Free Republic

At one point during this this week’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the hundreds of delegates, known as commissioners, gleefully bounced scores of red balloons in the air. At another point, they collectively broke into dance, confirming that most Protestants, especially if they’re old, white and Anglo, don’t look so great wiggling around. (Here’s a video, for mature viewers only.) Mainline Protestantism, at least in its official curia, has been liberal for nearly 100 years. But for most of that century it was a thoughtful, dignified liberalism that still roughly adhered to historic Christianity’s moral architecture, even if...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday expressed “solidarity” with the families of the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, but also hit out at Israel for arresting Hamas terrorists as part of its operation to locate the three teens. In a statement outlining Ban’s conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu the day before, the UN chief stressed “the need to avoid an escalation of tensions in the wake of the recent abduction of three Israeli teenagers and the increased violence and mass arrests in the West Bank.” According to the statement, in Saturday’s phone call with Netanyahu, Ban “conveyed his sympathy for...

Yid with Lid has the down low on this, including the video: YWL – In 2009 Chuck Hagel was a keynote speaker to the J-Street Conference (J-Street is the fake pro-Israel group created by George Soros to give cover to anti-Israel activists). … Succumbing to the pressure, J-Street finally posted the video this afternoon. In viewing the video (30 Minutes long-embedded below) we learn that Hagel is a believer in the meme created by former Secretary of State James “F**K The Jews They Won’t Vote For Us Anyway” Baker as part of his Iraq study group. This falsehood is that...

The liberal fringe group J Street is facing renewed questions over its purported dishonesty to journalists and editors after one of its top campus officials penned an op-ed that was so thoroughly riddled with factual errors that a leading Israeli publication was forced to delete the piece and apologize. Jacob Plitman, the president of J Street U’s National Student Board, recently attacked several pro-Israel groups in an editorial published by the Times of Israel (TOI). However, TOI editors quickly removed the piece after at least four major factual errors were discovered, according to an explanation of the incident provided to...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Berkeley Prof: Terrorists Good, ‘Islamophobia’ BadPosted By Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene On May 8, 2014 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments When “interfaith dialogue,” “Islamophobia,” boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and academia collide, there’s a good chance that Friends of Sabeel – North America (FOSNA) will be involved. Case in point: FOSNA, the “voice of the Palestinian Christians,” recently held a conference with the title, “Voices for Justice & Peace in the Holy Land” that encompassed all four factors. It took place at co-host Christ the King Catholic Church in...

Under the guise of experiental, educational sojourns in the Middle East, an ongoing, extensive tourism subterfuge of global proportions is at work today. This comprehensive and coordinated fraudulent operation includes travel agency fronts, terrorist groups, international NGOs, Islamists, and Leftists. They include such organizations as the Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies, Abraham Path, the Soros Foundation to Promote Open Society, and others. All of them, whether unwittingly or intentionally, are part of an effort to turn tourists, college students, and Christian pilgrims against the Jewish state of Israel. Using the rubric of “a connection between people from the Middle...

A pro-Palestinian activist on the University of Michigan’s campus recently posted what experts described as “an overtly threatening” photo of himself wearing a traditional Arab headscarf and jamming a knife into a pineapple. The emergence of the photo comes just days after Palestinian activists on the University of Michigan’s campus leveled death threats and racial epithets at pro-Israel students who opposed a resolution to divest from Israel. Pro-Palestinian campus activists, angered by the student government’s recent decision to reject their divestment measure, leveled death threats at one student and have reportedly called other pro-Israel students “dirty Jew” and “kike.” The...

Between the UC Irvine 11 and now the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine at Northeastern University in Boston, colleges may finally be getting sick and tired of anti-Israel campaigns that have gone on for decades resulting in physical assaults, arson, vandalism and countless lawsuits.The American campus has become more ‘sensitive’ than ever with bans on offensive costumes and trigger warnings everywhere. Left-wing activism has traditionally gotten a pass, but even so a message is being sent to tone it down. In a series of three videos, the APT documented its investigation into Islamic extremism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism at...

Ahead of meeting with Netanyahu, president says unprecedented ‘aggressive settlement construction’ detrimental to peace process Israel can expect to face international isolation and possible sanctions from countries and companies across the world if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to endorse a framework agreement with the Palestinians, US President Barack Obama cautioned on Sunday ahead of a meeting with the Israeli prime minister. In an interview with Bloomberg, Obama stressed that time was running out for Israel to achieve a peace deal, and added that he believed Netanyahu had the capacity to rally Israel’s citizens behind an agreement. But if Netanyahu “does not...

The State Department on Monday once again went out of its way to state that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is “staunchly opposed” to boycotts against Israel. “We are absolutely opposed, we have been opposed to any attempts at boycotts—boycotting Israel,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news briefing, a day after taking to Twitter to stress that Kerry did not mean to threaten Israel when he said at the Munich Security Conference that the Jewish state will face boycotts if peace talks fail. […] She also said that Kerry “has had a 100 percent...

