Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Voters weigh their values and priorities before casting their ballot for president. For me, achieving and maintaining peace in the world is the single most important issue to consider when choosing the president of the United States. When we look at the last four years of the Harris-Biden administration versus the four years of President Trump’s administration, there is no comparison. For the four years of Trump’s presidency we had peace, but the world is very different today. President Trump eliminated the funding to Iran when he wi...
(JTA) — I was born and raised in Israel, the oldest of 10 siblings, in a liberal-minded Orthodox Jewish family. I love my family, a diverse gang of smart people who respect one another even when disagreeing. Politically we are a mixed group. Some of us are fiscally conservative or libertarian. Others are traditional liberals who believe in a social safety net. Although only three of us live in the United States, we are all American citizens and eligible voters in the November elections. We share a concern for the State of Israel and for the saf...
On Nov. 5, 2024, Americans will be voting in what many view as the most consequential elections in our history. As I make my selections, it will be imperative that my choices reflect the values that are important to me not only as a Jew but also as a human being, those concerning freedom, truth, justice, equality, intelligent leadership, and empathy. In a recent poll by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, 72 percent of Jewish voters backed Vice President Kamala Harris, and 25 percent supported former President Donald Trump. In 2021, the P...
For single-issue voters for whom Israel is the most paramount, the choice in November hinges on which candidate is truly best for the Jewish state. Voters leaning toward Donald Trump tout him as the most pro-Israel president in history. Without trying to compare his policies to, say, Harry Truman, who made the Partition Plan happen, or Lyndon Johnson, who established the U.S. as Israel’s principal arms supplier and guarantor of its qualitative edge, or Ronald Reagan, who institutionalized U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, let’s examine Tru...
(JNS) — Tuesday evening. The conductor of the train from Jerusalem to Herzliya apologizes to passengers ahead of the first stop in Tel Aviv after Ben-Gurion Airport. “Sorry, but we can’t go any farther,” he announces over the loudspeaker. “The security situation doesn’t allow for it.” Irritated sighs could be heard from rush-hour commuters, tired mothers with cranky children and travelers with suitcases in tow. Sketchy internet connections disrupted the updated emergency alert instructing the entire country to shelter until further notic...
“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, was published in 1837. It has been adapted in many forms. Today, “the emperor has no clothes,” is a metaphor for people living or perpetrating a lie or are too stupid to admit that. In the original story, an emperor with an obsession for fancy clothes hires conmen posing as weavers to make him magnificent clothes that are so unique, they are invisible to those who are incompetent or stupid. One day, the “weavers” report that the emperor’s new clothes are finished. They...
(JNS) — On Oct. 7, Hamas carried out the most heinous attacks on Jews since the Holocaust. While Diaspora Jews watched in horror and disbelief at events taking place in Israel, few could have imagined the impact on their own lives, especially the outburst of antisemitism to ensue in their communities. Nowhere has this been more acute than at America’s finest universities. Over the past year, Jewish organizations have fought tirelessly to counter this torrent of antisemitism, battling a brand of hatred we thought died generations ago. As the...
(JNS) — On his nightly program recently, long-running HBO news pundit Bill Maher, in reference to one of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s dire misassessments of Hamas’s nefarious intent, demanded that she just “shut up” already. Coming from a lifelong liberal, Maher’s acerbic reprimand should cause pondering Jews to sit up and take note. Maher’s negative assessment of Harris’s grasp on the true nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is further reinforced by the vice president’s completely out-of-touch cheerleading during the presid...
(Gatestone Institute via JNS) — The hatred of extreme left-wing agitators and parts of the left-liberal elite in politics and the media against our Jewish compatriots and the State of Israel since the barbaric massacre of innocent civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, has directly fueled antisemitism and hatred of Jews. It started immediately after Oct. 7 with inflammatory demonstrations of millions of people with false flags and slogans in many European capitals, including many non-Western immigrants, who thereby demonstrated that they do not share a...
Yeah, I’m celebrating. For the past two weeks, Israel (including the Mossad, IDF, and military intelligence) have shown unparalleled prowess and success in the global war on terror. First, thousands of Hezbollah beepers exploded on command. Then their walkie talkies. This is recognized as the most precise anti-terrorist operation ever. Before and after, Israel took credit for the targeted assassination of nearly all the top Hezbollah leaders. Israel targeted and destroyed countless Hezbollah missiles and launchers, along with other weapons a...
(JNS) — Hey, does anybody still make New Year’s resolutions? Maybe you do, and yours goes something like mine, “My New Year’s resolution this year is to keep the resolutions I made last year!” My friend said that his goes like this, “My New Year’s resolution is to have a fat bank account and a skinny body. Last year, I got mixed up.” Most people I know have long stopped making New Year’s resolutions because they know it doesn’t work. They just go “in one year and out the other!” In much of the world today, especially for us Jews in Israel a...
(JNS) — Starting with the explosion of thousands of beepers and pagers of Hezbollah members in Lebanon on Sept. 17 and with the elimination of Hezbollah senior leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27 along with practically all of the highest-ranking members of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, Israel is once again reclaiming its vaunted military might that seemed to have atrophied on Oct. 7. This might constitute a sea change in the Iranian grip on the Lebanese political landscape and could have ramifications for the Islamic Republic of Iran, thr...
