Free Republic

A pair of activists in the state of Washington are promoting an anti-Israel curriculum that high school social studies teachers are considering adopting. Ed Mast and Linda Bevis, of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, have developed “The Palestine Teaching Trunk.” Bevis gave a presentation on it in October at the Washington State Council for the Social Studies annual meeting, Edward Alexander reported in The Weekly Standard on November 10, 2014. “In 1967, Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza from Egypt and Jordan,” the “Teaching Trunk curriculum reads. “Israel instituted a military occupation in Gaza and the West Bank—which...

Tuesday, November 11, 2014 The Price of Restraint is Death Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion”. Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left. But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t. Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and...

U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice ridiculed Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, for spending time with Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday. According to the report, Rice was asked in a recent meeting with a top American Jewish leader why she had not held meetings with Dermer. She responded, “He never asked to meet me.” “Besides, I understood that he’s too busy traveling to Sheldon Adelson’s events in Las Vegas,” she added, referring to the major Jewish philanthropist who also owns Israeli daily Israel Hayom. Haaretz reported that Rice was referring to Dermer’s...

Israel is the country most hated by Turkish citizens, a Pew Research Center poll released last week found. Responders were asked whether they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of a selection of states (US, China, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Israel) and entities (such as the European Union and Nation). Israel was found the most disliked country of the offered options, with 86 percent of responders saying they have an unfavorable opinion of Israel and only 2 percent seeing Israel in a positive light...

Anti-Israel activists exploit Ferguson tension as part of propaganda war.While no one knows if there will even be an indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, leaked evidence including an autopsy report raise the possibility there will be no indictment. If that happens, the streets will be on edge, and it will not take much of a spark to set the city on fire worse than ever before. As much tension as there is, an underreported story is the active role of “pro-Palestinian” activists who have exploited the Ferguson riots and tension this summer and fall...

This New York Post piece by Eliyahu Federman is spot-on (Hat Tip: Victor Shikhman). Abbas called Jews visiting the Temple Mount (Judaism’s holiest place) a “herd of cattle,” with no right to visit or worship there. Jewish visits, he said, were a desecration that must be stopped “by any means.” “Any means” turned out to include the murder of baby Chaya. What’s most remarkable is the US silence on Abbas’ remarks. Neither Secretary of State John Kerry nor any State Department spokesman condemned Abbas’ words comparing Jews to cattle. Even the US embassy in Israel failed to issue a...

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority (PA), called for a comprehensive strategy against Islamic extremism on Saturday - by blaming Israel for rising radicalization a la' the remarks of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry insisted on Friday that the failure of peace talks between Israel and the PA - not Western apathy to Islamism nor the US's failures to resolve tensions in Iraq - was the culprit for the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) group, sparking outrage from Israeli officials. "There wasn't a leader I met... who didn't raise with me...

As the days trickle down to a precious few before Election Day, I have become increasingly depressed by the comments I've read on several conservative forums. There are way too many conservatives expressing dissatisfaction with the GOP candidates running next month and in the possible lineup in 2016. They say before they vote for a RINO, they'd rather stay home. There was a time when I would have admired their principled position but not this year. It is vitally important that the Republicans take over the Senate because the sad fact is that President Obama would never have been able...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that too many Israelis were ready to abandon a bid for peace in the region and, in a departure from his prepared remarks, added that this was something Israelis should think about. Related Stories 1. Obama urges Iran not to let opportunity pass for nuclear deal Reuters 2. What Obama Wants From The UN (The Note) ABC News 3. Modi's Power Play - Can Obama Charm Him? Huffington Post 4. Obama says will allow no 'safe haven' for Islamic State militants Reuters 5. Khorasan planned imminent attacks against U.S....

Bill Clinton was caught off mike in Iowa this weekend “agreeing that the [Israeli] prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was ‘not the man’ to make peace with Palestinians — a position at odds with his wife’s pro-Israel stance, a new report said Monday. Clinton’s spontaneous comments came during an impromptu conversation with pro-Palestinian activists after he and Hillary spent the day at a political event in Iowa on Sunday.” This is part of a pattern for Bill Clinton – “blaming the Israeli prime minister for the lack of progress toward peace with the Palestinians.” What do we learn from this? 1....

