Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) Ahead of Chanukah, two students at Colgate University in New York vandalized a campus menorah. When they were caught, they explained that they didn’t mean it. They were just drunk. The incident at Colgate isn’t a big story in and of itself, because anti-Jewish incidents on campuses happen every day, all over the United States. However, the explanation the students provided for their behavior exposes a larger truth. Their thinking, apparently, was that their drunkenness made their deed understandable. Of course, if you’re drunk, you’d...
In an interview with Maariv last week, former Israeli Air Force commander Amir Eshel made several startling admissions about the role he and other IDF generals played in scuttling former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most significant strategic policies. His most startling admissions related to former U.S. president Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In 2019, then-Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz appointed Eshel to serve as his interlocutor with the Trump administration and its Middle East peace plan. In this pos...
(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...
Esteemed Shillman Journalism fellow Daniel Greenfield from Frontpage Maga-zine revealed that the ADL hired an activist named Tema Smith to serve as its director of Jewish outreach. Smith’s hire is newsworthy because Smith has a long record of anti-Israel, pro-terror and anti-Jewish postings on social media. In other words, she has a long record of antisemitic activism, which Greenfield documented. Consider a few examples of Smith’s publishing history: • During the Hamas war against Israel in 2014, Smith posted and endorsed an article that...
At the UN General Assembly last week, a large majority of member nations voted to lavishly fund a permanent inquisition against the Jewish state. The member states funded the operation of an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry,” against Israel. The commission, run by outspoken haters of Israel with long records of demonizing the State of Israel and its people, was formed by the UN Human Rights Council in a special session in May. Its purpose is to deny and reject Israel’s right to exist, its right to self-defense, its r...
(JNS) — After the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the supplemental spending bill for the Iron Dome program, everyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the Biden White House to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, quickly proclaimed bipartisan support in Washington for the U.S.-Israel alliance to be as strong as ever. Unfortunately, even before the bill passed, it was clear that the opposite was the case. Eight House members from the leftist edge of the political spectrum voted against the Iron D...
(JNS) — Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem portfolio, gave an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001 in which he exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yasser Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the “peace process” as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo, for them, was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, “from the river to the sea.” Husseini described the Oslo process as a “Trojan Horse.” Arafa...
(JNS) — There is little point at this stage of the game in mentioning the depths of moral depravity and treachery into which Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked have descended. Now, as the two self-proclaimed “leaders” of the ideological right defect from the nationalist camp and form a leftist government supported by pro-Hamas Arab parties, the time has come to discuss the strategic and national consequences of their actions. The place to begin the discussion is by noting that ministers that support the Biden administration’s Middle East po...
(JNS) — Throughout the month of Ramadan, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been inciting Arab Israelis in Jerusalem and throughout the country to attack Jews. And so it happened that at the outset of the month, Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and beyond found themselves beset by gangs of Arab thugs who beat them on the streets and light-rail cars just because they were Jews. Last week, Hamas’s leaders announced their detailed plans to open a new campaign against Israel on May 9. May 9 was a conflation of three events: Jer...
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed. What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirat...
On Wednesday, supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside ballot counting centers in Arizona and Michigan to demand a clean and honest vote count. An MSNBC reporter in Arizona filmed the protesters in Maricopa Country where 400,000 ballots were being counted. Standing behind the protesters, the reporter tried to paint the crowd as violent and dangerous even as they kneeled in silent prayer for election integrity. It was a hard sell, but other reporters quickly got in on the action and videos appeared throughout the day of reporters de...
Almost all the polls say that President Donald Trump is heading toward defeat at the hands of his Democrat challenger, former vice president Joe Biden, next month. But Robert Cahaly who heads the Trafalgar Group polling firm disagrees. Cahaly was the only major pollster that accurately called the 2016 presidential race. In an interview with “The Political Trade” podcast last week, Cahaly said his data show Trump headed for another upset victory Nov. 3. Cahaly said that today, as in 2016, the disparity between his numbers and the marquis polling...
(JNS) — Last Tuesday, two notable events occurred in the Democratic Party. Joe Biden announced that he had selected California Senator Kamala Harris to serve as his running mate in November; and Rep. Ilhan Omar won her primary, all but guaranteeing her return to Congress for a second term. On the face of things, Harris’s selection seems like the more significant of the two events. But actually, Omar’s primary victory was far more momentous. Traditionally, presidential candidates have selected their running mates based on electoral consi...
