Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — It was an ideal opportunity to get opinions and reactions, and elicit what they think and feel beyond their words. After all, people from all over the world flock to Las Vegas for this specific market. But it wasn’t just any universal gathering of people coming to buy and sell their wares; it was the annual American Film Market. The movie industry. An industry that carries exceptional weight and influence on vast, diverse audiences. Despite being part of that industry years ago, I was now writing about it from a specific Jewish fra...
(JNS) — Before the first Trump administration upended nearly every piece of common knowledge about the Middle East, figures like former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry set the tone. In its relentless pursuit of a peace process that would end the Israel-Palestinian conflict—viewing Israeli concessions as the key to peace in the entire region—that tone was often quite negative. As in, “No, no, no and no,” Kerry’s infamous conclusion about the possibility of Israel reaching out to its other Arab neighbors. Trapped in a mindset shaped by a...
(JNS) — Rolling Stone, a magazine once renowned for its solid investigative journalism, is planning to publish a reckless, unsubstantiated attack on two of my heroic sons serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Doing so is not just journalistic negligence but a grotesque blood libel and a nauseating, stomach-turning display of antisemitism. Rolling Stone is legitimizing the Hind Rajab Foundation, a minuscule joke of an organization that claims to represent Palestinian interests. The foundation, which has fewer than 1,000 followers on social media...
(JNS) — An Israeli broadcast journalist reporting on world leaders who condemned the pogrom in Amsterdam paused after quoting tweets by U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to ask a snide rhetorical question. “And guess who hasn’t responded to the antisemitic attacks in The Netherlands?” she said, sneering with unadulterated schadenfreude. “Donald Trump,” she answered, enunciating each syllable for effect, adding sarcastically that “he must be preoccupied with other matters.” Unlike this media figure and so many of...
(JNS) — If you search for “Zionism,” you’ll quickly find this bizarre definition on Wikipedia: “Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe.” In other words, Israel is an ethnonationalist colonial movement—precisely what they scream in pro-Palestine demonstrations on university campuses all over America. Zionism is apparently not the self-determination struggle of the Jewish people to rep...
(JNS) — While hordes of politicians, celebrities, “influencers” and “wannabes” somberly intone “Never Again,” 86 years after Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” that ushered in the Holocaust, cowardice reigns in the West. “Never again” is a pledge of Jewish defiance and Israel its embodiment. From the physical borders of the state and from Entebbe to Amsterdam, wherever Jews are threatened, Israel has taken on the role of defender of the Jewish people. If one is an optimist, “Never again” was also a way for the European community to ver...
(JNS) — For a magazine that prides itself on journalistic standards, Editor & Publisher seems to throw those standards right out the window when Israel is the subject of their reporting. A feature story in the October issue of E&P, the leading trade magazine of the U.S. news media industry, described the difficulties faced by some reporters covering the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the biggest difficulty with the article was its parroting of blatant anti-Israel falsehoods. The author of the article, Gretchen A. Peck, w...
(JNS) —There was a pogrom in Amsterdam—and no, it’s not 1938. Ten Israelis were injured and hundreds were attacked as they left the Maccabi Tel Aviv/Ajax soccer match on the evening of Nov. 7, just hours before the 62nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” in Germany and Austria. The scene was apparently complete chaos. The video footage on social media has been harrowing; Israelis screaming things like, “Not Jewish” and “Free Palestine” to avoid the mob’s wrath. But the attacks didn’t end there. In truth, the onslaught...
(JNS) — American foreign policy can be quite resistant to change. When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that inertia includes a perennial refusal to take a decisive position on the so-called Palestinian right of return. The result has been decades of failed peace negotiations. With renewed talk of a two-state solution, it’s important to revisit this issue as a new approach is in order. During the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now the State of Israel. Those ref...
(JNS) — The 1979 takeover of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Revolutionary Guards, once seen by some as a hope for change, has become a nightmare for millions. Decades of repression—mass executions, torture, religious coercion and severe suppression of rights—have fueled widespread disillusionment among the Iranian populace. Iran’s violent, isolationist foreign policy has further estranged its people and amplified their yearning for freedom. Amid this landscape, Israel’s recent “Operation Days of Repentance”—its first direct strike...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Dear President-elect Donald Trump, the next leader of the United States of America, As you assume once again the mantle of the presidency and leadership of the free world, I write to you with an urgent purpose. The world watches you today with a shared conviction that good must triumph over global evil. Your previous tenure demonstrated that appeasement of malevolent forces serves only to embolden them. As a fellow believer in the Republican tradition, you understand that national strength alone can safeguard a n...
(JNS) — “There’s no such thing as a winnable war It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore … “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology But what might save us, me and you Is if the Russians love their children, too.” So sang Sting. He was, and I think he still is, a marvelous singer. But the naïve notions expressed in that 1985 song are long past their sell-by date. Start with the Russians. President Vladimir Putin firmly believes his war of conquest against Ukraine is winnable. Russians who love their children have no say in the matter. A...
(JNS) — In a recent bold move, Israel’s parliament voted to end the nation’s relationship with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. This decision, with overwhelming support from both the ruling coalition and the opposition, has now been ratified by the Israeli government. This decision is not merely a political stance; it reflects a growing recognition that UNRWA has become a vessel for terrorism rather than a lifeline for those it purports to help. UNRWA was formed at the end of the War of Independence in 1949, born in a...
