Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — With U.S. President Donald Trump now back in the White House, a Middle East policy shaped by former President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy advisers, who also served under former President Joe Biden, comes to a close. In between these two Democratic leaders, Trump launched of the Abraham Accords peace policy and set a new course that many hope will be the new direction of the Middle East. Throughout his eight years of presidency and later, in the background, hidden behind Biden, Obama sought to exert his influence in the r...
(JNS) — With all of the controversies surrounding President Donald Trump, it’s astonishing that something as trivial as a hyphen in “anti-Semitism” has caused umbrage. Yet some Jewish leaders, including Deborah Lipstadt, former President Joe Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, have found the change in spelling from “antisemitism” concerning. Lipstadt, a leading proponent of removing the hyphen, expressed dismay: “This decision makes no sense. I cannot fathom why there would be this reversal.” For those whose memories do...
(JNS) — As the conflict in Gaza enters yet another critical phase, Israel faces a daunting question: Will this war lead to the release of hostages and a genuine security achievement, or will it be remembered as another cycle of violence with no tangible gains? The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is at a crossroads where the outcomes of its military operations will shape not only its political future but also the broader regional dynamics involving Iran and its proxies. Israel’s leadership has framed this war as...
(JNS) — With the completion of Phase 1 of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and a new Israeli offensive into Gaza becoming more imminent, some Arab states have scrambled to put forward a plan for the “day after” as a counterproposal to the Trump plan of resettling Gazans and bringing a potential American presence to Gaza. Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar advocate for Hamas to disarm but retain some governing role in Gaza going forward. As part of Egypt’s vision, Hamas would surrender its missiles and rockets to Egyptia...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump is changing the narrative regarding Gaza. His visionary declaration of turning Gaza “into the Riviera of the Middle East” has people reimagining the entire area. Gaza has been a launching pad for terrorism since 1948. The Arabs of Gaza left their homes of their own free will at the direction and encouragement of their leaders who invaded Israel after it was recognized by the United Nations as a state in 1948. The Arab world kept Gaza as a festering sore to keep international pressure on Israel. The Hamas...
(JNS) — The Trump administration seeks to expand the Abraham Accords, first and foremost with Saudi Arabia, however, the current reality on the ground does not encourage such moves in the near future. Saudi Arabia has declared that it will not establish relations with Israel without significant political progress with the Palestinians—an unacceptable demand from Israel’s perspective. While moderate Arab leaders do recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, they still harshly condemn Israel for its war in Gaza, portraying it as a war crimi...
(JNS) — For years, I’ve heard the complaint that non-Jews don’t stand up against systemic antisemitism. And I agree. But do you know what’s even more confusing? When Jewish organizations actively oppose measures that combat systemic antisemitism. I’m not naive. People are people. Unity is a utopian fantasy. Apparently, so is expecting universal agreement on a basic legal principle: If you violate the terms of your visa, you can be deported. Actions have consequences. Why is it such a complex concept? I dedicate a significant part of my life to...
(JTA) — Our teens have managed to corner the babysitting market at our local synagogue. So when the WhatsApp message first arrived a week and a half ago from one of the other dads, it seemed pretty routine. “Can one of your kids babysit Saturday night? We’re going to see an Oscar nominated documentary that’s only in town for a week.” I’ve known this couple for many years, having interacted with them in both Jewish professional settings and lay leadership roles. I also know them well enough to recognize that neither of them are cinephiles...
(JNS) — When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, known as the father of modern Hebrew, worked to revive the language as a spoken one, he believed it would be a tool to rapidly foster a sense of unity among olim, Jewish immigrants to the land of Israel. His success at making it accessible for day-to-day use continues to provide a common thread across Israeli society. For many secular Jewish Israelis, speaking Hebrew (“Ivrit”) and serving in the military are some of the most important cultural aspects of their Jewish identities. Unfortunately, few Diasp...
(JNS) — “Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it.” — “Macbeth,” Act 4, Scene 3 The holiday of Purim is the most joyous of Jewish holidays and therefore our sages teach that when the month in which occurs, Adar, begins, joy increases. But given recent events, this year the joy of Adar may feel palpably less than in previous years. Many Israelis kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, are still hostages, continually brutalized and mocked, and the three that became the faces of that day’s treachery — S...
(JNS) — It was interesting to watch the bemused look on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face during a Washington press conference as President Donald Trump floated his harebrained idea of deporting all Gazans. Yet the man who insists he is “not a vassal” quickly pivoted to praise Trump for an idea “that could change history.” Trump deserves credit for apparently abandoning the two-state solution embedded in his first-term Mideast peace plan. Some praised him for thinking outside the box, but creativity alone doesn’t make an idea...
(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...