(JNS) — Donald Trump was elected four years ago because Americans wanted to save their country. Both in domestic and foreign policy, in the eighth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, America was going off the rails. At home, Obama’s identity politics were tearing the country apart. As is now graphically apparent, identity politics are not about expanding justice. They are geared toward tearing Americans away from one another and undermining the very idea of America. Abroad, America had become the laughingstock of its enemies and the worst night...
The ceasefire negotiations between Israel and the Hamas terror group’s regime in Gaza point to a central truth about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Before anyone speaks any more about a possible “deal of the century,” or a “two-state solution,” it is imperative that the implications of those talks be fully understood. The ceasefire talks are being held between the sides of two separate international coalitions. On the one side are Israel, the U.S., and Egypt. On the other side are Hamas, Qatar, and Turkey. The party tha...
President Donald Trump’s decision to appoint former UN Ambassador John Bolton to serve as his national security adviser is arguably the most significant single step he has taken to date toward implementing his America First foreign policy since taking office. The news hit America’s enemies and competitors—from Pyongyang to Teheran to Moscow to Beijing—like a wall of bricks Thursday night. Early criticisms on the political right of Bolton’s appointment have centered on two points. First, it is argued that Bolton, who has been involved in U.S. f...
On Tuesday a delegation of diplomats from the US Consulate in Jerusalem came to Bethlehem to participate in a meeting of the local chamber of commerce. When they arrived in the city, Fatah members attacked them. Their vehicles with diplomatic license plates were pelted with tomatoes and eggs by a mob of protesters calling out anti-American slogans. After the Americans entered the hall where the meeting was scheduled to take place, some of the rioters barged in. They held placards condemning America and they shouted, “Americans Out!” Some of...
A decade ago, Israelis gave little thought to the issue of illegal immigration. In 2006, there were 2,766 illegal migrants in Israel, nearly all of them from Eritrea and Sudan, who had entered Israel through its then-open, 150-mile border with Egypt. In 2007, the dam of illegal immigration burst. According to Israel’s Immigration and Population Authority, 5,179 African migrants—predominantly from Eritrea and Sudan—entered Israel from Egypt in 2007. The illegal migration reached its peak in 2011, when 17,281 arrived. When you consider that...
Europe is the epicenter of the political war against Israel. Europe fights Israel on the streets of Europe, in the corridors of power in Brussels, other Western European capitals and the UN, and in Israel itself. Europe’s war against Israel is a passive-aggressive campaign fought and denied simultaneously. But in recent years, the mask has fallen over and over again. In the days that have passed since US President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement that the US recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and is beginning to take concr...
Monday, Dec. 4, The New York Times published the Palestinian response to an alleged Saudi peace plan. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly presented it to PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas last month. According to the Times’ report, Mohammed told Abbas he has two months to either accept the Saudi proposal or leave office to make way for a new Palestinian leader who will accept it. The Palestinians and their European supporters are up in arms about the content of Mohammed’s plan. It reportedly proposes the...
US President Donald Trump initiated an important change in US policy toward Iran. No, in his speech de-certifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear accord it struck with his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump didn’t announce a new strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or stemming its hegemonic rise in the Middle East, or limiting its ability to sponsor terrorism. Trump’s move was not operational. It was directional. In his address Friday, Trump changed the policy dynamics that dictate US policy on Iran. For the first time...
As the New Year 5778 begins, 88 percent of Israeli Jews say that they are happy and satisfied with their lives. This makes sense. Israel’s relative security, its prosperity, freedom and spiritual blossoming make Israeli Jews the most successful Jewish community in 3,500 years of Jewish history. The same cannot be said for the Jews of the Diaspora. In Western Europe, Jewish communities that just a generation ago were considered safe and prosperous are now besieged. Synagogues and Jewish schools look like army barracks. And the severe security c...
The nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb. If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the U.S. territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental U.S., was a direct threat to U.S. cities. In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about U.S. superpowe...
Over the past week, two major U.S. institutions have produced studies that discredit their names and reputations as credible organizations. Their actions are important in and of themselves. But they also point to a disturbing trend in the U.S. in which the credibility of important American institutions is being undermined from within by their members who pursue narrow partisan or ideological agendas in the name of their institutions. The political implications of this larger trend were clearly in evidence in the 2016 presidential election. From...
The Israel angle on McMaster’s purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds. McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews. Many of you will remember that a few d...
