Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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By Melanie Phillips (JNS) — When U.S. President Donald Trump sent Vice President JD Vance to negotiate with members of the Iranian regime in Islamabad, people initially thought that Vance—reportedly the most outspoken voice in the Trump administration against going to war with Iran—would be a soft touch. When the talks in Pakistan broke down, however, Vance’s position could hardly have been tougher. Having seen the Iranian regime up close, he said, he was absolutely certain that these people must never be allowed to get nuclear weapons. In rece...
(JNS) — This headline from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last week was typical: “Trump announces Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, but major disputes remain.” That framing misses a basic truth: Ceasefires don’t resolve conflicts. Though they can lead to productive negotiations, they are more often used by both sides to prepare for the kinetic battles that lie ahead. Even ones that hold don’t necessarily produce good outcomes. The most obvious example: More than seven decades after the 1953 Korean armistice, the United States remains in a froz...
(JNS) — Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in 1923 that the Jew is a prince, regardless of circumstances—that Jewish dignity does not depend on the world’s recognition and that Jewish sovereignty does not require the world’s permission. A century later, the State of Israel proves his point. In January 1948, with independence weeks away and war with five Arab armies inevitable, Israeli founding father (and several months later, its first prime minister) David Ben-Gurion sent Golda Meir (who eventually went on to become prime minister herself) to the Unite...
(JNS) — Tehran’s strategy is not to win but to last. For decades, it has managed pressure by extending timelines, calibrating escalation and avoiding decisive outcomes. The question now is whether that strategy—strategic delay—has reached its limits. For years, policymakers treated time as neutral, something to be managed, extended or deferred. That assumption is increasingly untenable. Time is not neutral. It is a forcing mechanism, not a refuge. In the biblical tradition, time was never meant to be indefinite. It was a mechanism for correct...
(JNS) — A Jewish college student sits in a lecture hall while her professor describes Israel as a colonial project. She’s not sure he’s right, but she doesn’t have the knowledge or courage to push back. She stays quiet. After class, she scrolls through Instagram, where the algorithm serves her a steady diet of the same narrative. By winter break, she’s stopped going to Hillel. By spring, she tells her parents she doesn’t feel connected to Israel anymore. She’s not angry. She’s just gone. This is not a hypothetical. This is the pattern Brandeis...
A simple “thank you” for a simple act the other day bothered me. Early one recent Friday morning, on a warm spring day, I decided, during a round of errands in my New York City neighborhood, to buy a few items for Shabbat at a small kosher grocery store a few blocks from my apartment building. As I entered the glass door at front of the store, I could see a small crowd of shoppers already in line, getting their necessities for their Shabbos meals. Someone coming in my direction also caught my eye — a young frum woman, tichel upon her head,...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has created at least a temporary pause in hostilities, opening a potential diplomatic window while underscoring the deeper regional confrontation involving Iran and its proxies. According to reports, Trump personally intervened with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, helping bring both sides to accept a cessation of hostilities despite earlier reluctance in Beirut to engage directly with Jerusalem. The...
(JNS) — The vast majority of Republicans and political conservatives breathed a sigh of relief when President Donald Trump finally and conclusively read former Fox News host Tucker Carlson out of his MAGA movement last week. In addition to platforming and coddling a wide array of extremist Jew-haters and Israel-bashers on his podcast, Carlson has spent the last year assailing the president’s foreign-policy decisions, in particular his strong stand against Iran. Last month, Trump said Carlson had “lost his way.” But the podcaster’s comments...
(JNS) — It’s one hell of a reflection on Europe that the country which now arguably has the continent’s toughest laws against antisemitism—and the greatest will to fight this resurgent evil—is Ukraine. Yes, Ukraine. The country that has been beating off a brutal Russian invasion for more than four years. The country for whom a typical day will bring hundreds of drones and barrages of missiles raining down on its cities and towns. The country that has been traumatized by the cruel abduction of nearly 20,000 of its children by the Russians...
(JNS) — College acceptances have been coming out, and final collegiate decisions are generally due by the end of April. For Jewish parents helping their children navigate the process of choosing a school, the most important question may not be how an administration handled the last incident of antisemitism, but whether there is a Jewish community strong enough to help their child build a Jewish life there. For many Jewish parents, the college search has changed. It is no longer only about academic rankings, internships, the beauty of the ground...
(JNS) — It started with a sentence spoken in a classroom. A teacher told a group of students that Israel was bombing Iranian children. The statement was presented without context, without clarification and without any attempt to frame the complexity of what was being discussed. My son was sitting in that room. For him, this is not distant news. His family lives in Israel. They move in and out of shelters as missiles are intercepted overhead. This is part of their daily life, something I have experienced firsthand through my time being a s...
(JNS) — Israel has agreed to explore a ceasefire framework directly with the Lebanese government, despite Beirut’s failure to uphold the 2024 agreement requiring Hezbollah to disarm and withdraw north of the Litani River. “In light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed at the Cabinet meeting yesterday to open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Thursday. “The negotiations will focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah a...
(JNS) — You’d think that with 8 million Jews under fire in Israel from a country that screams “Death to Israel!” that Jews around the world would unite to support the U.S.-Israel war to defeat the Islamic Republic. It comes as no surprise that Jews in Israel overwhelmingly support this war of self-defense. But for American Jews, this solidarity drops precipitously, to only about half the tiny U.S. Jewish population. Whether you’re an American Jew who supports the war or one who does not, you have to ask, “Why this disparity?” Why would America...
