Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The bodies of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas, her young sons Kfir and Ariel, and octogenarian Oded Lifshitz were displayed by Hamas terrorists on a newly erected “stage” in the Gaza Strip, paraded around like trophies before a crowd of Palestinian Arabs, and handed over to the International Red Cross while music blared from loudspeakers. We have come to expect awful scenes like these by Hamas. Jewish hostages (living or now dead) have been marched through the streets of Gaza and handed over to the Red Cross. Some hostages were force...
(JNS) — Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the last few weeks have been some of the most difficult since the trauma of the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. For a split second, it seemed like the anti-Israel news cycle might calm down — and it felt like we were finally going to get a bit of a breather. But then the hostage swaps began. These exchanges shifted in nature when the terrorists could no longer parade our kidnapped civilians around, draped in green fatigues, as if they were captured soldiers. Muc...
(JNS) — Did you know that moving a few miles to temporarily get out of the way of gunfire constitutes an “exodus”? I didn’t either until I read the appalling headline on the front page of The New York Times on Feb. 18: “In West Bank, Israel’s Tactics Cause Exodus.” This was a thinly disguised attempt to invert Jewish history by headline writers. Look, it says, the Jews are doing to Arabs what Pharaoh did to the Jews! But while the Jews experienced an actual exodus in ancient Egypt, the Palestinian Arabs of today are undergoing nothing of th...
(JNS) — “O God, do not be silent; hold not Thy peace, and be not still,” IDF Chief Rabbi Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim prayed the words of Psalm 83 over the bodies of two murdered children, their mother and an old man, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Hamas and PLO terrorists had mockingly paraded their coffins to the cheers and jeers of Muslim men, women and children occupying Gaza while upbeat music played, they had mixed up the bodies, locked the boxes and then attached keys that did not work. After inspecting the coffins for explosives, Israel had c...
(JNS) — As the State of Israel stands on the brink of a fateful decision with historic geopolitical implications, some might argue that it’s a decision as significant as the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan. For the first time since the Simchat Torah massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, a bold idea has been put forth that offers a real, feasible and long-term solution to the chronic problem known as Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump announced an emigration or “relocation” plan earlier this month for Palestinian residents in the Gaza Strip. He argued that war-tor...
President Trump’s recent statements about Gaza have raised many questions: What will be in Gaza? Who will be in control? Who will rebuild? Where will Gazans live? Who will be responsible for ensuring that neither the physical terrorist infrastructure that Hamas built, nor the genocidal Islamic ideology that it represents, will ever threaten Israel, or the well-being of Gaza’s Palestinian Arabs? Trump’s discussion of evacuating Gazans and U.S. controlling Gaza have received wide celebration and criticism. Whether these were meant as a negot...
(JNS) — What kind of a liberation movement purposely, with malice aforethought, murders a 9-month-old infant, a 4-year-old toddler and their terrorized mother? What kind of world praises Hamas’s atrocities? How “civilized” can people in the civilized West be if, in response to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, they continue to support the rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of civilians from southern Israel? Or, just hours after Hamas announced that it would be returning the corpses of the Bibas children and their mother,...
(JNS) — On Oct. 6, 1943, Heinrich Himmler delivered a chilling speech to Nazi leaders justifying the murder of Jewish children. Eighty years later, on Oct. 6, 2023, Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar reportedly issued a similarly horrific order to his followers — not only to kill Jewish children but to kidnap them. This stark parallel underscores the persistent and brutal nature of antisemitic violence, revealing its continued threat in the modern era. In his speech, Himmler rationalized the mass murder of Jewish families, stating: “I would...
(JNS) — Or ben Sima Geula. I’ve said that name every time I prayed, three times a day, for the last six months. At some point during Or Levy’s 491-day captivity, my son’s school — in an attempt to personalize the names of the unfathomable 250 hostages—gave each child a person to pray for. Our youngest returned from school with a passport-sized image of Or that has lived in our home since. “Aba, will you pray for him?” my son asked me. Of course, I agreed. In the latest hostage-prisoner exchange, Or and two others came home—well, what...
(JNS) — On Saturday, as Sagui Dekel-Chen, his face marked by suffering, buried it in the blonde hair of his wife—whispering the name of their new daughter, Shahar-Mazal, born as he languished in captivity—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shattered a long-standing stereotype. For years, he had been accused of prioritizing war over the lives of hostages. But in a decisive move, he chose the hostages. This time, Netanyahu had not only the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump to resume a full-scale war against Hamas but also his activ...
(JNS) — President Donald Trump’s call to move the Arab population in Gaza to Egypt, Jordan and other countries is a winning strategy. He is the first president to come up with a realistic and humane solution to one of the world’s greatest and most vexing problems. The Arab world, with all its riches and oil wealth, has purposefully kept Gaza poor, underdeveloped and a hotbed of Muslim hatred of Israel and the West for its own selfish reasons. Had the money that was poured into Gaza for the building of tunnels and weaponry to attack Israe...
(JNS) — Hope or despair? Solutions or causes? History or revisionism? At its core, these are the questions being debated as U.S. President Donald Trump brings a wrecking ball to the conventional wisdom of the Palestinian question. The president’s specific policy prescriptions for resettling the residents of Gaza or undertaking an American effort to build condos on the Mediterranean coast are utterly irrelevant. What matters is that he is trying to change the lens through which the world views the Palestinian question and, in so doing, give hop...
