Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Sunday, July 7, is not just another day. It is 275 days since the inhuman Hamas invasion and massacre in Israel, slaughtering 1200 and taking more than 250 hostages to Gaza. 120 are still in captivity in Gaza’s network of terror tunnels. Some may still be being held captive in the private homes of Hamas terrorist operatives, as were the four rescued in a bold IDF operation on June 8. Through forensic and other evidence, Israel has declared that a few dozen of the 120 hostages are already dead. But the actual number of hostages still alive is u...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — The reaction of many Jews to the horrific times in which we find ourselves calls to mind the “Christopher Columbus problem”—conflating what’s new to us with what’s actually new. Has the world really changed since Oct. 7, or have a number of enduring truths suddenly become all too evident? I propose that it is the latter. Here are a dozen examples: 1. Many hold Israel to a very different standard than any other nation. Countries that kill gays, subjugate women, slaughter minority populations and murder dissidents...
(Gatestone Institute via JNS) — “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!” — “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens Every leftist cause is founded on empathy. The quintessential leftist, no matter how much blood eventually spatters his hands, starts off by caring a great deal about other people. His heart bleeds for the oppressed, the workers and the peasants, for racial and sexual minorities and for all the oppressed peoples of the world. The ideological fashion may change, but the story...
(JNS) — The revelation of President Joe Biden’s precipitous cognitive decline at last week’s debate has come has a shock to many, including myself. In retrospect, of course, we were all foolish to dismiss the plethora of evidence that the decline was underway. But beset by the machinations of a collaborationist news media and what was clearly a carefully managed cover-up by the White House, we can’t be entirely blamed for holding on to our illusions. There was, moreover, a great deal of wishful thinking involved. Many of us were dissati...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — There is a certain kind of person for whom “The West Wing” was dramatic television at its finest. It featured sharp, brainy, political dialogue with a cast walking around the White House outwitting one another—not outdoing the other’s wits, but simply being wittier. The president was a former professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist. Naturally, he was a Democrat. “The West Wing” catered to coastal elites in the same way that “Roseanne” and “My Name Is Earl” were beloved by the working class in red states—or, at...
(JNS) — The debate on Thursday evening between U.S. President Joe Biden and predecessor Donald Trump is a gift that keeps on giving. Every syllable spoken by the two presumptive nominees continues to be the focus of both serious and comedic discourse. Only a handful of desperate straw-graspers are rejecting the consensus opinion that the incumbent’s performance revealed an unacceptable level of age-related brain fog. Even those of his ardent supporters in the media who’ve been telling us not to believe our lying eyes realized that the jig w...
(JNS) — Apart from its own 780,000-strong armed forces, Iran has assembled a score of armed groups in countries neighboring Israel; all of which, like Iran, are committed to the eradication of the Jewish state. The United States, the European Union and others in the West who are fixated on a two-state solution continually exhort Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a peace agreement. This exhortation confuses a sideshow with the main act, because Iran and its proxies, not Israel and the Palestinians, call the shots. Iran, which directs m...
(JNS) — Most of the organized Jewish world is as outraged as the Anti-Defamation League. The decision of Wikipedia to label the ADL as an “unreliable source” on its site with respect to anything related to Israel generated a letter of protest from 43 of the largest and most influential American Jewish organizations, including a sampling of groups on the center, left and right. The notion that the ADL, still considered the authoritative source on the subject of antisemitism by the liberal media, being shut down by the ubiquitous online encyc...
(JNS) — An EMP is essentially a large nuclear bomb that explodes in the outer atmosphere. In a cone-shaped area below, all electricity infrastructures and electronic devices fail. The area can be predetermined by arranging the size of the cone beforehand. So, for example, an attack could be focused on greater Chicago or the entire Midwest. The explosion causes no immediate deaths. But after roughly 10 days, many people will die due to lack of food (because refrigeration is impossible), water (most water is delivered by electric pumps), w...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — On the surface, it makes little sense. How can the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust lead to the biggest rise in antisemitism in modern times? Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? The more Jews die, the more they like us? Like that famous book said, “People Love Dead Jews.” How does one explain that on Oct. 8, right after 1,200 Jews were massacred, mutilated, butchered and raped by Hamas terrorists, 33 Harvard student organizations co-signed a statement holding Israel “entirely responsib...
(JNS) — A malodorous wind has been blowing through our institutions of international jurisdiction. Take, for example, the United Nations. Although erected after World War II upon the loftiest of foundations, an unscrupulous crew of autocracies, tyrannies and unaligned third-world nations—who have long resented the leading role that the United States has taken on the world’s stage—united into a force to be reckoned with, eroding that institution’s eminence. Among these nations is the 56-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the largest w...
(JNS) — As the war in Gaza appears to be winding down and another appears to be winding up on Israel’s northern border, Israeli politics is returning to something like its usual state: angry contention. For many months, the political divisions that threatened to rip the country to pieces in the year before the Oct. 7 massacre were buried by war. The interregnum appears to be over. The street protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have heated up again, with the issue of a hostage deal added to the usual griev...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Growing up in the home of a staunch Republican and an equally staunch Democrat, I became an Independent; it seemed like the sensible choice. The more I began to understand our political system—how partisan it can become, how parties change through the years—the more I remained steadfast in my choice. When I worked at The New Republic in the early ’90s, most of my friends were Democrats because the party still represented classical liberalism: Liberty, justice, equality, pluralism, civil society. With Republi...
