Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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While walking through my Jerusalem hotel dining room thinking about the news from the states that a U.S. court has tossed out a $655 million terrorism judgment, a young woman came up and gave me a big “Hi!” Seeing that I was not connecting her face and name, she spared me that now all too frequent embarrassment and quickly said, “Sarah.” She was one of the first girls that my late daughter Alisa met when we moved to West Orange, New Jersey in 1978. She and Alisa attended nursery school and then started yeshiva together, and it was this now 41-y...
It’s one of the most disturbing photos from Israel that I’ve seen in years. I’m referring to last week’s image of the hundreds of Palestinian terrorist weapons captured in Israeli raids. It was enough to send shivers down one’s spine. And it revealed more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than all the panel discussions, research papers, and expert analyses with which we are always being bombarded. Friends of Israel often complain about what they say is the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s inadequate effort to make Israel’s case to the internati...
It’s not the end of the world just because an Egyptian athlete refused to shake hands with his Israeli counterpart at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro last week. After all, the Egyptian is the one who violated judo etiquette. He’s the one whom the fans booed. I won’t lose any sleep over his petty insult, and I doubt many Israelis will either. But the incident, as small as it was, does offer some food for thought about much bigger issues, such as the prospects for peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. The Judo Snubber, Mr. Islam El Sheha...
If a bomb was thrown at a prominent synagogue in Brooklyn, the media would treat it as front-page news and politicians would rush to condemn the assault. But watch what happens when Palestinians throw a bomb at a prominent Jewish holy site and synagogue in Israel: editors bury the story, and politicians are focusing their attention elsewhere. On Aug. 7, a Palestinian terrorist hurled a bomb at the Tomb of Rachel, near Bethlehem. The building contains a synagogue, a study area and, of course, the burial site of one of the Jewish biblical matriar...
Israel’s parliament this week took action in response to an Arab Knesset member’s public support of a terrorist who murdered an American-Jewish peace activist. But if you read the account by New York Times correspondent Isabel Kershner, you wouldn’t know anything about the terrorist or his victim—all you would learn is that Israel’s rulers are suppressing dissent and might be infected by “budding fascism.” It’s as if Kershner and her editors are living in some kind of alternative universe, in which Israel is always guilty, Arab extremists are...
In a remarkable turnaround, Democratic Party activists who are known to be pro-Palestinian are calling on their party’s platform committee to condemn the Palestinian Authority (PA). Or am I misreading something? Two pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, issued their call last week on the blog of J Street. It happens that Ellison and Gutierrez are members of that same platform committee, so it may seem strange that they are taking a public position before the committee has finished...
Suhair Halabi is very proud of her son, Muhannad. Mrs. Halabi is so proud, in fact, that she recently displayed her pride by visiting the site where Muhannad became famous. We know about her visit because she posted, on Facebook, a photo of herself at the site, flashing “V” for “Victory” signs with both hands. But Muhannad’s “accomplishment” was not a 4.0 grade point average in school or a game-winning goal in a soccer field. It was the cold-blooded murder of an Israeli rabbi on the streets of Jerusalem, the slashing of the rabbi’s wife...
The June 8 terrorist massacre in Tel Aviv exposed all five of the major myths that cloud discussions of Israel and the Palestinians. Myth #1: “The problem is the settlements” This was not a massacre of “settlers.” The attack did not take place in some disputed territory. Nobody can claim that the victims “provoked” the violence by living in some predominantly Arab area. These were people drinking coffee in the heart of Tel Aviv. Myth #2: “It was a reaction to the occupation” The attackers are residents of the village of Yatta. The Israeli occ...
Palestinian terrorist attacks that result in only a few casualties vanish quickly from the headlines. The victims are hospitalized, the politicians issue condemnations, the Palestinian Authority praises the attacker, and then the episode is quickly forgotten. It’s rare that anybody is still paying attention weeks later, when the attacker appears in court. That’s a shame, because sometimes what comes out during the legal process can be very revealing. Consider the attack on May 2, when a Palestinian terrorist named Muhannad Muhtaseb stabbed an...
Have you ever bought a slice of pizza in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem? Have you visited friends at the Hebrew University dormitories in the city’s French Hill section? Or taken the Jerusalem light rail train to the Neve Yaakov stop? Guess what—you just might be a Zionist war criminal! Ramot, French Hill, and Neve Yaakov are decades-old Jewish neighborhoods that are physically indistinguishable from other sections of Israel’s capital city. Ramot (population: 70,000), French Hill (23,000), and Neve Yaakov (40,000) technically are situa...
Israelis of a certain age have a saying that translates from Hebrew as, “We’ve already seen that movie.” It’s the approximate equivalent of, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” It came to mind after seeing the most recent full-page ad in the New York Times that was sponsored by advocates of a Palestinian state. At the top was photo of Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat, next to the headline, “Israel Made Peace With Egypt—and Got Peace.” That was followed by a photo of Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin, and King H...
No, the headline doesn’t refer to America’s president. I’m referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas. But let’s keep President Barack Obama’s party, the Democrats, in mind as we examine the latest developments involving Abbas and his Fatah party. Established in 1964—long before there were any settlements or “occupied territories”—Fatah has long been the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and it carried out many of the PLO’s most notorious terrorist massacres. The 1972 Munich Oly...