(JNS) — The Heritage Foundation rightly called the global Hamas support network an existential threat to Israel and all Jews in the Diaspora. In response, they recently conceived of “Project Esther” to serve as an antidote to the Jew-hatred sown in the meadows of higher learning and readily spread in the corridors of democratic policymaking and the mass media. This project is now needed more than ever because the damage caused by the pro-Palestinian interest groups has infected the minds of impressionable youth in the United States, clear...
(JNS) — The phenomenon of playing with terminology—altering the original meanings of words, replacing intentions of expressions, mistranslating and reversing narratives—has become the weapon of choice of the anti-Zionists. Whereas in previous decades their propaganda was one of simply misleading, misquoting, misrepresenting and outright lying, today’s pro-Palestine cadres create a new vocabulary and fill terms with their preferred new definitions. Not only has a new glossary of terms been fashioned, but those terms and words do not just describ...
(JNS) — Under clear pressure from the United States, Israel refrained from targeting Iran’s nuclear development sites in last week’s retaliatory strikes against Iran’s military assets. But that merely delays Israel’s dilemma of what to do about this existential danger. By all Western intelligence estimates, Iran is at most months and possibly just weeks away from having deployable nuclear weapons. Hence, both the United States and Israel face an inescapable choice: Either massively bomb Iran’s nuclear development sites now to stop and disable...
(JNS) — Steven Erlanger has been writing about Israel for The New York Times for nearly 30 years. How can it be that he still doesn’t know what the Oslo Accords say? Even before he was hired by the Times, Erlanger was writing about the Middle East for The Boston Globe in the 1980s. In early 1996—a little more than two years after the signing of Oslo I on the White House lawn—he became the Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington and wrote plenty about America’s Middle East policy. He even served as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief...
(JNS) — Young Israeli soldiers on patrol in Gaza two weeks ago encountered and eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander who plotted and implemented the invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 and the brutal massacre that followed. This long-anticipated milestone was a significant battle won in a war that will not soon end. To understand why, you need to understand who Sinwar was and the cause for which he fought. His goal was not to force Israel to end the “occupation” of Gaza because, as a matter of incontestable fact, all Israelis departed Gaza...
(JNS) — In recent years, the American evangelical community—long considered a bastion of conservative values—has been undergoing a significant shift. The younger generation of evangelicals, millennials and Generation Z is embracing a more progressive outlook, especially on issues like climate change, racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Many see this as a potential threat to evangelical support for Israel, which has been historically unwavering and tied to conservative politics. For decades, evangelical support for Israel has been a corne...
(JNS) — Believe it or not, the hero of this week’s Torah portion, Noah, needed a not-so-gentle push to get him into the Ark that he himself had built! “And Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark because of the flood waters,” (Genesis 7:7). Interpreting this verse, the great commentator Rashi says that Noah only went into the ark because the floodwaters pushed him inside. He himself wasn’t quite sure this flood thing was really going to happen, but eventually, when he was getting rather wet, he decided to seek refuge...
(The Gatestone Institute via JNS) — The legacy of the last two Democratic presidencies — Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s — will be the appeasement of Iran in its efforts to dominate the Middle East and eventually expand its influence through the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. Obama has been the “Chamberlain” in this 21st-century version of Great Britain’s and France’s appeasement of an evil and dangerous regime. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought he had a secure peace treaty with Hitler — “Peace in our time,” he prom...
(JNS) — One year ago, our enemies launched an unprecedented assault on the Jewish state. On Oct. 7, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s proxy terror network unleashed an unprecedented and heinous massacre to kill as many Jews as possible and destroy the State of Israel. Decades in the making, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Qatar, and yes, the Palestinian Authority plotted together, united by a common goal: to wipe Israel off the map. Despite knowing about such plans over the years, Israel chose to hold back. No Israeli government, including those led by Isr...
(JNS) — Some people here in Israel reportedly cried tears of joy over the killing by the Israel Defense Forces of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Rafah area of Gaza on Wednesday. Others were jubilant. I was not. Yes, there’s enormous relief. There’s huge satisfaction that at last Sinwar has met his long overdue fate. The world is a better place without him. It’s also an immense victory for the Israel Defense Forces. And it’s another vindication of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to send the IDF into the Hamas stron...
(JNS) — Last week, the Jewish people celebrated the holiday of Sukkot. Last year, the holiday ended with the Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel. This year, we are celebrating our strength, resilience and success in fighting evil. Sukkot is the holiday when everything culminates: The annual holiday cycle that begins with Passover, the High Holidays that begins with Rosh Hashanah, and, in the mystical tradition, references the culmination of human history. That is why our Torah readings speak of the “end of days” and the final battles that will happe...
(JNS) — Is it just me, or is the “new” antisemitism starting to sound a lot like the old kind? In recent weeks, The New York Times has twice published remarks that directly invoked classic antisemitic stereotypes. Many of us had thought that kind of crude bigotry had finally been eliminated from the mainstream media. Apparently not. Book reviewer Sam Kriss wrote in the Times on Aug. 20 that his Jewish identity is rooted in his affinity for books, matzah-ball soup and his “overbearing mother.” If a reporter would ask him about it—althou...
