Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 140
(JNS) — The “West Bank” is “occupied” by Israel. Wait, no, only part of it is. The Palestinian Arabs are “stateless.” Wait, no, a large segment of the region actually is “governed by the Palestinian Authority.” These and other contradictory statements all appeared in a single article in The New York Times on April 17 by news correspondent Raja Abdulrahim. I almost feel sorry for her; she seems so confused. It’s not, however, a confusion based on facts that are perplexing or unclear. It’s based on the blatant contradictions betwee...
(JNS) — I understand that Hillary Clinton is mourning the passing of her friend and predecessor, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. But that doesn’t give her the right to revise the historical record concerning Albright and Israel. Writing in The New York Times on March 27, Clinton described Albright as “a woman of action, especially when facing injustice.” According to Clinton, Albright “understood that American power is the only thing standing between the rules-based global order and the rule of the sword.” And she “never stop...
(JNS) — A New York congressman has withdrawn his support for a pro-Israel bill, saying that J Street, which labels itself as the “home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” convinced him to change his position. This development reveals a great deal about the reasons for the ongoing tension between American Jewish critics of Israel and the rest of the Jewish community. The congressman in question is Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a first-term Democrat who represents a district that covers part of New York City (the north Bronx) and much of Westchester Count...
(JNS) — When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he’s a Palestinian Arab, of course. In any other part of the world, under any other circumstances, somebody who, for nationalistic reasons, fires a submachine gun into a crowd of civilians is recognized as a terrorist. But when Fadi Abu Shkhaydam opened fire with a submachine gun into a group of Jewish civilians in Jerusalem earlier last month, murdering tour guide Eliyahu (“Eli”) Kay and wounding four others, the word “terrorist” was nowhere to be found. The opening sentence of The New York Ti...
(JNS) — It’s the ultimate case of biting the hand that feeds you. Americans for Peace Now has launched a public assault on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations — the very organization that risked its good name and credibility by welcoming Peace Now into its ranks, despite plenty of reason to turn them away. And just to make this whole episode even uglier and more ironic, the attack by APN on the Presidents Conference is over the issue of Jerusalem — the very issue that nearly torpedoed APN’s admission to the co...
(JNS) The obvious lesson for Israel from America’s abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban is that it can’t count on the U.S. to protect it from the consequences of ceding more territory. This reality, however, is a disaster for those who have been banking on the idea of offering “American security guarantees” to facilitate additional Israeli withdrawals. It explains the recent flurry of statements from the think-tank crowd and Jewish former officials of the State Department trying to undercut the notion that the Afghanistan mess demonst...
(JNS) — While the Jewish left keeps trying to convince us that most anti-Israel hatred is not antisemitism, a new poll has found that a large majority of American Jews see things such more clearly. The poll, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, asked Jews whether certain types of anti-Israel statements or actions are antisemitic: “Saying Israel should not exist as a Jewish state” — 75 percent say it’s antisemitic “Comparing Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis” — 70 percent “Protesting Israeli actions outside an American synagogue” — 67 p...
(JNS) — Everything about the murder of Israeli teenager Yehuda Guetta shatters the myths and lies that are used by groups like J Street to promote the Palestinian cause. In a fair world, the killing and its aftermath would be an utter public-relations disaster for the Jewish left. But in the real world, things likely will turn out rather differently. Let’s start with the ironic timing. Last week, J Street announced its support for legislation by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) to penalize Israel for arresting teenage Palestinian terrorists. But...
(JNS) — Left-wing American Jewish groups are crowing about their success in postponing a vote on whether the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund can purchase private land from Arabs in Judea and Samaria. What they are celebrating is the striking of a blow at the heart of Zionism. “We’re happy to share some good news today!” began the email from Partners for Progressive Israel, the U.S. arm of Israel’s far-left Meretz Party. “Thanks to the tireless resistance work being done” by various left-wing activists, “a small victory” has be...
(JNS) — The Biden administration reportedly intends to demand that Israel return to the nine-miles-wide pre-1967 armistice lines. Should we be surprised? How dangerous would that be? And what should American Jews do about it? According to numerous media reports, an outline of the Biden plan has been prepared by Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs. Amr worked on the same issues during the Obama administration. So, it’s hardly surprising that the plan he has drafted reflects the same positions that wer...
(JNS) — When is a Palestinian terrorist not a Palestinian terrorist? When The New York Times covers up her past and hopes nobody will notice. I’m referring to a deeply troubling allegation contained in a major article in the Times on March 6, authored by its new Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley. The article focused on a Palestinian disc jockey, Sama Abdulhadi, who was recently arrested by the Palestinian Authority for performing a concert near a mosque. Incredibly, Kingsley quoted Abdulhadi and others blaming “the Israeli occup...
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Dozens of terrorists who murdered American citizens are walking free in Palestinian Authority-controlled territories. The Biden administration is preparing to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the unreformed, terror-sponsoring PA regime. PA bulldozers are damaging Jewish historical and religious sites in Judea-Samaria and building homes in areas under Israeli control. And the number one issue on the agenda of prominent American Jewish and Zionist organizations is an unkind joke about Israel on ...
(JNS) — The critics of Israel are so predictable, it’s almost funny. Over the past two weeks, as if on cue, The New York Times published an op-ed urging steps to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state; the RAND Corporation released a new study pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state; and the news media manufactured a mini-crisis between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to put more pressure on Israel to—you guessed it—agree to the creation of a Palestinian state I say “as if on cue” and...