(JNS) — You can’t simultaneously fan the flames of Jew-hatred, pose with a hose for a photo op and convince others that you’re serious about putting out the fire. To the surprise of at least some of this year’s religiously and politically diverse attendees at the annual Passover seder at City’s Winery in Manhattan, Zohran Mandani, New York City’s openly anti-Zionist mayor who has mischaracterized Israel as illegitimate, colonial, genocidal and apartheid, served as guest speaker. During his Passover address, he acknowledged “the rising tide of a...
(JNS) — All the usual suspects are producing editorials, op-eds and podcasts that conjure up a host of problems that lurk around the next corner and are about to confront the United States and Israel in their conflict with Iran. We’re told that the United States and Israel have no end game prepared, that they’ve begun an open-ended conflict that might turn into (if it isn’t already) a quagmire, that they’re running out of munitions, that aerial bombing can’t cause regime change, that the closing of the Strait of Hormuz will cause worldwide i...
(JNS) — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller (“The Three Cs”) are probably the most exceptional examples of the renewed Christian theological opposition to Israel and Zionism that has always been lurking in dark corners. There are, of course, the “normal” fanatical Jew-haters—Nick Fuentes, Ana Kasparian and Myron Gaines (pseudonym of the Sudanese Amrou Fudl). And now, even conservative media personality Megyn Kelley is queuing up. All claim not to be antisemitic but, to varying degrees, express a rhetoric of such intense dis...
After six canceled and delayed flights, I was finally able to get home to Israel last week having been stranded in the U.S. for three weeks due to the war. I used my time productively, conducting 20 interviews and briefings in the last two weeks alone. Most of my interviewers were interested in my perspective as a dual American-Israeli citizen on the war against the Islamic Republic, the challenges in Israel, and my not being there with my family. In one of the conversations, the host affirmed his support for the war, and Israel, repeatedly...
(JNS) — The “Greater Israel” narrative (from the Nile to the Euphrates) is a modern reincarnation of antisemitic myths. The claim is not rooted in Israeli policy, strategy and action but in simplified, emotionally charged narratives that cast Israel as expansionist and aggressive. Israel is not pursuing a “Greater Israel” in any way or form. The lie is amplified by media networks with millions of audiences, such as podcasters and media personalities Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan and others, dripping with imagery of expansion, dominatio...
(JNS) — Passover began this year on the evening of April 1, April Fools’ Day. It’s known as the day when practical jokes and hoaxes are perpetrated on unsuspecting victims, with the pranksters usually exposing themselves by shouting “April Fools!” This year’s timing is curiously coincidental, but arguably not without significance. The theme of Passover is succinctly stated in the Haggadah itself: “We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt, and God took us out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, Blessed be He, had not taken...
(JNS) — For decades, the United States sold Gulf monarchies hundreds of billions of dollars in advanced weapons. These regimes were called “allies,” treated as partners and defended as pillars of regional stability. Yet now, with their order under threat, their American-built arsenals sit mostly idle. In the past decade, U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait totaled $300 to $450 billion. U.S. President Donald Trump also advanced a $142 billion deal with Saudi Arabia—the largest arms agreement ever—an...
(JNS) — The “State of World Jewry” speech given by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens at the 92nd Street Y on New York City’s Upper East Side in February sparked some intense debate over whether the Jewish community should focus on fighting antisemitism or invest its resources into Jewish culture and education. This debate, though important, obscured a point Stephens made about the sources of Jewish strength and survival: the Jewish imperative of saying “no” to a majority culture when its demands encroach on Jewish particulari...
(JNS) — They file in gradually, descending the two flights of steps leading to the bomb shelter. Some remain silent, heads down. Others exchange knowing glances, shrugging as if to say, “Here we go again.” Newcomers to this particular space follow veterans, learning the rhythm, the corners, the spots where cell reception is best. The last one to enter when the air-raid siren stops wailing pulls the heavy door shut and lifts the handle until it clicks—a required act to stave off blast-damage. The room has white walls, dingy from basement dust, v...
(JNS ) — “Operation Epic Fury” is a watershed moment in the moral and geopolitical realignment of the Middle East. It is the execution of a strategy that has been forming for years. Beneath the headlines about strikes and sorties lies a coherent framework aimed at reshaping the region by distinguishing governments that terrorize and destroy from those willing to cooperate in a new regional order anchored in stability, economic growth and peace. The military dimensions of the operation focuses on breaking the mechanisms through which radic...
(JNS) — The war against Iran is having a most clarifying effect. It’s shining a light on those who are prepared to stand with civilization against barbarism and flushing out those who are not. The usual suspects—those who hate Israel, despise America and stick pins into effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—are willing Iran to win, or more to the point, willing Trump and Netanyahu to lose. Those who get news of the war only from mainstream media outlets in America and Britain have little idea of w...
(JNS ) — As Michigan’s Jewish community counts its blessings following a nearly catastrophic terrorist attack last week on Temple Israel, a cherished synagogue in my hometown, a political takeover is quietly underway in the state. It’s one that doesn’t just tolerate Jew-haters; it elevates them, dressing antisemitism up in political rhetoric and calling it progress. The Michigan Democratic Party will hold its State Endorsement Convention on April 19. Any registered Democrat who attends the convention in person can help decide who the Michiga...
