Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The Institute for Science and National Security issued its “Analysis of IAEA Iran Verification and Monitoring Report: May 2025” by David Albright, Sarah Burkhard and Spencer August Faragasso on June 9, 2025. The report cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report dated May 31, 2025, that Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent highly enriched uranium amounted to 233 kg. Two weeks ago, the IAEA reported a slight increase of 60 percent HEU to 440.9 kilograms, enough to yield approximately 10 nuclear weapons. The finding reported that it...
(JNS) — Am Yisrael, the global Jewish people, stands at a historic crossroads. The challenges we face on a communal, social and national level are familiar yet somehow different. The Jewish experience of the 20th century and the establishment of the State of Israel have been game-changers. The question is: What are we doing about our current challenges? How should global Jewry leverage Israel’s success? For years, Israel’s innovation output has outpaced far larger nations across nearly every sector: transportation, aquaculture, climate, high-...
(JNS) — More and more information is surfacing to reveal that the Islamic holy war against the West isn’t just being waged on the battleground of the Middle East. Even more significantly, it’s also being waged through a trillion-dollar influence campaign to colonize and subvert the Western mind, organized by extremists from the Islamic world. These have tunneled into the West through a vast civic infrastructure whose real purpose and sources of funding have been as well concealed, and in their own way are just as deadly as the subte...
In these few days following Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden death after returning from Ukraine, I have heard Jews offering the traditional blessing usually spoken for one of our own: “May Lindsey Graham rest in peace. May his memory be for a blessing.” The words felt fitting. Graham was not Jewish, but he stood firmly with Israel and the Jewish people. He understood that Israel was not only defending itself but also standing against forces that threatened the region and beyond. He wasn’t alone. Some of the greatest friends the Jewish people...
The evening of Sept. 11, 2001, I remember standing in a sea of stupefied university students clutching candles on the Yale campus. I was there with my roommates, one an erstwhile and still lifelong New Yorker. We were all trying to make sense of the unimaginable that had happened to her city, to America, to us, only hours earlier. Twenty-five years later, in New York and across the country, a new cohort of candidates who express deep hostility toward Israel, fierce criticism of and contempt for the United States, and, in some cases, troubling...
(JNS) — The current onslaught against the Jewish people is causing many Diaspora Jews to ask themselves profound and unsettling questions. Israel is being used by its enemies to divide them. The condition of their acceptance as Americans or Brits, they are being told, is to renounce the Jewish state. Some are doing that. Others are staying solidly in support. Others still, badly gaslighted, are unsure what to think. All are now asking themselves the hitherto unthinkable question: whether there’s now a future for Jews in the United States or...
(JNS) — U.S. President Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran and the Trump administration is in talks with the Palestinian Authority to “boost their strained bilateral relationship,” as Washington seeks Ramallah’s cooperation to advance its landmark policy initiatives in the region. No Palestinian Authority leader has ever condemned the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 1,200 others into the Gaza Strip. Polls show overwhelming support...
(JNS) — One week ago, a slate of democratic socialists swept three competitive Democratic House primaries in New York. In districts this blue, the primary is the election. Among the winners are candidates who rose through the movement that treats hostility to Israel as a credential, including one who helped organize the Columbia University encampments. They are now bound for Congress. Now, it may be Colorado’s turn. In Denver, 29-year-old barista and self-described Democratic Socialist Melat Kirosa defeated a 15-term congressional inc...
In Steven Spielberg’s new film “Disclosure Day,” the Pentagon is exposed as hiding the proof of extraterrestrial life. My reaction was to ask: What can we learn from the fact that we are not alone? It would be hubristic to imagine the Creator of an infinite universe fashioned only one outpost of conscious life. However, the existence of aliens proves what was disclosed by our sages millennia ago: Everything—humans, aliens, stars and quarks—is a manifestation of the single infinite consciousness of the Divine. We are not biological creatures...
(JNS) — It is a beautiful time to be Jewish. While crowds around the world chant slogans stripped of any rational meaning; while the phrase, “From the river to the sea,” is repeated without regard for geography, history or consequence; while “genocide” is used to describe a conflict in which the Palestinian population has grown from roughly 150,000 in 1948 to around two million today; while the language of human rights is turned on its head to defend movements that oppress women and execute homosexuals; while newspapers amplify invented...
(JNS) — American businessman Ronald S. Lauder stood at The Jerusalem Post conference in New York earlier this month and said what many have been saying for years. Since Oct. 7, Jewish organizations in the United States have spent more than $600 million fighting antisemitism through advertising, media campaigns and public messaging. “Has it helped?” he asked the room. “Has all that money stopped or even slowed down the hatred against us? The answer is no.” He’s right. And he’s not the first person to say it. In the mid-1990s, marketing con...
(JNS) — Extreme socialism is now on the march in America, with the demonization of Israel as the principal weapon in its arsenal. Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, three extremists backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, emerged victorious this week from their Democratic primaries in New York City’s 7th, 10th and 17th congressional districts. Valdez and Chevalier are affiliated with the ultra-left, anti-American Democratic Socialists of America. On social media, Valdez has boasted of having “wiped my hand on the Ameri...