John Kerry has a new strategy for achieving Mideast peace: mobilize the international community to gang up on Israel. That was the essence of the secretary of state’s disturbing remarks in Paris on March 13. Kerry declared that the Obama administration is “looking for a way forward” to bring about creation of a Palestinian state. He said that Palestinian statehood is “absolutely essential.” Not just “an idea worth exploring”; not just “something to be considered.” Rather, “absolutely essential.” Kerry and President Obama have made up their mi...
Just when you thought Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t get any weaker on the problem of Palestinian incitement and violence, he did. Kerry met with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan, on Feb. 21, against a backdrop of daily Palestinian stabbings of Israeli women and children, and non-stop anti-Jewish incitement in the official PA press, radio, and television. Yet the secretary of state did not threaten to withhold the Obama administration’s annual $500 million aid package to the PA over the inc...
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is backtracking, a little, on her remark last week that “there is a special place in hell” for women who failed to endorse Hillary Clinton. Writing on the op-ed page of the New York Times, Albright did not apologize or withdraw the comment, but she did concede that it was “undiplomatic” of her to say what she said. Indeed, friends of Israel have had bitter experiences with Albright’s “undiplomatic moments.” During the 2014 Gaza War, Albright told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Israel’s anti-terrorism a...
France’s announcement that it will try to convene an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been strongly criticized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But before anyone concludes that only “right-wingers” oppose such a conference, it’s worth recalling that one of the most outspoken critics of the conference idea was prominent peace process player Yitzhak Rabin. The year was 1985, and Rabin—later the co-signer of the Oslo Accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat—was Israel’s defense minis...
The U.S. State Department has been so pro-Palestinian for so long that it might seem startling to suggest that there is a current of anti-Palestinian racism at Foggy Bottom. But just consider: The official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, published an article on Jan. 21 suggesting that the U.S. carried out the 9/11 attacks in order to have a pretext for causing “creative anarchy” in the Arab world. The article, by regular columnist Dr. Osama Al-Fara, claimed that there are “many questions” about 9/11 “that p...
“I am proud of my son,” the father of 16-year-old Morad Adais, of the Palestinian village of Dura, declared this week. What do you suppose was the occasion for this burst of parental pride? What was it that young Morad did which so pleased his father? An impressive report card? Helping with home repairs? Taking care of younger siblings? No, what Morad did to bring honor to the Adais family was that he broke into the home of a young Israeli Jewish mother of six and brutally stabbed her to death. Not that the elder Adais is the exception. On the...
It’s that dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about, because it makes everybody uncomfortable. It hovers in the background, it’s hidden in the closet, and it lingers in the recesses of our minds. But it’s there, written in black and white in the Oslo Accords, and it can’t be erased: the Palestinian Authority (PA) is obligated to surrender to Israel any terrorist whose extradition the Israelis request. Which is what makes the ongoing standoff in Bulgaria such an inconvenience! A Palestinian terrorist who escaped from an Israeli prison...
State Department officials and Middle East “experts” are always warning us that if the Palestinian Authority collapses, Israel will be harmed because Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation will come to an end. But an incident in Ramallah this week makes one wonder if that “security cooperation” really exists at all. The Palestinian news agency “Ma’an” boasted on Dec. 22 that “Palestinian police ordered Israeli Border Police forces out of the Beituniya area of western Ramallah and threatened to use their weapons if they refused, local...
The Arab journalist whom the New York Times has hired to report on Israel has come up with the most “terrifying” example yet of Israeli oppression: the issuing of parking tickets to Palestinians. The reporter, Diaa Hadid, who describes herself as “an Australian of Lebanese & Egyptian descent,” previously served as public relations officer for the pro-Palestinian group “Ittijah.” Its director, Amir Makhloul, is in an Israeli prison for espionage on behalf of Hezbollah terrorists. Hadid’s resume also includes a stint as a columnist for the anti-...
Dear Imam Abdul Rahmam Ahmad: I read the text of the condolence letter that you wrote the Jewish community of Boston following the recent murder of 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz by Palestinian terrorists. As the father of a young woman who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Israel in 1995, I appreciated the fact that you, as the imam of the Islamic Center of New England, spoke out. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of your expression of “great sadness” that Ezra “had his life brutally cut short in Israel...” I am glad to know that, a...
A memorial ceremony was held at Ben Gurion Airport just before the body of 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz was flown to the United States for burial last Saturday night. William Grant, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, was in attendance. Yet if the ceremony had taken place at the site of the attack in which Ezra was murdered, U.S. diplomats would have boycotted the event. That’s because the attack took place in Gush Etzion, and believe it or not, the policy of the U.S. government is to boycott the funerals of American victims o...
Terrorists who get caught before they strike don’t usually attract much attention. But the arrest of Mrs. Ayman Kanjou deserves extra attention, because she defies every stereotype we have ever been taught about Palestinian terrorists. Men are presumed the most likely to become terrorists, since in Muslim society they are the ones who enjoy various freedoms, while women are sheltered and carefully watched by their husbands or fathers. They didn’t stop Mrs. Kanjou. Young unmarried men are the ones whom we expect to get caught up in rad...
The heartbreaking murder of Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama, gunned down by Palestinian terrorists in front of their children, will generate tear-filled eulogies and anguished recitations of tehillim (Psalms) throughout the Jewish world. As they should. But then what? The depressingly familiar post-terrorist attack ritual is already unfolding before our eyes. The Obama administration has issued a formalistic condemnation, adding its standard, amoral appeal: "We urge all sides to maintain...