Jerusalem calls the move 'an unfortunate surrender to economic interests.’ First Fox Sports – Middle East wiped Israel off the map, then – following complaints – it got rid of the map altogether. The sports network broadcasts in Israel, and a weekly schedule can be found online, especially important for American football fans interested in knowing what games will be broadcast on any given Sunday. Up until Thursday morning, the website had a “select your country” button that accessed a drop-down list of 23 countries in the Middle East, from Algeria, through KSA (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), all the...

Meghan Marzec, the President of the Ohio University student Senate turned the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge into an anti-Israel blood bucket challenge. At a Student Senate Meeting Wednesday evening, pro-Israel students protested the anti-Israel action and several of the pro-Israel students were escorted out and arrested by campus police. According to the student newspaper, The Post: Ohio University Police Department Chief Andrew Powers told The Post that four students were arrested at Wednesday night’s Student Senate meeting in Walter Hall. ... Rabbi Danielle LeShaw, who went with the arrested students to OUPD’s station, told The Post they were charged with...

The ceasefire agreement didn’t give Hamas everything it wanted, but it gave Israel nothing at all.Israel’s insistence on demilitarizing Gaza fell by the wayside.Why? Here’s one answer. Nabil Shaath, a senior PLO official and confidante of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said that Israel dropped the demand that Hamas be demilitarized, due to American pressure, in an interview with the Arabic Ma’an News Agency. As usual the war was won on the battlefield and lost at the negotiating table. Which means it will have to be repeated in a year or two with a stronger Hamas.Without demilitarizing Gaza, the entire...

In 1948, the argument for the creation of Israel was a moral argument; the argument against the creation of Israel was based on an assessment of America’s national interest. Almost seventy years later Israel is an economic and military powerhouse, with a rapidly growing population, while her traditional enemies are weaker than ever. At the present time, most of those who argue against the continued existence of Israel attempt to base their arguments on moral grounds. Still, a small and noisy group of conservatives contend that our support for Israel undermines our standing in the region, and threatens our national...

Eleven lawmakers backed by liberal advocacy group J Street either voted against or refused to vote in favor of increased funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which has been a critical life-saver during Hamas’s latest assault on the Jewish state. Congress overwhelmingly approved an emergency increase in funding for Iron Dome this month by a vote of 395 to 8. Three of the eight who voted against the funding increase are J Street-backed lawmakers. Another eight abstained from the pro-Israel vote and also are financially supported by the group. J Street’s political action committee (PAC) has already donated...

“Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies,” as it is widely known on the Internet, states that as any online comment thread grows longer, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 100%.” With all due respect to American internet-law pioneer and free-speech advocate Mike Godwin, perhaps the law ought to be renamed after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who might just be the world’s most verbally promiscuous trivializer of the Nazi legacy.“Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target,” Mr. Erdogan recently told supporters at a...

On Tuesday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer hosted Hamas spokesman Osama Hamden. The week before, Hamdan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a new image of Hitler" on the network. But now, for some reason, Blitzer stumbled into a random act of journalism: He asked Hamdan about comments he had made suggesting that Jews used Christian blood in matza. Hamdan stumbled around and blamed the Jews for their action in Gaza. Blitzer called Hamdan's comments an "awful, awful smear." The very fact that this represented a unique moment in the media coverage of the Israel-Hamas Gaza war demonstrates the malpractice of...

Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) has voted to boycott Israel, The Jewish Chronicle reports. The decision came at a special meeting on Monday, during which the NUS national executive committee adopted a policy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

(GRAPHIC-AT-LINK)The Los Angeles Times leads Thursday with a story entitled: "Gaza's dilemma: Deadly war or suffocating Israeli embargo." According to the story, Palestinians in Gaza are left with no choice but to wage war, because if they do not fire rockets at Israeli civilians, they must accept an Israeli [sic] "embargo." The article omits the obvious point that if Hamas would stop trying to kill Israelis, neither the embargo nor the war itself would be necessary. The authors, Alexandra Zavis and Batsheva Sobelman, accept that Hamas started the war--and even suggest that most Palestinians in Gaza support it, though there...

Days before the recent Israel/Hamas conflict erupted, the Presbyterian Church in America withdrew $21 million worth in investments from Israel because, as spokesman Heath Rada put it, the Israeli government’s actions “harm the Palestinian people.”Soon after, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and was asked if he was “troubled” by the Presbyterian Church’s move.Netanyahu responded: It should trouble all people of conscience and morality because it’s so disgraceful. You know, you look at what’s happening in the Middle East and I think most Americans understand this, they see this enormous area riveted by religious hatred,...