(JNS) — With the approach of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States on July 4, it’s important to reaffirm some basic truths. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, summarized it well in his pithy remark: “Without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there would not be an America.” This is true in terms of Jewish thought, blood and treasure. Jewish merchants and shippers supplied the Continental Army with sorely needed goods a...
(JNS) — I grew up inside a political machine. My father and friends ran the Brooklyn, N.Y., reformers love to denounce. In 2010, when a group calling itself the New Kings Democrats came to tear that machine down, I was one of the people defending it. I know what a machine looks like from the inside. I know how it rewards loyalty, protects its own and decides races before the voters ever do. The insurgents had a case, and parts of it were true. Machines grow comfortable. They get closed and self-dealing and certain of their own permanence. T...
Dear Editor: The following can be sung to the tune of “Where have all the flowers gone.” Where have all the Jews gone, from a long time ago? No more Jerry Bornsteins, no more Hy Lakes, no more Bill Goodmans. From long time ago … No more Norman Rossmans, no more Dick Weiners or Bob Weinriches From long time ago… No more Dorothy Morrells, no more Marlene Rossmans or Gloria Goodmans From long time ago … No more Lester Mandels or Bob Yarmuths from long time ago … With well over 30,000 Jewish people living in Central Florida — the Greater Orlan...
A twelfth-century Crusader fortress in southern Lebanon teaches a lesson that Washington keeps refusing to learn: ceasefires are not a strategy, and walking away from the battlefield only guarantees the next generation will have to return to it. Beaufort is a twelfth-century Crusader fortress perched on a commanding height in southern Lebanon. For nearly a thousand years it has been used to control vast stretches of territory and to launch military operations with relative impunity. Its position is not just strategically significant. It is a...
We’ve been hearing for weeks, even months from the White House that Islamic Republic of Iran was about to sign a deal. True or not, for some reason President Trump‘s most recent statements have been taken more seriously. The stock market is up, oil prices are down and some sort of a deal may indeed be announced imminently. As I read the terms of the proposed deal, whether true or not, my heart breaks because the outcome of the deal will be deadly. There are truly no good terms of the deal being reported, but as much as the terms are bad, the...
(JNS) — In the never-ending churning of news cycles, commentators and the public alike are always ready to overreact to each aspect of every story as they roll out. Under these circumstances, historical perspective is rarely part of anyone’s understanding of events. This was amply illustrated by the discussion about the United States signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. Hysteria about the implications of the deal for Israel, which was cut out of the negotiations over the agreement, is probably unwise. It’s not clear how much of th...
Seventy-five years ago this week, in response to the horrors of the Holocaust, the United Nations convened the1951 Refugee Convention. The United States, along with 25 other nations, signed the international refugee protection agreement, recognizing refugees’ right to seek safety and accepting its obligations to accept refugees. We also mark the anniversary (June 1939) of the tragedy of the MS St Louis ship carrying refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The United States, Cuba and Canada refused entry to this “ship of the damned”; it was forced to ret...
(JNS) — As the father of a terror victim, as a Zionist and as an Israeli citizen, I quake with the report of every missile strike or terror attack against the Jewish state. That is not a figure of speech. It is not political theater. It is the involuntary reaction of someone who knows what a phone call can mean, what a headline can hide, and how quickly an ordinary day can become the day that divides a family’s life into before and after. The targets are always civilians. They are people going about their lives, trying to make a shekel, wai...
(JNS) — This week, Jewish communities around the world mark the anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Escaping Europe and arriving in America during World War II, the Rebbe knew well where silence leads. His father died in exile for daring to defend religious liberty under communism. The Rebbe taught the world to lead with light—to fight hatred by speaking out against injustice wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head. Today, that ancient poison of global antisemitism strikes wit...
(JNS) — In my media interviews, I am often asked: “Has Israel become the 51st state of the U.S.?” With half a smile, I answer: “If only. American states have far more freedom and room to maneuver than Israel does.” This situation is hardly new. Ever since U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion halt the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign against Egypt in Sinai in 1956, and later withdraw from Gaza, the United States has consistently forced Israel to stop fighting and agree to a ceasefire....
(JNS) — The IDF’s top brass is convinced that Hezbollah is a semi-dismantled organization that has suffered the hardest blow in its history. It had 30,000 fighters on Oct. 6, 2023; since then, 8,000 have been killed and about the same number wounded. “Even a jihadist enemy is dying for a ceasefire.” The chief of staff, for example, said in closed discussions that he is in favor, under the following conditions: One, Hezbollah’s withdrawal beyond the Litani River. Two, the destruction of all its infrastructure, this time not by the impotent...
Sometimes it is exhausting reading all the lies that people say about Israel. It is true that if you tell a lie long enough people will believe it. This is why we must address all the lies that people — students, professors, congressmen, neighbors — hear and grasp hold of. Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun wrote in his editorial this week, “The Rebbe taught the world to lead with light—to fight hatred by speaking out against injustice wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.” I would add to that to also lead with truth — not just speak out against inju...
It’s not easy writing and editing dictionaries. As the world changes so does the vernacular. Besides introducing new words that come along, there is a core responsibility of the lexicographer to revise existing words that have taken on new or expanded meanings. The profession certainly must have its challenges. Take the word “ceasefire.” We can all agree that it means a temporary pause in hostilities between warring factions. Yet, for quite some time, the president — a high-profile influencer because of his communication skills and bully p...