(JNS) — The Biden-Harris administration released its “Fact Sheet” on the “Administration’s Actions to Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence” on June 17, 2024. It is available on the White House website. Curiously missing is any mention of the Oct. 7 massacre and the mass rapes committed by Hamas. Nor is there mention of the kidnappings, sadistic murders and other atrocities Hamas committed against women on that day and since. In her remarks later that day at a White House event intended to raise awareness about “Conflict-Related Sexual Viole...
(JNS) — The Biden administration is negotiating directly with Hamas for the release of the five American/Israeli citizens kidnapped and held hostage by the terror group since Oct. 7. The talks with Hamas, an American-designated international terrorist organization, are being brokered by Qatar. Qatar is an ally of both Hamas and Iran. Shockingly, those talks are happening with no input or involvement from Israel—America’s closest and most reliable ally in the world. This is like America negotiating with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after 9/11. I...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — I’ve only been in Israel for 48 hours but I can already feel the angst. I asked a prominent thinker what is different about the current crisis, and he immediately replied: “The enormous gap between the level of our problems and the quality of our leadership.” Among other concerns, there’s a genuine fear that a war in the north with Hezbollah– a terror army equipped with tens of thousands of guided missiles that can disable critical infrastructure– will make the Gaza war feel like kid’s play. Meanwhile, ther...
(JNS) — Were you aware that the Dreyfusards, those seeking to exonerate the Jewish captain of France’s army who was accused of spying for Germany, were not only working for France and for Jews, but that their campaign “was also a fight for Black people, for LGBT people, for indigenous people, for Palestinians”? That is the opinion of Noah Berlatsky. In a 2019 op-ed piece on JNS, I employed the term “Diasporic supremacy” to relate to the new form of anti-Zionism that has developed, as well as the smug “we-do-not-agree-with-Is...
(The Washington Times via JNS) — The Nova Music Festival was billed as a celebration of “Friends, Love, and Infinite Freedom.” On Oct. 6, 2023, attendees from more than two dozen countries gathered in Israel’s Negev Desert just three miles from Hamas-ruled Gaza to sing, dance and celebrate peace through the night. At dawn the next day, Hamas terrorists used bulldozers and bombs to break through Israel’s high-tech fence that was thought to secure the border. Arriving at the festival grounds, they began slaughtering, raping, mutilating and kidna...
(JNS) — Act 1. The stage is set. The key players are Barack Obama, who wants to manufacture a break with Israel; Benjamin Netanyahu, looking to navigate a hostile administration; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. During Biden’s visit to Israel, the Obama administration stages a scandal, claiming that it was deliberately insulted because the local Jerusalem municipality routed some housing that the administration belatedly opposed through an approvals process. Hillary Clinton spends an hour (and later brags abo...
(JNS) — The unbearable images of the war in Gaza have shaken the world, prompting urgent calls for an end to the suffering. However, neither calls for an immediate unilateral ceasefire, nor incantations, nor grand speeches, nor votes at the United Nations will be enough to bring about peace or stop the violence. Yet somehow, this approach seems to prevail in much of the international community. To think that a solution can magically emerge—where hostilities cease overnight without the release of hostages or a significant weakening of Hamas’s mi...
In a poll from last year, the Muslim occupiers in West Bank and Gaza gave Hamas a 76 percent rating. Islamic Jihad was at 84 percent. The UN was at only 9 percent. And America was at 0 percent. Maybe the latest $400 million check will turn things around. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced an additional $404 million in new aid to Palestinians, while attending the “Call for Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza” Conference in Jordan on Tuesday. This is in addition to “the more than $1.8 billion in development, econo...
Since when did terrorism enter the lexicon of valid political or diplomatic debate? Since when did intellectual up become intellectual down and the real targets of intended genocide, Israel and the Jewish people, become the accused perpetrators of genocide? In a recent interview with the foreign media, a Hamas terrorist was asked, “How is it that most of your missiles fall in open areas to such an extent that they are predominately inaccurate?” In response he allegedly replied simply that “our missiles are accurate, but the God of the Jews move...
(JNS) — The blatant antisemitic act regarding the 2024 edition of the East Brunswick High School yearbook recently made headlines. The action resulted in a picture of Muslim students replacing the original photograph of the Jewish students who are part of the Jewish Student Union club. In addition, there is a complete absence of the names of the Jewish students. JSU, a division of NCSY, stands in unwavering support of our students, advisers and parent community at East Brunswick High School in New Jersey. For more than a decade, our club at t...
(JNS) — There is much room to improve international law in order to deal with terrorism and the use of force by non-state actors. But that is not essential to fighting terrorism. The law matters but is not always either the problem or the solution. It was not the lack of applicable law that resulted in the Oct. 7 massacre and the international criticism of Israel’s response has nothing whatsoever to do with the law. International law already prohibits the terrorism and genocide being waged by the Palestinian Authority and Iran (directly and...
(JNS) — The creator of the universe has given humankind the ability to forget. This is both a gift and a curse. Without the ability to forget, how can we forgive? Our ability to forget gives us room to heal. But the necessity of remembering is also of great importance. By remembering, we can help ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. When we remember too long and too hard, we don’t allow room for forgiveness, rebirth and growth. When we forget, we allow others to fill the void with half-truths and outright lies. When we forge...
