Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 3575
Visiting Israel for the first time a year ago was not only a spiritual pilgrimage and fulfillment of a dream, but an experience that allowed me to look at my own experiences as a persecuted Christian in Iran — arrested, and sentenced to death because of my faith, through a different prism. I went to Israel to impart a message to the Israeli and Jewish people that Iran is not your enemy, that Iranians support Israel and the Jewish people, and that the Iranian and Israeli (and Jewish) people have a common enemy in the terrorist Islamic regime. On...
(JNS) — The words you are looking for are, “Thank you, Mr. President.” I have not hesitated to criticize many of U.S. President Joe Biden’s policies before and after Oct. 7, but I have also consistently maintained that he has been the most pro-Israel president ever during any of Israel’s wars. That should have been obvious this past weekend when the United States coordinated a regional air defense that helped Israel avoid suffering any serious harm from a barrage of more than 300 Iranian drones and missiles. It was the first time U.S. forc...
(JNS) — One of the many ways last weekend’s drone and missile attacks on Israel could have been worse: If Iran’s rulers had instructed their U.S.-based operatives to simultaneously carry out a terrorist attack, and our intelligence agencies had failed to learn about it. Preventing such a catastrophe requires that those intelligence agencies have the ability and authority to surveil—think wiretap—terrorists abroad and their communications with operatives in the United States. Which gets me to a little good news: Last week, the House, on a bipa...
(JNS) — After the death of Moses, Joshua was called upon by God to lead our people into the Promised Land. He knew he faced potential resistance ahead. Yet having come from slavery in Egypt, he had the determination and confidence to lead his people and win the battles. Joshua saw the war through to its conclusion when the enemies were defeated, and the land of Canaan was under Israel’s control. For thousands of years, the Jewish people have faced real and potential catastrophes, as well as monstrous enemies. Each time, we pushed forward on...
(JNS) — Can you see the hypocrisy? I see it all day, every day. It’s hard to live in Israel, no matter how you feel about the war, and not see it. When you live in this region, it’s like the rest of the world is upside down. It’s like you’re looking at a bizarro universe that exists on a different plane—a universe so devoid of logic and morality that it no longer feels like your own. The Israel Defense Forces made a monumental mistake. It was an error almost no one wanted. The accidental drone strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen hum...
(JNS) — Given the current rancor between the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the unbreakable, unshakeable bonds between Israel and the U.S. seem to be loosening a bit. While bad under any circumstances, the timing of the mistaken attack on the World Central Kitchen crew in Gaza could not have been worse. Not even Israel’s admission of error and apology curbed the world media’s appetite for defaming the Jewish state. President Joe Biden’s finger-wagging response opened the door for foreign leaders to do the same. I...
(JNS) — In January 1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Casablanca Declaration. It stated that the Allies’ goal was the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers. This was a statement of moral clarity and resolve for the ages. In sharp contrast, President Joe Biden has now effectively demanded Israel’s “unconditional surrender.” After the tragic accidental killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers by the IDF, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and...
(JNS) — Marking on Sunday six months since the Oct. 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by listing what he called the “considerable achievements” of the war in Gaza. “We have eliminated 19 of Hamas’s 24 battalions, including senior commanders,” he said. “We have killed, wounded or captured a large number of Hamas terrorists. We have cleared out Shifa [Hospital in Gaza City] and other terrorist command centers.” He went on, “We have destroyed rocket factories, command centers and weapons caches. A...
(JNS) — Too many people in positions of power have all too conveniently forgotten what Israel is up against. And what we in the United States are up against, for that matter. Israel has been fighting a war of no choice. It is an existential war. It was forced upon Israel on Oct. 7, when the most brutal atrocities imaginable—the worst since the days of the Holocaust—were inflicted on Israelis. Now that six months have passed since Oct. 7, it’s time to ask a few pointed questions: Has the world forgotten the babies who were decapitated and bur...
(JNS) — It is appalling that Israel’s recent airstrike, accidentally killing seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in Gaza who were bringing food to its besieged residents, has aroused as much international fury, if not more, as Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. President Joe Biden has become the fickle leader of this anti-Israel assault. As the November election looms and his re-election prospect shows signs of fading, he is clinging desperately to the hope that he ca...
(JNS) — In a life full of accomplishments, Joe Lieberman will almost certainly be best remembered as the answer to a trivia question. Even more significant was his role as a supporting player in one of the most intense political controversies as well as one of the great “what ifs” in American history. But as much as the 2000 presidential election—during which he became Al Gore’s running mate and the first Jew ever to achieve such a distinction—and its denouement over recounts in Florida was his moment in the sun, his life should be recalled wit...
(JNS) — On March 24, Al Jazeera posted a video on YouTube that accused the Israel Defense Forces of raping Palestinian women during their recent operation in Shifa Hospital. IDF Arabic spokesman Lt.-Col. Avichai Adraee immediately and categorically rejected the rape claims. The next day, the Al Jazeera video was removed without comment or retraction. A subsequent post on X by Yasser Abu Hilalah, Al Jazeera’s former managing director, admitted that the rape accusations were fabricated and that the woman who made the claims, Jamila al-Hissi, adm...