(JNS) — It took less than a week for the Biden administration to return to the Obama-Biden policy of moral equivalency, or what I prefer to call immoral equivalency — the policy of viewing Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and their respective actions, as being on the same moral plane. On Jan. 26, just six days after the inauguration, President Joe Biden’s acting representative at the United Nations, Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills, announced that the administration supports creating a Palestinian state. In practical terms, that means...
(JNS) — Ahlam Tamimi’s name will not appear among the list of those whom President Donald Trump pardons during his final hours in office. But the Palestinian arch-terrorist might as well be—because successive U.S. administrations have treated her as if she is immune from prosecution. Tamimi played a major role in the August 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed, including American citizens Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum, and four Americans were among the 122 people who were injured. Tamimi was captured by...
(JNS) — Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist who built his career on a lie about his pro-Palestinian past, has just authored a column bemoaning the legitimization of lying in American culture. Then, just a few hours later, he publicly urged Democrats around the country to temporarily relocate to Georgia and lie about their intentions in order to vote in the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff races there. In his Nov. 11 column in the Times, Friedman announced that “the worst legacy of the Trump presidency” is that “lying has been normali...
(JNS) — Pundits will tell you that the most dangerous enemies of the Palestinian Arab cause are the Gulf kingdoms that have decided to recognize Israel, or the European countries that are moving their embassies to Jerusalem, or the American politicians who refuse to keep underwriting the Palestinian Authority’s debts. I disagree. I say that the Palestinians’ most formidable foe is archaeology. A 2,000-years-old mikvah (ritual bath) was recently uncovered in the Lower Galilee. Most people probably would never have heard about the disco...
(JNS) — Partners for Progressive Israel, a left-of-center group that is part of the American Zionist Movement, is in the midst of a 12-session “digital excursion to Israel and Palestine.” Session No. 3, which was held this past week, consisted of virtual meetings with officials of the Palestinian Authority. The Partners’ official program booklet, describing the contents of the sessions, includes a photo or illustration for each one. For the session with the P.A. meetings, the booklet reprinted the official logo of the Palestine Liberat...
(JNS) — I have a Jerry Seinfeld question. Why do Jewish celebrities keep whining about their parents? Popular actor-comedian-director Seth Rogen ignited an Internet firestorm with his recent complaint that his parents “fed [him] a huge amount of lies about Israel.” They “never told him” that “Oh, by the way, there were people [Arabs] there.” But Rogen says he now knows the truth and realizes that having a Jewish state “makes no sense.” What actually makes no sense is the notion that his parents said there were no Arabs in pre-Israel Palestine....
(JNS)—At a time when violence against Jews is on the rise around the world, should the United States provide advanced weapons to a government that actively promotes anti-Semitism? That’s the question we need to consider as the Senate debates Senate Joint Resolution 26, which would block the administration’s plan to provide Qatar with 24 attack helicopters, 2,500 Hellfire missiles and other sophisticated military hardware. Qatar is the world’s leading financer of the Hamas terrorists. Qatari money pays for the missiles that Hamas fires at kind...
(JNS)—In what crazy, upside-down world does a Palestinian Arab randomly stab Jews in Jerusalem, get shot dead by Israeli policeman and then become the focus of an Associated Press article with a headline about Israelis killing Palestinians? In our crazy, upside-down world, that’s where. The latest craziness began when the terrorist was strolling through the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday morning when he happened to see a Jewish man. So, the Arab stabbed the Jew. The stabber then went a little further along, until he spotted a Jewish child wal...
(JNS)—A Pennsylvania high school teacher, who says he was deprived as a teenager, is now taking it out on his students—by lying to them about Israel. Sam Schindler, co-founder and history teacher at the Stone Independent School, a private school in Lancaster, Pa., explains in The Forward this week how the “truth” about Israel was hidden from him. His teachers only taught him about the positive side of Israel, he complains. “What was kept from me then were images of the occupation, of pulverized houses, of bloody civilians and of terrified...
(JNS)—There was a time when a proposed U.S. sale of sophisticated rocket systems to an Arab regime that finances terrorism against Israel would arouse fierce opposition from American Jewish leaders. So why are Jewish leaders silent in the face of the Trump administration’s announced plan to sell $300 million in advanced rocket technology to the government of Qatar? The Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, claimed at his White House meeting on April 10 that he doesn’t help terrorists. (I guess his well-paid American PR advisers told him w...
(JNS)—Radical Jewish students at Harvard University are planning to hold a late “Liberation Seder” to “protest the continuing occupation by Israel.” On Thursday, April 5, six days after all other Jews around the world held their Passover seders, the Progressive Jewish Alliance held its event to protest “our community’s support for the occupation” and to ask “Are you for endless occupation, or for freedom and dignity for all?” I have a question for these students: Have you ever taken a course in the history of modern Israel? Either the answer is...
(JNS)—Have you ever read a news report about a Palestinian Arab who starved to death? Even one? Of course not, because it never happens. Yet the foreign minister of Sweden is now claiming that the Palestinian Authority must provide salaries to terrorists and their families because otherwise, they will “starve.” Sweden, which was the first country in the European Union to recognize the P.A.-occupied territories as the “State of Palestine,” has given the Palestinians more than $700 million in aid since 1993. The Swedes are now in the middle of...
