi’s statutory definition of a fetus as an unborn human being. This definition is not an accredited scientific definition, but is based on religious doctrine. It gives the Court leeway, however weak, to exclude the right to abortion from constitutional protection afforded to other rights, which the Constitution is obligated to secure. In...
Speaking to students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a foolish, unnecessary, and strategic mistake of opening an antisemitic battle as another front distracting from his very real war against Russia. Though Zelensky himself is Jewish, doing so he continues the antisemitic tradition that has marred Jewish life in Ukraine for generations. This is not Zelensky’s first time calling out Israel for not doing enough to help Ukraine in their war with Russia. By singling out Israel to standards b...
(JNS) — “Why not?” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asked that simple question last week after the normally publicity-mad Council on American-Islamic Relations told him it had nothing to say about a Boston BDS organization’s promotion of a “mapping project” that has been condemned as antisemitic and possible incitement to violence. The interactive map posted online earlier this month “mapped” the addresses of dozens of Jewish institutions and organizations in Massachusetts. Its stated goal was “to reveal the local entities and netw...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Now that Roe v. Wade has been officially overturned and it becomes clear that the pro-choice community doesn’t have any more of a plan on how to protect abortion rights than it did to protect Roe from its critics, it might be a good time for pro-choice believers to look for guidance from the strongest abortion rights advocate and most prominent feminist voice to ever serve on the Supreme Court. So, the question to ask now is WWRBGD? — What Would Ruth Bader Ginsburg Do? Given Ginsburg’s strong credentials on this is...
(JNS) — Much has been written in recent days about a Boston BDS group’s online map of Jewish sites across Massachusetts. The “Mapping Project” ostensibly revealed the monstrous connections between Massachusetts institutions and the alleged evils of Zionism and Israel, which would have been bad enough, but it also gleefully included synagogues, Jewish sites and Jewish schools at best tangentially related to the Jewish state. The takeaway was clear: Jews equal Zionists. And since Zionism is evil, the Jews are evil. And now, says the map, you kno...
(JNS) — This week, the U.N. Human Rights Council published an 18-page report on the May 2021 conflict between Hamas and Israel. From the outset, Israel knew the report’s conclusion was predetermined and rightly refused to cooperate with a biased investigation, labeling it “a moral stain on the international community and the U.N.” This assessment has proved correct. The inquiry that led to the report — the first such inquiry to be open-ended — is led by Navi Pillay, a former UNHRC high commissioner who has spearheaded more investigati...
(JNS) — The moment that some Israelis have been dreading and others happily anticipating finally arrived on Monday. Though the announcement by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of a call for the disbanding of the Knesset was virtually a foregone conclusion, it came as a bit of a surprise. Earlier in the day, it was reported that Bennett had bought his teetering coalition an additional week. This was attributed to the fact that Likud Party and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was postponing a no-confidence m...
(JNS) — As I was researching the Six-Day War fought 55 years ago, I stumbled across an article written by Christopher Sykes, the son of Sir Mark Sykes, the British diplomat who negotiated the Sykes-Picot agreement with François Georges-Picot. Christopher was a diplomat, soldier and foreign correspondent who wrote about the war in the February 1968 issue of Encounter. He made several keen observations that are relevant today. Sykes said that he had firm convictions about “the rights and wrongs of the opening of the June war; the need for a unit...
(JNS) — According to the Washington, D.C.-based White House Historical Association, the 1978/79 U.S. policy on Iran, that embraced Ayatollah Khomeini, betrayed the pro-U.S. shah and failed the pro-U.S. Sunni Arab regimes, was based on a superficial view of Middle East political, religious, cultural and historical reality. “In January 1979, the Shah fled into exile, and the theocratic regime of Khomeini took power. There was little informed understanding in the U.S. government about the political implications of this fundamentalist regime. Gar...
(JNS) — On the face of it, the “Mapping Project” undertaken by Boston BDS was a disaster for the antisemitic movement. In recent years, many on the political left had begun drifting from the sort of harsh critiques of Israel championed by groups like J Street towards the openly anti-Zionist stance of Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. But the colorful map published by the group that targeted the entire Jewish community was enough to shock even many of those on the left-wing of the Democratic Party into condemning the project. Indeed, the M...
It’s summer. Time for vacation. Maybe the beach. Maybe that foreign trip postponed the past couple of years? One thing for sure, books will be part of the agenda. Summer = books. It is a time when we naturally just chill. Why do book sales escalate in the summertime? Why are new releases always scheduled for this time of year? It is traditional that be it the beach, the mountains or a local hangout, books get packed to tag along. For some reason we allow ourselves the liberty wherever we vacation to read. That’s why book publishing booms in...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — It was January 2020, in a small cafe in Givatayim, that I last met with the celebrated Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua, who passed away on June 14 at the age of 85. That was January 2020 B.C. — Before COVID — so there were no discussions of pandemics, viruses or vaccines (those were the days). The only health issue we talked about was the difficult battle with cancer that Yehoshua was facing. This wasn’t the first time we had met, but due to his health issues, this meeting felt different. When we sat down for that cu...