I was a battalion physician in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War. Those who fought and survived the 1973 Yom Kippur War hoped that the bitter lessons of that war had been learned and that Israel would never experience a similar catastrophe. Tragically, one day after the 50th anniversary of that war, history repeated itself with the devastating Hamas attack of Oct. 7. The similarities between these events are chillingly striking. The Yom Kippur War began with an attack by Egypt and Syria on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. There were many...
(JNS) — Trying to understand current events in the Middle East without knowing its history is doomed to failure. Trying to understand Israel without an understanding of Jewish history and Zionism is equally futile. Over 100 years ago, the Jewish people began to realize they would never be safe without their own land, government and army, along with the power to determine their own future. For its entire history, the State of Israel they founded has been under attack. Although Israel has extended its hand in peace to its enemies from the b...
(JNS) — The United States has a law called the Taylor Force Act that forbids the United States from transferring money to the Palestinian Authority so long as the P.A. transfers money to terrorists. Since 10 percent of the P.A.’s budget is used to reward terrorists and their families for the Jews the terrorists murdered in terror attacks, the United States has been unable to transfer money to the P.A. for the past few years. Unfortunately, even though the Biden administration knows that the P.A. pays terrorists, it still considers them a pea...
(JNS) — It’s been more than 160 days since Hamas terrorists invaded my homeland, Israel, the only home for the Jewish people, leaving behind a trail of blood, devastation and destruction. It’s been more than 160 days since innocent Israeli families have been torn apart, loved ones murdered, brutalized and taken from their homes. It’s been more than 160 days since husbands, wives, children, grandparents, family and friends have lived in agonizing uncertainty, not knowing whether their loved ones are still alive. It’s been more than 160 days sinc...
(JNS) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has never been a friend of Israel. But her recent blood libel that Israel is committing an “unfolding genocide” in Gaza puts her squarely in the Jew-hating camp. AOC needs a refresher course on the Bible. God says, “I will bless those who bless you and him who curses you I will curse.” Evangelical Christians understand this better than any other group. I doubt AOC has ever heard it before. It’s a shame that AOC was educated by a self-hating Jew—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). I missed my chance to...
(JNS) — As some of us have long feared and that has now become undeniable, Israel is fighting not one but two wars of defense against a malevolent foe. The first is against the axis of Iran and its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. The second is against America. The Biden administration is to construct a pier off the Gaza shore to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. This week, Israeli TV’s Channel 14 reported that, astoundingly, the Americans have handed over the financing and management of this pier to Qatar, the...
(JNS) — Starting in the 1920s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union pioneered the art of dezinformatsiya. A hundred years later, the Communist Party of China has developed disinformation into a high-tech science. You probably know how the Kremlin did propaganda: Thousands of KGB operatives would feed false information to journalists in dozens of countries to advance Moscow’s goals. Increasing anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism were high on the list. Some of those journalists were fellow travelers. Others were what the Soviets called “us...
(JNS) — Sigmund Freud always took a somewhat jaundiced view of the human psyche, but in the wake of the horrors of World War I, it turned even darker. Confronted with mankind’s capacity to destroy itself, Freud concluded that within every living thing, there is a drive towards senescence and homeostasis—a state in which things do not change. The ultimate form of such a state, of course, is death. Thus, Freud believed, all life contains within it the seed of its own destruction and dissolution—a death drive. But Freud understood that this was no...
(JNS) — With settlers in the headlines because of recent U.S. sanctions on four Israelis in Judea and Samaria who have been linked to violent attacks against Palestinians and talk about a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, one would think it was enough unwelcome news for the week. But now along comes U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and his criticism of Israel’s announced plan to add 3,000 homes to settlements in Judea and Samaria. Saying that Israel’s expansion of settlements in the territories was “inconsistent with interna...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — Israelis may have been shocked by the recent Israel Defense Forces military intelligence report that Hamas will survive the war in Gaza. Leaked to the press in an apparent attempt to shame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, the internal report belies their repeated pledges to destroy Hamas completely. “The bottom line,” said Israeli investigative reporter Ilana Dayan, an outspoken critic of the government, about the report’s findings, is that “Hamas will survive this campaign as a terror gr...
(FLAME via JNS) — The clamor for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war is reaching a crescendo—from world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, and a recently failed U.N. Security Council resolution to ordinary people demonstrating around the globe. But a ceasefire now offers virtually no benefits and would have disastrous consequences—satisfying only the insidious goals of Hamas. A permanent ceasefire would not liberate Gaza, and it would not stop Hamas’s war against Israel—nor would it stop the deaths of innocent Palestinians. Above all...
(JNS)— At the moment, 26 out of the 27 E.U. member states support an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas without requiring Hamas to unconditionally release all its hostages and surrender. At the same time, Hamas is demanding that Israel release 5,000 terrorists in exchange for the remaining hostages and exit Gaza, which would leave Hamas with a significant terrorist force intact. The sheer arrogance of such demands appears irrational, given the crushing military defeat Hamas is suffering and its likely destruction once Israel fully ent...
(JNS) — It’s challenging to remember life in Israel before the Simchat Torah massacre of Oct. 7., but it’s possible. We can remember the horrid Yom Kippur, just 12 days before the massacre, that required police to control and then stop a prayer service. For over a year beforehand, Israelis were at each other’s throats over proposed judicial reforms. Lines were drawn between right and left, religious and secular, north and south, the center and the periphery. On Oct. 7, however, we realized that in a divided society everyone is distrac...
