Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 164
Not much politics here. A long national holiday begins a few days before Rosh Hashanah and extends till two days after Succot. In Jewish tradition, there is a day after a holiday, perhaps to provide for recuperation. All told, that’s close to a month without politics. When things get going again in a few days, we may hear how the greats and near greats are responding to the UNESCO decisions about the lack of a Jewish claim to the Temple Mount, and the expansion of a regional war with new atrocities from Nigeria, across Libya and Egypt, and o...
Israeli politicians and Jewish activists here and there are calling for unity, typically behind whatever point of view they are supporting. In extremis, we hear that it is essential for the survival of Israel or the Jewish people. Yet it never takes long before we hear other Israelis or Jews demanding unity behind something quite different. God Himself gave us the label of a stiff-necked people, in the 32nd chapter of Exodus. The meaning since then has involved antagonism, stubbornness, argumentative, and going into minute detail in order to...
It isn’t easy summarizing the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel, or extending that to Israeli Jews and Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. Animosity is more apparent than accommodation in most summaries of Israeli and Palestinian history. Yet accommodation has been more apparent than bloodshed. There has been violence, but never of the magnitude shown by what Muslims have recently been doing to one another in Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen. The Second Intifada, from 2000 to about 2005, took 1,100 Israeli and perhaps 5,000 P...
Several of our headlines have dealt with an issue that is always in the near background: Who are the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs? How do they think? and Is there any chance of living in a condition of peace, or at least reasonable quiet? One of the headlines came from responses to a comment by a prominent radio journalist, Razi Barkai. He began a mini-storm by questioning the policy of holding back the bodies of Palestinians killed while attacking Israelis, noting the feelings of Palestinian families, and comparing them to those of Israeli...
We’re taught to honor principles, and there is merit to that principle. But they are also the traps in which disappear decency and good sense. Those who think and express themselves in absolutes and reject dispute from those who doubt the value of the principles being promoted, risk a lonesome life in politics, where the language of survival and success is nuance. Fierce opposition to occupation is one of the principles that gets in the way of dialog. Occupation has become a four-letter word pointed at Israel. It is said to be occupying P...
We’re all on the borders of cultures. We express the condition by where we travel, with whom we deal, and how we deal with those who are different from ourselves. Staying close to home and minding our own business are conventional ways of dealing with strangers, some of whom may worry or threaten us. Americans who feel safe in upscale neighborhoods don’t venture into Black ghettos, unless they know the way and want to purchase something available there. Jews living in French Hill stay away from Isaweea, Shuafat, or Beit Hanina, unless they spe...
Not much of anything. This is a time for watching and waiting. The biggest crap shoot is in the United States. Currently it seems wisest to bet the nickel on Hillary, and a dime or even a quarter that the stay-at-homes will have more votes than any candidate. If the bet on Hillary wins, we can assume more of the same from the government she will be leading. If Donald wins, all bets are off. Picking his direction defies the odds-makers. There is a lot going on elsewhere. The Israeli government and its security services should continue investing...
Politics isn’t everything. There’s also sport. Anyone who’s visited Rome’s Coliseum, or the remains of Greek amphitheaters around the Mediterranean, knows that its capacity to divert has been with us for a long time. We’ve moved beyond the blood sport of the gladiators. Boxing is losing its popularity. Dog fighting and cock fighting are underground. Wrestling is more theater than sport. American football and North American hockey are about as bloody as they get, with football on the agenda of those who worry about the damage to knees and brain...
The pictures are fuzzy. Overt, explicit, and legally enforced racism is no more in the United States. Individual blacks, Asians, Jews, and other minorities, and women, can reach as high as the White House, senior governmental and corporate positions, and marry who they choose. Integration, human relations, political correctness, busing, and affirmative action accomplished a great deal. But not everything. A significant incidence of white-black violence associated with police, black activism said to paint an extremist picture, and the killing of...
A single page in the weekend edition of Yedioth Aharonoth captures the essence of where we are. One article on the page is a rational assessment of recent violence, its decline, and concludes with the point that there is no solution, other than the ceasing of incitement among the Palestinians, which no Israeli should expect. It was drafted before the weekend’s uptick in attacks, with two Israeli deaths in separate incidents in Judea and Samaria, three Palestinian attackers dead, and several Israelis injured. Without being sure, we can guess tha...
Our flight returning from Europe occurred with the news of a multiple terror attack on the Istanbul airport, which has so far produced more than 40 deaths and 260 injuries. No organization has claimed credit, but the betting is on the Islamic State, or maybe Assad. Turkey has acquired numerous enemies domestic and foreign, including its Kurds and those living elsewhere. Experts on the subject are saying that this was not the style of the Kurds. Turkish Airlines has come into its own with lots of connections, good service, and pursuing a larger...
The headline of this note, letting aspirations for an organized work rest in peace, may reflect more cynicism than reality. Colonialism began its demise with World War I, when the European powers that could carve up the world and color the maps as they thought best, endured economic and demographic catastrophes until then unequaled in world history. The European-centered world took a while to die. The U.S. opted out by putting domestic politics ahead of Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a League of Nation. Britain and France led the way to changing G...
We’ve known for some time that American society looks as much like a Third World country as a First. Sure, it has a GDP that is still larger than China’s, and it is viewed, especially by Americans, as a world leader in just about everything good. However, its social gap is the largest among western democracies. The U.S. has what sociologists call the “underclass,” with gangs, drugs, 14-year-old mothers and 30-year-old grandmothers, not too far from nice bubbles of the well-to -do. The country is either enviable or deeply troubled, dependi...