(CAMERA via JNS) — If further proof were needed that the BDS campaign against Israel is deeply antisemitic, a venomous “mapping” campaign defaming and targeting Boston-area Jews provides stunning evidence of it. A Boston BDS group recently publicized an online map that lists the addresses of Jewish institutions across Massachusetts. The group called on followers to use the addresses to “dismantle” and “disrupt” the institutions in question. Although the project was slammed as antisemitic and dangerous by members of Congress, the city’s leadin...
(JNS) — It was in 1896 that Theodor Herzl published his groundbreaking book, “The Jewish State,” which launched the modern Zionist movement. Though his project was, as he noted in his book, “very old” and indeed rooted in the prayers of Jews for nearly 2,000 years, it would only be 52 years later that his vision was brought to life with the birth of modern-day Israel in May 1948. That state turned 74 years old this week, and as Israelis observe Yom Ha’atzmaut — Israel Independence Day — they have much to celebrate. The country that came to li...
(JNS) — The United Nations has declared an existential war on the state of Israel. Last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council contrived a unique “Commission of Inquiry” after Israel responded to another round of Hamas rocket attacks. The Inquiry has just issued its first report. Now emanating from the U.N.’s top human-rights body is a brazen attempt to resurrect the old 1975 lie that a Jewish state is a racist state. The report’s allegation that discrimination by Jews against non-Jews lies at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict is actually at t...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — “Zionism is racism” is indeed a pernicious lie. Propagation of this lie has led to both random and organized violence against Jewish people and the marginalization of Jews in their respective nations, from the Soviet Union to Great Britain. Should the claim that Zionism is akin to racism, white nationalism and Nazism penetrate mainstream American circles, it would be a crisis for our community. It would be used to justify hatred against us, isolate us from progressive movements and imperil our status as prote...
(JNS) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently tweeted to her eight million Twitter followers that the U.S. should cut aid to Israel. “It has to stop,” she said, claiming without evidence that the IDF killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh “with U.S. funding.” It is worth pointing out that a large number of war reporters — including some from Al Jazeera — have been killed or wounded on the job. It’s a risky career path. But few have been mentioned in such fervent terms by congressmen and congresswomen. When Israel is involved, it...
(JNS) — For the past three months, I have resisted the urge to write about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was just too disturbing. Covid wasn’t bad enough, so we needed a war too? War is ugly, cruel, terrible and barbaric. I have watched the genocide and devastation of Ukraine along with everybody else. I am sickened and distressed by it like everybody else. And I am most disturbed because I see very few diplomatic efforts to end the war. I ask myself, as Michael Goodwin put it in the New York Post, “Are we on the verge of sleep...
(JNS) — The May 24 slaughter of 19 children and two adults at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, provided fresh ammunition for the rhetorical and ideological battle over gun control. Combatants in this ongoing war tend to be diehards on the left and right. The former hold firearms and those who champion the constitutional right to bear them responsible for such horrific acts of violence. The latter hail the Second Amendment and support the National Rifle Association, which backs the right of law-abiding citizens to defend t...
On the day when the shooting happens, I finally unlock what some say is the most vital part of the American dream. My husband and I have a house in the suburbs now, big trees towering above — no picket fence, but a wide expanse of green and room for the pattering of tiny feet. As we sign the paperwork, we each take turns rocking our baby on our legs. This house is for our children. We say it over and over again. If it were just he and I, we would be content with the walls of a small Brooklyn apartment, with the city streets as a backyard. I...
(JNS) — Conspiracy theories cast a shadow over the 75th World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), as hundreds of health officials and diplomats converged on Geneva last week. One of the assembly’s key goals—to draft a new agreement that would “strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”—opened the U.N.-affiliated world body to accusations that it was attempting to usurp national governments’ powers to make health decisions. The conspiracy caught fire online as cultural, media and pol...
Dear Editor: Listening to the man who lost us Afghanistan along with the 13 dead American soldiers and the loss of 80 billion dollars in armaments, I felt sick to my stomach while he spoke at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day. The man has no shame. Hunter Biden’s lap top almost never existed with all the pornography and the evidence of the Biden Crime Family with Joe as the Big Man that we have a criminal speaking to the nation on this hallowed day. He’s not ashamed of what he’s doing to our nation to make it weaker than our enemies both...
Dear Editor: I had the opportunity to pick up the May 13, 2022 issue of Heritage. Not having read it in many months, I was impressed at the many articles, which were on top of critical issues facing Jews in America today. One article, however, raised more questions for me than it answered: “What do Jews say about abortion?” by Phillissa Cramer via JTA Cramer does not explain what overturning Roe v. Wade means. “Jewish women in dozens of states will almost certainly become unable to access care that they might well decide is required relig...
(JNS) — Resolutions proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives mean nothing. They give members an opportunity to pay lip service to various causes favored by their constituents but don’t commit the government to action. They are almost always not worth noticing. But every once in a while, a resolution is put forward that demands attention. This week that is exactly what happened when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) proposed House Resolution 1123, “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugee Rights.” The word nakba means “catast...