George Soros Funding Anti-Israel Evangelical Group January 26, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield Demographics is the enemy of the left. And the left fights it with aggressive immigration and aggressive reeducation. When they are faced with traditionalist religious movements that create their own educational systems or student groups, they resort to infiltrating them. And so Evangelical Christians are targeted with entities like Telos and Orthodox Groups with entities like Avi Weiss’ Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. The endgame is leftist steering and infiltration. George Soros, that old collaborator who stated that he never had as much fun as in his Nazi days, has...

Anti-Israel Activist Speaks at Open Doors Brazil “Bishara Awad is interestingly silent about Muslim persecution of Christians in Palestine. There were large numbers of Christians in Palestine just a few decades ago, but they are disappearing. Will Awad say that the culprit is ‘Israeli occupation’?” By Julio Severo In early May 2013, Palestinian Christian author Walid Shoebat warned that “Jesus at the Check Point” would soon be speaking at a church near you. “Jesus at the Check Point,” which is a “Christian” organization with a socialist twist, is touring the United States to muster support to alleviate “Christian Persecution.”...

J Street attempted to cover up evidence of a failed Boston event on Friday, within minutes of a Washington Free Beacon reporter mocking the group’s inability to draw a crowd on Twitter. J Street was forced to cancel an event originally scheduled for June 20 in Boston due to a “lack of attendance,” according to the Washington Free Beacon. After a reporter for the website noted on Twitter that J Street, which bills itself as a top “pro-Israel” group, failed to attract a crowd, evidence of the failed event’s existence was removed from Facebook. The event had been named, “Drinks...

The Spanish government provided funding between 2009 and 2011 to political NGOs leading the campaigns to delegitimize Israel through demonization, boycotts, lawfare and other forms of political attacks, according to an NGO Monitor report issued on Tuesday. The report provides comprehensive and detailed evidence of the use and/or misuse of official Spanish funds, including regional governments. The analysis, entitled "Assessing Transparency, Accountability, and Impact on Israel", issued in Spanish and English, was written by Soeren Kern and Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg. Kern is an analyst at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group; Steinberg is President of...

What’s a pro-gay, anti-Israel activist to do when faced with the fact that the Jewish state is the only nation in the Middle East in which not only is it illegal to discriminate against homosexuality, but where it’s celebrated with an annual gay pride parade? To such activists, the answer is obvious: invent a bogus theory called “pinkwashing” that accuses Israel of touting gay rights in order to downplay its alleged oppression of the Palestinians. The University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Near Eastern Studies recently jumped into the fray with a lecture comically titled, “Pinkwashing: Gay Rights and...

Some politically correct colleges in America and Western Europe observe something they call “Israel Apartheid Week.” It’s another opportunity to libel Israel for building a defensive perimeter to keep out Arab suicide bombers. These misguided young people who libel the only democracy in the Mideast look to former President Jimmy Carter for their inspiration. Carter was the most prominent person in the world to apply the hated term apartheid to Israel’s purely defensive barrier. Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, has served as a text for the libelers of Israel. The French have an apt expression for what Israel is...

When you arm Islamists, you become a willing participant in your own undoing. When Mohamed Morsi dehumanizes Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs,” there’s an elephant in the room. We find it here: Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil — these are many times worse in rank, and far more astray from the even Path! You see, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood mahoff–turned–president did not conjure up the apes-and-pigs riff on his own. When Morsi fulminates that Muslims “must not forget to...

Were Barack Obama re-elected, I predicted two months before the Nov. 2012 presidential vote, "the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow." Well, election's over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by: Choosing three senior figures – John Kerry for State, John Brennan for the CIA, and Chuck Hagel for Defense – who range from clueless to hostile about Israel.Approving a huge gift of advanced weapons - 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks - to the Islamist government in Egypt...

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to former Sen. Chuck Hagel's 2008 memoir, America: Our Next Chapter. In it, Hagel lays out his thoughts on a wide range of issues, including the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Iran, to which he devotes one chapter each. Hagel's attempt to describe the origins and history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals that he does not know the facts--and fills the void with anti-Israel bias. Hagel identifies the origins of the conflict by claiming: "the Arab-Israeli standoff was first set in motion by the Balfour Declaration of 1919 promising the Jewish people a homeland and the...

Chuck Hagel, who was nominated on Monday by President Barack Obama as Secretary of Defense, dismissed allegations that he is against Israel. The former Nebraska senator said in an interview that an accurate assessment of his record will demonstrate "unequivocal, total support for Israel" and endorsement of tough international economic sanctions against Iran. Critics have "completely distorted" his record, the former Nebraska senator told the Lincoln Journal Star, a local newspaper based in his home state. At last, Hagel said, with his nomination announced by the president, he has an opportunity to set the record straight. He added that there...