Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — As chaos envelops Syria — with one gang of terrorists overthrowing the other gang of terrorists who ran the government — the question needs to be asked: Can you imagine the danger Israel would now be facing if it had surrendered to U.S. demands in the 1990s to give up the Golan Heights? This isn’t some theoretical what-if scenario. During the first Clinton administration, a team of State Department negotiators led by Dennis Ross spent several years trying to pressure Israel to give over the Golan to Syrian dictator Hafez Assad (father...
(JNS) — For a magazine that prides itself on journalistic standards, Editor & Publisher seems to throw those standards right out the window when Israel is the subject of their reporting. A feature story in the October issue of E&P, the leading trade magazine of the U.S. news media industry, described the difficulties faced by some reporters covering the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the biggest difficulty with the article was its parroting of blatant anti-Israel falsehoods. The author of the article, Gretchen A. Peck, w... Full story
(JNS) — Steven Erlanger has been writing about Israel for The New York Times for nearly 30 years. How can it be that he still doesn’t know what the Oslo Accords say? Even before he was hired by the Times, Erlanger was writing about the Middle East for The Boston Globe in the 1980s. In early 1996—a little more than two years after the signing of Oslo I on the White House lawn—he became the Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington and wrote plenty about America’s Middle East policy. He even served as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief...
(JNS) — Is it just me, or is the “new” antisemitism starting to sound a lot like the old kind? In recent weeks, The New York Times has twice published remarks that directly invoked classic antisemitic stereotypes. Many of us had thought that kind of crude bigotry had finally been eliminated from the mainstream media. Apparently not. Book reviewer Sam Kriss wrote in the Times on Aug. 20 that his Jewish identity is rooted in his affinity for books, matzah-ball soup and his “overbearing mother.” If a reporter would ask him about it—althou...
(JNS) — At almost the exact moment that Israeli forces were eliminating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon—one of the world’s most notorious mass murderers of Israelis and Americans—left-of-center American Jewish groups were delivering a letter to Israel’s ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel make more concessions to Hamas. The juxtaposition of the two developments shines a light on the extreme tone-deafness that has overtaken many on the U.S. Jewish left. The letter that the liberal groups delivered to the Israeli e...
(JNS) — An ex-U.S. State Department official believes that he has come up with a brand-new, innovative, never-before-tried way to reach peace in the Middle East: Give more territory to the Palestinian Authority. How many times will these guys try to sell us this bridge to nowhere? These same dangerous ideas? The “new” scheme is to give the Gaza Strip to the P.A. This proposal comes from David Makovsky, who used to be the right-hand man to Martin Indyk, the most pro-Palestinian U.S. ambassador to Israel in history. For more than 20 years, Makovs...
(JNS) — U.S. President Biden’s suspension of weapons deliveries to Israel places Deborah Lipstadt, the most prominent Jewish member of his administration, in quite a bind. How will she respond? Let us recall the example set by Mark Siegel in 1978. He was the Carter administration’s liaison to the Jewish community when President Jimmy Carter decided to provide deadly fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The president expected Siegel to convince American Jews to accept the weapons deal. In early March 1978, Siegel addressed 900 young leaders o...
(JNS) — The former Israel bureau chief of The New York Times has discovered who is really to blame for the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7: Israel. This vile bit of slander comes from the pen of Ethan Bronner, who spent 26 years at the Times posing as an objective journalist. That included the years 2008 to 2012, when he served as its Israel bureau chief. Bronner’s pro-Palestinian bias over the years has been well documented. (For dozens of examples, see camera.org). Unfortunately, that troubling record didn’t stop Bloomberg News from making him head...
The duality of Shavuot is undeniable: the yom tov exists, or rather coexists, with distinctly different facets. On the one hand is its status as an agricultural festival marking the wheat/barley harvest and the related celebration of the precociousness of the Land of Israel and another aspect is its historic commemoration of the most remarkable event in the origin story of the Jewish People - the Revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Passover and Shavuot are connected by family ties as much...
Dylan Williams of J Street, in a recent op-ed, called on the Biden administration to “rebuild the U.S. relationship with moderate Palestinian leaders.” Since presumably J Street would not claim that the leaders of the genocidal Hamas gang are “moderate,” then the “moderate Palestinian leaders” Williams and J Street have in mind must be Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and those around him. Less than three years ago, on April 30, 2018, Abbas stood before the opening session of the Palestine National Council and delivered a blatantly...
A Muslim-American extremist has been disinvited from a Jewish-organized civil rights panel, and Jewish liberals are denouncing his removal as a suppression of free speech. But the real outrage here is that he was invited in the first place. Salam Al-Marayati, longtime president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, was invited by a group called Jews United for Democracy to speak as part of its panel on “After Four Years of Division, Tension and Bigotry — Now What?” Yet Al-Marayati himself is a promoter of division, tension and bigotry. Bigot...
Rabbi Steinsaltz, who passed away Aug. 7 in Jerusalem at the age of 83, was a rabbi in the most authentic meaning of the word: He was an educator. And the world was Rabbi Steinsaltz’s student body. He spent decades teaching, writing, publishing, lecturing, mentoring, and organizing, and all of this work was focused on bringing Jews closer to Judaism and Jewish sources. But, I think what Rabbi Steinsaltz really was at his essence was a dreamer. Rabbi Steinsaltz dreamed of a world where Jews cared more about each other, where ancient Jewish w...