(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...
By (JNS) — Despite all that’s happening in Israel, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, three U.S. senators—the chairs of important senate committees—are outraged over the behavior of some Jewish residents of the Shomron and Yehuda. The three—Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the committee; Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen expressing their growing...
(JNS) — Among many journalists who seem to know little about Jewish history or international law, New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley and unrelenting critic of Israel Thomas L. Friedman (among others) share a common misnomer. They repeatedly refer to Israel’s “occupied territory,” located in what became known as Jordan’s “West Bank” after Israel’s war of independence in 1948. Two decades later, following its stunning victory in the Six-Day War, Israel regained the biblical homeland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samar...
(JTA) — I’ve spent the last year traveling the world — two trips each to Israel and Ukraine, along with time in Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Georgia and beyond — and I have new eyes for the situation we Jews find ourselves in. We face skyrocketing antisemitism, an agonizing war with Hamas and its allies, and the grim Whac-A-Mole of so many other pressing concerns. And in early October, we’re somehow meant to endure a Jewish New Year that will force us to confront the chasm between our prayers and our reality. Attemptin...
(FLAME via JNS) — Jewish students from the City University of New York recently attending a Hillel welcome-back dinner were surrounded by masked, screaming protesters who banged on windows and chanted, “Terrorist! Terrorist! Terrorist! All Zionists are racist! Dogs off campus!” The protesters shoved pictures of murdered babies in students’ faces and assaulted a Hillel staffer. Campuses are already paying the price of last school year’s weak-kneed, appeasing administration responses, as violence and threats by radicals rachet up again. Th...
As the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York this week, all eyes will be on Lebanon, and all daggers will be drawn to blame Israel. But in looking to ascribe blame, paraphrasing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, they should look no further than their own backyard. To that end, I launched a plan to send mirrors to each of the UN member states (and observers) to mount behind the microphone and their country’s name, so when they sit in the General Assembly and blame Israel, they can see where the real blame lies. Let’s be clear, eve...
(JNS) — Jewish parents have always worried about their kids, but since Oct. 7, fears and concerns have been justified and amplified in an America where antisemitism is running rampant. When it comes to university choices in North America, any Jew who considers enrolling in Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, New York University, the University of California, Los Angeles, or some of the other schools that day after day sees horrific antisemitism really needs to rethink their priorities. You are sending your c...
(JNS) — It’s a busy time for the media. Not only is it election season, but in between campaigning for Kamala, the media also has to carry water for the multiple Islamic terrorist groups attacking Israel. After almost a year of turning Hamas press releases into headlines (“Gaza Ministry of Health claims 24 children killed in assault on rocket launcher school”), the media hurriedly began turning Hezbollah press releases into headlines (“Lebanese government caims Hezbollah leaders killed by pagers were really 12-year-olds”), and now with the ar...
(JNS) — For decades, Jewish Republicans have talked about a realignment whereby Jews will abandon their traditional, almost reflexive support for the Democratic Party and embrace the Republican Party. Historically, Jewish voters have leaned heavily Democratic due to the party’s association with liberal values, which resonate with most Jews who identify as liberal or progressive. Policy Jews say that Israel is not the most critical issue, but they are influenced if one candidate is perceived as hostile—as was the case, for example, with Jimmy...
By The strength and survivability of the Jewish people has always been their ability to simultaneously respect their rich history, to appreciate the gift of life, and to embrace optimism about the future. Coincidently, the Torah’s narrative also speaks to us in the past, the present and the future, bestowing a sense of eternity within our DNA. The Torah begins with a history of the evolutionary creation of the universe and our planet Earth (time frame of 6 biblical days); including the creation of humans. God “rested” but did not “stop” on the...
(JNS) — I was on site when a mob of Islamists and leftists attacked the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. The synagogue was besieged and Jews were prevented from entering. Multiple Jewish community members were assaulted while the police for the most part did nothing. No arrests were made of the attackers who came armed and masked. While the media tried to once again cover up or redirect blame for the violence, there was enough outrage that a few L.A. legislators actually attempted to introduce bills banning more of the same. Who would p...
(JNS) — The current negotiations between Hamas—an Iran-supported, internationally designated foreign terrorist organization—and Israel, a legitimate democratic nation-state, is a puzzlement. About 3,800 Hamas terrorists were among the 6,000 Gazans who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and committed barbaric, inhumane atrocities. Every inhumane act committed, including the taking of hostages and the firing of thousands of indiscriminate rockets into civilian Israeli towns and cities, is against every law of humanity, conduct under the laws of war and m...
(JNS) — Hezbollah began a massive attack against Israel on Aug. 25. They planned to launch more than 7,000 missiles and drones to overwhelm Israel’s defense systems. Satellite surveillance images of the movement and loading of ballistic missiles into launchers gave Israel about 15 minutes advanced notice of the attack. To prevent an attack that would probably have overwhelmed its aerial-defense systems, Israel sent 100-plus fighter jets to destroy as many of Hezbollah’s rocket-launcher barrels as possible. These barrels were aimed at north...
