Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — We’re seeing again how Israel can fight so well with weapons but so badly with words. Take the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which has turned into an international incident. She was fatally shot during an Israeli anti-terrorist incursion into Jenin. An initial autopsy by Palestinian coroners found that it was “not possible” to tell whether she was killed by Israeli or Palestinian gunfire. Of course, that didn’t stop Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from treating Israel as a murderous...
(JNS) — Supporters of the BDS movement against Israel claim they are not antisemitic. I have co/ncluded that they are correct in the sense that the word “antisemitism” is too weak to capture their depravity. It is not necessary to go into the myriad examples of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to define “antisemitism,” the word means hatred of Jews. Lots of individuals and groups hate Jews and have for centuries. More recently, a new form of anti-Semitism emerged in which “Israel” or “Zionist” is used as a euphemism for “Je...
A new study conclusively shows multiple benefits of a faith-based life to working-class adolescents – particularly males. As a child living in communist Russia, Ilana Horwitz knew nothing about religion. But after her family emigrated to the United States when she was seven years old, Horwitz attended a Jewish school and began teaching some Judaism to her parents. Years later, as a graduate student in sociology, education, and Jewish Studies at Stanford University, she chose to focus on religion as an academic interest. Horwitz realized that m...
(JNS) — Whether you even know what a picture postcard is will immediately put you in a certain age bracket. Just recently, I asked a group of teenagers if they knew what a postcard was, and they had absolutely no idea. It reminded me of a video posted last year of two teenagers being challenged to operate an old-fashioned telephone where you dialed the number with that circular dialing system. They were completely flustered and just could not work it out. I’ll get to the picture postcard soon. I intended procrastinating, but I never got aro...
(JNS) — The job of defenders of democracy would be easier if opponents of free speech never sought to disguise their efforts by portraying their goal as the preservation of the very ideals that they are suborning. It’s a lot harder to recognize the nature of the threat when those who seek to silence dissent say they are doing it for our own good because those guilty of wrongthink are bad people. It’s even worse when a group whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism, like the Anti-Defamation League, joins in this effort. And it creates a genui...
(JTA) — Last week, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz responded to the draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, “A woman’s rights over her own body are hers alone.” It might seem odd that the Israeli health minister was commenting on American abortion law, but his response, contained in a tweet, addresses a theme common to the abortion discussion in Israel and America that I research as an ethicist and scholar of reproduction among Jews. In the 1970s, the Israeli Knesset debated the legalization of abortio...
(JNS) — Who in the Middle East has not been traumatized by the upheavals of the last century? All of us celebrate the history of our families and treasure the places where we have lived, yet only the Palestinian leadership has weaponized the memory of displacement and transformed it into an ideology of genocide. “Nakba Day,” which occurs every year on May 15, was established in 1998 by former Palestinian Authority leader and international terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat to turn Israel’s Independence Day into a festival of grievance. The ver...
The United States was founded by deeply religious Christians, and its tradition is rooted in what’s known as Judeo-Christian values. Other countries also are founded on, and embrace, biblical values as well. It should go without saying that Israel, as the Jewish state, was re-established on biblical Jewish tradition that is played out in almost every aspect of Israeli society. When soldiers are inducted into the IDF they are given a Bible. Shabbat is not just the cornerstone of the weekend, it’s a weekly affirmation of God’s creation and the n...
(CAMERA via JNS) — On April 30, MSNBC host Ali Velshi delivered a lengthy rant against the Jewish state that was as dishonest as it was rabid. The monologue was riddled with false statements and exaggerations that betray Velshi’s willingness to twist the facts to fit his preferred narrative. During the segment, Velshi claimed: “The map of the Palestinian Authority, sometimes described as Swiss cheese, has been carved up by Israel over the past century.” The P.A. did not exist until 1994, a mere 28 years ago, so the reference to the “past c...
(JNS) — It was one of the first things President Joe Biden did once he assumed office in January 2021. Though it has gotten almost no notice, it is almost certainly one of the most consequential acts of his presidency, and its impact will likely be felt long after he leaves office. But while the administration is boasting of it as proof of their devotion to civil rights and bettering the lot of the disadvantaged, it may do far more damage to American society than anything else that happens during Biden’s time in office. Considering that his...
(JNS) — Arab riots on the Temple Mount in opposition to any Jewish presence on the Jewish people’s most holy site have exposed what the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about. It’s not about the lack of a Palestinian state or Israeli concessions to the PLO, Hamas or other terrorist organizations. It’s about what makes the Temple Mount a holy place and who is the legitimate sovereign power over the entirety of the homeland of the Jewish people. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan—represented by the Waqf, the religious authority on the Temple Mount—sup...
(JNS) — The world has entered a very challenging period due to various factors that enhance pre-existent undercurrents and allow them to boil over. The perceived weakness of the current United States government on the global stage has allowed rogue nations to push their agendas without fear. The botched execution of the U.S. military disengagement from Afghanistan, the compromised security on its southern border, local inflation and economic instability, a self-inflicted dependence on foreign oil and social unrest are all factors in the rise o...
(JNS) — The Biden administration has announced that its titular head will be visiting Israel within a few months. Biden’s last high-profile visit to the Jewish State in 2010 ended with him staging a diplomatic incident and refusing to leave his hotel room for an hour to attend an event with Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis have little reason to be optimistic about this Biden expedition. After Muslim rioters disrupted Passover by engaging in violence at the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, the administration urged “all sides to exerc...
My wife and I, and five of our children, had a discussion over Shabbat dinner recently about giving up our U.S. citizenship. Five of my six children were born in the U.S. On my father’s side, I’m a second generation American. On my mother’s side, fourth or fifth. When we moved to Israel, our children’s ages ranged from 11 to 3. A year later our youngest son was born in Jerusalem. He’s an American because we are. Some are surprised to know that we choose to keep our U.S. citizenship or that we’re even allowed to. Others ask why we’d want t...
(JNS) — Discerning the truth about diplomatic activity is often a matter of sifting out what’s real from amid the surrounding noise of governmental spin. That means that at the moment, an accurate assessment of the possibility of a new American nuclear deal with Iran, as well as the state of U.S.-Israel relations may require one to ignore most of the headlines. If so, the optimism currently prevailing in Jerusalem about the prospects of the Biden administration betraying the security interests of Israel, the Arab states as well as the West cou...
(JNS) — The “West Bank” is “occupied” by Israel. Wait, no, only part of it is. The Palestinian Arabs are “stateless.” Wait, no, a large segment of the region actually is “governed by the Palestinian Authority.” These and other contradictory statements all appeared in a single article in The New York Times on April 17 by news correspondent Raja Abdulrahim. I almost feel sorry for her; she seems so confused. It’s not, however, a confusion based on facts that are perplexing or unclear. It’s based on the blatant contradictions betwee...