Israelis and Zionists around the world marked Yom HaZikaron this year starting on the evening of April 27. Yom HaZikaron LeHalalei Ma’arakhot Israel ul’Nifge’ei Pe’ulot HaEivah, literally: Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism is Israel’s Memorial Day, and it is not celebrated with barbecues, but with tears of ultimate grief. And as so many Israelis mourn for their precious fallen fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and friends and comrades, it is not the same for Jews outside o... Full story
Every spring, the Jewish community is treated to a colorful variety of new editions of the Passover Haggadah. There’s something for everybody—you can find haggadahs that focus on everything from the environment to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel TV show. And now, just in time for the 2020 holiday, brace yourself for the most disturbing version yet, courtesy of J Street: The Anti-Israel Haggadah. That’s not its official name, of course. And J Street will surely bristle at the notion that anything it does can be described as “anti-Israel.” But almos... Full story
More than 150 rockets were fired at Israeli civilian targets by the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists from Gaza within hours after the Nov. 12 targeted air strike assassination of Baha Abu al-Ata, a top commander of Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. Coming just over two weeks after the U.S. successfully targeted ISIS terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to be captured or killed there is a simple question to ask here: What would the U.S. do if after al-Baghdadi killed himself his terrorist soldiers fired 150 rockets as U.S.... Full story
An anti-Hamas bill has been severely watered down by Congressman Eliot Engel. It’s a turn of events that should trouble every supporter of Israel. The New York Post claimed this week that Engel (D-NY), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed to change the bill after heavy pressure from Qatar and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Post quoted “a personal acquaintance of Engel’s” as saying, “Eliot told me directly that he was getting a lot of pressure from the Qataris” about the bill At the same time, Engel or his represe... Full story
Netflix’s “The Spy” is a six-episode series about real-life Israeli Mossad hero Eli Cohen. “The Spy” stars Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for his 2006 adult-oriented comedy movie “Borat,” as the legendary Mossad agent. “The Spy” debuted on Sept. 6. When Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the government of Syria on May 18, 1965, it was clear to Israelis and Syrians that he had succeeded in becoming a friend of the president of Syria, and had penetrated the innermost Syrian government circles. What was not yet known, however, was that he had g... Full story
First, they praised the terrorist who murdered a U.S. senator’s niece. Then they were chosen by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to organize her now-canceled trip to Israel. Tlaib’s outrageous choice of the pro-terrorist group “Miftah” to run her trip is a slap in the face of the United States Congress and deserves to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee. The fact that Rep. Tlaib chose Miftah to organizer her trip is no secret; it was widely reported by major news media. The problem is that nobody is explaining what “Miftah” really is. The... Full story
Herman Wouk, the famed novelist who first became a household name for his 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning “The Caine Mutiny,” died last week nearly 70 years after achieving fame. Besides his long career as a writer he was also a lifelong Zionist. This fact of Wouk’s love affair with the State of Israel has been completely absent from the many articles celebrating his literary career and marking his passing, less than two weeks before what would have been his 104th birthday. In this small space we will attempt to rectify that. Again and again—from h... Full story
The horrific shooting attack on the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California has generated a variety of responses and recommendations, from tolerance education to firearms instruction to increasing synagogue attendance as a show of defiance. Remarkably, however, one of the most obvious possible responses to anti-Semitic violence has been almost completely absent from the post-shooting dialogue: Aliyah. Immigration by American Jews to Israel has never been more than a trickle—typically 2,000 to 3,000 annually, less than one-fourth of one percent o... Full story
It can be claimed that no single day in the Jewish liturgical calendar is clearly meant to showcase the unity of the Jewish People than Yom Kippur. And during Yom Kippur no single service symbolizes that unity more than the famous Kol Nidre. A short declaration made with a call that we all stand together is made near the start of the service: “By the authority of the Court on High and by authority of the court down here, by the permission of One Who Is Everywhere and by the permission of this congregation, we hold it lawful to pray with s... Full story
Hillary Clinton is hoping for a “new tone” in the U.S.-Israel relationship, one Jewish leader recently claimed. But in the meantime, Israel is stuck dealing with the deadly consequences of her policies as secretary of state. Russia this week announced its intention to provide Iran with the S-300 advanced missile system. Russian president Vladimir Putin reportedly justified his action on the grounds that the missile system is for defensive purposes. In this case, however, “defensive” means that it could be used to “defend” Iran’s nuclear weapo... Full story
(The authors are president and chairman, respectively, of the Religious Zionists of Philadelphia, and candidates on the Religious Zionist slate (www.VoteTorah.org) in the World Zionist Congress elections.) A sea change began within hours of the Israeli election returns. Thomas L. Friedman, who has devoted much of his life to promoting Palestinian statehood, declared in his New York Times column that the idea of a Palestinian state is “not possible anymore.” That was followed by his Times colleague David K. Shipler, another longtime adv... Full story
American Jewish leaders who supported the Oslo Accords or have criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are now strongly challenging the Obama administration’s policy toward Israel. It’s the latest sign of a growing consensus in the Jewish community that the president’s vindictive approach toward Israel is unfair and overreaching. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, head of the Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue and the Ramaz Day School in Manhattan, was an early supporter of the left-leaning Israeli party Meimad, and its American equivalent, Shvil Hazah... Full story
Who misled President Obama into his losing showdown over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s blockbuster speech to Congress? And how much of this week’s setback to the president should be blamed on the “progressive” Israel lobbying group J Street? When J Street was established, its leaders chose a football metaphor to describe their purpose: they said they would serve as “President Obama’s blocking back.” In other words, they would charge into the defensive line, pushing aside critics so that Obama would be able to dictate terms to Israel. But a... Full story