(JNS) — As I viewed the recent press conference with Jordanian King Abdullah II and President Donald Trump, I couldn’t help but reflect on the history of Jordan and the king’s namesake and great-grandfather, Abdullah I. After Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem, in 1948, it sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas, which it proceeded to rename the West Bank of Jordan. On Dec. 1, 1948, it organized a conference in the town of Jericho that was attended by representatives of numerous con...
(JNS) — For decades, Palestinian activists and their Western enablers have pushed the narrative that resettling Gazans is an unthinkable crime. The irony? Hundreds of thousands of Jews, including my own family, were expelled from Arab lands, and no one lifted a finger to help. There were no global protests, no calls about a “right of return,” no international aid agencies keeping us in permanent refugee limbo. We weren’t given the luxury of relocation; we were forced to rebuild from nothing. Now, as Gazans are being handed a golden ticket...
In the past days, I have received a flurry of inquiries asking my thoughts regarding President Trump’s recent statements on Gaza, Israel, and Iran, each asking for my insight: friends, donors to Genesis 123, and journalists. So, what do I think of Trump’s statements and actions on the Middle East? My thoughts reflect that of many Israelis, ranging the gamut from foolish, dangerous, and impossible, to brilliant, bold, and about time. In the Middle East, nuance is like salt, needed to make most things taste a little better. Another dif...
(JNS) — In late February 1945, among the first reports on the horrors of Auschwitz was one by a Polish officer, Lt. Wacław Lipiński, who wrote in the Polpress Bulletin, “Those who have survived don’t look like human beings, they are mere shadows.” Decades later, those words find a chilling echo in the images of three Israeli hostages — Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy — freed on Feb. 8 from Hamas captivity. Emaciated, pale and visibly broken, they emerged as specters of their former selves as they were forced onto a stage in Deir al-Balah...
(JNS) — I have a confession. I know—I’m not Catholic, and you’re not priests, but I’ll share it with you anyway. Each year, when we come to last week’s Torah reading of Beshalach, I am guilty of passing judgment on the people of Moses’s generation. And over the years, many congregants have asked me the same question. They were eyewitnesses to the greatest biblical miracles of all time. They saw the 10 plagues strike Egypt and completely spare the Israelites. They experienced the Exodus from Egypt, a superpower where not a single slave had eve...
(JNS) — Say what you will about former President Joe Biden’s policies, but he was the most knowledgeable U.S. president on the Middle East. Donald Trump, on the other hand, may be among the least informed. Ironically, he is now proposing the one move Biden should have made after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—relocating Gaza’s civilians to Egypt and Jordan—that could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives and averted the humanitarian issues. The problem? Trump’s plan is too late, and if implemented...
(JNS) — On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other jihadist organizations (what I refer to as “Hamas-plus”) initiated a war against Israel. Shortly thereafter, Israel declared that its military would promptly retrieve the hostages and eradicate those responsible. These goals were not achievable because the actions of Hamas and others were based on a belief system that only the followers of their radical branch of the Muslim religion are entitled to live on this planet. Recent polls indicate that 60 percent of the citizens of Gaza support jihad...
(JNS) — Big if true, as they say. “The Trump administration is considering three potential areas for the absorption of refugee Gazans after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. plans to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate those currently there to rebuild the area, N12 reported on Wednesday. “According to the report, the areas being considered are Morocco, Puntland, and Somaliland. “The report noted that what these three countries share in common is a strong need for U.S. support, as Somaliland and Puntland seek international recogni...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that resettling Palestinians living in Gaza “could be temporary or long term” has raised many eyebrows. Calling Gaza “literally a demolition site right now,” he said, “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change …. You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.” He went on to say, “You know over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t kn...
(JNS) — The recent ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas are just the latest chapter in a series of high-stakes decisions with unpredictable outcomes. The hostage deal has been a source of both intense joy and extreme apprehension. There have been countless times in the last 16 months that tragedy was supplanted by triumph. The notion that patience is a virtue has never been truer. There is a tendency to jump to conclusions and allow emotions to dominate opinion. The complexities of the situation, including many factors unknown to t...
(JNS) — The Anti-Defamation League was founded 111 years ago to “stop defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment for all.” It fulfilled that noble purpose for decades, and I was once proud to contribute to the organization. It fought antisemitism and defended Israel and did its best to stay out of divisive partisan politics. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. On Jan. 20, the ADL posted the following on X: “We unequivocally condemn Pres. Trump’s issuance of 1,500 pardons and commuted sentences for Jan 6 insurrect...
(JNS) — Liberal and left-wing adversaries of Israel indulge in an abiding fantasy that one day the Jewish state, which they falsely regard as an ethnostate built upon an ideology of Jewish supremacy, will be replaced by a single state of Palestine. They fancifully believe that it will be a multiethnic democracy granting equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of religion or national origin. As fantasies go, this one has enjoyed a good deal of mileage, surfacing every few years at times of tension in the Middle East and gripping the a...
(JNS) — The ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas terror group went into effect on Jan. 19 and included the release of some of the surviving hostages kidnapped by the terrorist group on Oct. 7, 2023. Three of these victims—Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher—were returned to Israel alive in the first week of the deal. It is to be devoutly hoped that as many as possible will shortly be returned safe and sound to their surviving family members. “Safe and sound,” in this case, is a relative term. We know for a fact that...