There’s been another resignation associated with the appointment of Avigdor Liberman as Minister of Defense. This one comes from the Minister of Environment, who associated his resignation not only with the appointment of Liberman, but with the government’s loss of Moshe Ayalon, and with the approval of the gas deal. The Environment Minister had opposed the deal, lost in several governmental votes, and made it one of the reasons for his resignation. He added an emotional, quasi-religious element to his resignation, saying that he saw the est...
Bibi (Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu) is a caricature of Israel, both as viewed from within and without. He is loved and hated, admired and loathed, perhaps in about the same proportions among Israelis and those who watch Israel. Being the archetype of Israel helps to explain his longevity at the top, currently without an obvious candidate likely to replace him in the near future. He is a walking and talking manifestation of what makes people admire Jews or become anti-Semites. His power of articulation, in both Hebrew and English, is part...
‘Sometimes there’s a stink you just can’t wash off, kinda like a venereal disease... That’s the problem Trump’s got.” It can’t get much worse than that, a quotation in The Economist attributed to a Republican Congressman. Polls are showing that stinking mess tied with Hillary. If there is such a thing as “momentum” in politics, it doesn’t look good for the lady who will be the Democrats’ nominee. A month ago, she was a clear leader in Clinton vs. Trump surveys. In the bluster that marks a political campaign, and perhaps this one more than mo...
It seems appropriate to call these two contenders for the world’s most powerful office by their first names. Even this far away from their campaigns, where the news is usually about something else, we’ve been listening for more than a year to a great deal of commentary, along with video clips of them speaking in numerous settings. Neither seem up to the best who have reached the office they seek. Indeed, there is enough in both of their records to suggest that they may compete for the lowest ranks of presidential esteem. So first names app...
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin are at opposite poles. One comes from a long tradition of idealism, speaking about great values, and usually ending up a long way from what was promised. The other represents the essence of realpolitik, or “if I can take it, it’s mine.” Woodrow Wilson was an extremist of the American type, fighting a war to end all wars, demanding open diplomacy, and working to create a world parliament and free nations from their colonial masters. Wilson couldn’t convince his own Congress to join the League of Nations. He coll...
It is difficult to determine what is most offensive: the Jewish candidate for president condemning Israel’s actions, exaggerating by five times the deaths in Gaza during the military operation in 2014 without anything like an appropriate weighing of chronic attacks on Israel from Gaza; his emissary to Jews describing Gazans’ deaths as “murder”; or UNESCO’s resolution condemning Israel’s violation of Muslim holy places, without any consideration of their central place in Jewish history. We shouldn’t forget the even greater offense to good sense...
Four issues in current headlines may be causing some Israelis to avoid the news, and embarrassment for our overseas friends, while they are sending other Israelis to various sides of virtual barricades. One is that young soldier who killed a Palestinian in Hebron. Another is the faltering deal to expand the plaza alongside the Western Wall so that non-Orthodox Jews can pray as they wish at Judaism’s iconic site. The third is the arousal of an issue associated with the newborn wards of Israeli hospitals, i.e., should Jewish and Arab women be p...
A recent visit with a young Japanese friend, a paratrooper in the IDF, provided an insight into the nature of Israel and other places. He said that fellow soldiers take him for Chinese or Korean, even though he explains that he comes from Japan. Israelis do a lot of traveling. It’s tough being cooped up in a small country with hostiles all around. We can reach Europe, depending on destination, with 30 minutes of flying (Cyprus), four hours (Italy or France), or five hours (Britain). There are more than four million departures annually by I...
An American friend, who is almost as old as I am, can’t remember a presidential election with worse choices. An internet friend wrote about a bumper sticker, “I hate them both.” Another likes ABC, Anybody but Clinton. The latter recalls a movement in the Knesset when the Members had to select a President in 2000: Anybody but Peres led to Moshe Katsav, currently seeking a parole. Activists are arguing if it should be granted to a man convicted of rape and other crimes, who has yet to admit his guilt and promise reform. Ms Clinton’s long record...
By Ira Sharkansky One of the more problematic stories associated with the present wave of Palestinian violence is that of an attack on a security guard at a shopping mall in Maale Adumim. A video shows repeated blows with an ax, directed at the head of the security guard, which continue despite the guard already down and defenseless. You can see it here. What’s especially troubling about this episode is that the attacker is someone who worked at the shopping mall, and was known to his victim. They had coffee together at the canteen, and the v...
Brit Shalom (Peace Treaty, 1925) is a landmark in the continuing activity of Jews talking among themselves about what kind of accommodation they should, and can reach then with Arab now with Palestinian neighbors. What has become characteristic is the prominence in Brit Shalom of Jews from Europe and America, non-Orthodox or not firmly identified as religious. Since Brit Shalom there have been countless individuals, groups, political movements, and parties seeking to find or claiming to know what it would take to reach an agreement with...
We’ve had another round of clamoring about who is responsible for the failure of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement ending their disputes. There are two fronts in the recent verbiage. One consists of accusations by Mahmoud Abbas and Benyamin Netanyahu about one another’s willingness to meet. Another concerns the prospect that a former commander of the IDF, Gabi Ashkenazi, will enter politics as a moderate, and lead one or another party to make peace with the Palestinians. Both fronts are convoluted by other considerations, and we...
