Free Republic

... From Facebook to the Arab League in four days. This trail illustrates how prone senior opinion-shapers in the Arab world are to believe the most implausible stories about Israel. Did they truly think that Mr. Netanyahu, intransigent as he may be on the peace process, would post such blatantly racist comments on a public website? The answer appears to be yes. Just as Egyptian officials in Sinai believed that Mossad sent a shark to attack tourists in Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2010, or that Israel is responsible for violence between Egyptian Muslims and Christians, as Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Yehia El-Gamal...

South Carolinians are voting today in the GOP primary, which some pundits see as the candidates' last stand for getting the GOP nomination to run in the general election. On weekends on All Things Considered today, host Guy Raz talked with Danielle Vinson, the chair of the political science department at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., about what is often considered "dirty" South Carolina primary politics. "If you don't come of out here with a first or second place, it's hard to keep going," she says. "So by the time they get here everybody takes off the gloves." One of...

National Union Chairman MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh) said Sunday that the Shin Bet, the police, President Shimon Peres, former minister Aryeh Deri "and other radical left wingers" must apologize for blaming the arson at a northern mosque on Jewish "Price Tag" operations. MK Katz referred to a television interview with a resident of Tuba Zangariya aired Saturday night as confirming that the arson was committed by local residents, not Jews. "As I said insistently all along," he said, "all 20 arson attacks in the last three years were carried out by Arabs whose sole purpose is to create strife and...

CNN host Piers Morgan spoke with Gabrielle Giffords‘s husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on Wednesday and discussed Sarah Palin‘s controversial crosshair map, which targeted the Congresswoman’s district. Kelly wrote in a new book that the former Alaska governor never reached out to them. “We were never contacted by her,” Kelly said. “I find that extraordinary,” Morgan exclaimed. “Yeah, I was surprised too,” Kelly replied. “You know, certainly the targets that she put over Gabby’s and other people’s districts, in our opinion, was not the right thing to do. She is not the first person to do that. And it hasn’t always...

COMMENTARY | The ABC News "20 20" special with Diane Sawyer that chronicled the struggle of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to regain her faculties after a brain injury as the result of a shooting in January was-for the most part-heart-warming and inspirational. The documentary, which also contained the first public interview with Giffords since the shooting, was ruined by a gratuitous attack on tea party opponents of health care reform and on Sarah Palin toward the end of the one-hour special. A short segment showed Giffords confronting an angry crowd of constituents at a town hall meeting. Palin was shown briefly,...

It's a long way from Arizona to Oslo to Tel Aviv, but all three places have been the sites of major blood libels against the right. And a reminder of what to do in these situations. 2011 has seen the launch of two major blood libels aimed at the American and European right. The Breivik shootings and the Giffords bullseye. In both cases, the left tried to politicize an unstable man's shooting spree to silence and intimidate the political opposition. But my own experience goes back to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in the Kings of Israel Square in...

And don't forget, American taxpayers subsidize dozens of UN "projects." Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council’s expert on Palestine, decided to draw a cartoon to depict how he saw the world. Imagining the nations of the world and their interaction with law and liberty, Falk drew a dog wearing a sacred Yarmulke with a Star of David emblazoned on it. In the dog's mouth were the bloody bones of an infant: Around the dog's waist is a piece of cloth reading "USA."

No stray dog was condemned to death, or stoned by a rabbinical court in Jerusalem, the Beth Din have insisted. Israeli’s newspaper Maariv reported that a stray dog has wandered into a Beth Din financial court in the strictly Orthodox area of Mea Shearim and refused to be moved, which a judge decreed was a reincarnation of a secular lawyer who died 20 years ago. Reports said the judges then "decreed" that local children stone the dog to death. But the secretariat of the court released a statement calling the reports “bitter humour” and said all that had happened was...

A Jerusalem rabbinical court recently sentenced a wandering dog to death by stoning. The cruel sentence stemmed from the suspicion that the hound was the reincarnation of a famous secular lawyer, who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago.

JERUSALEM (AFP) – A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday. According to Ynet, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs. Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises. One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had...

A Jewish rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a stray dog it feared was the reincarnation of a lawyer who insulted its judges, reports say. The dog entered the Jerusalem financial court several weeks ago and would not leave, reports Israeli website Ynet. It reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20 years ago, when judges bid his spirit to enter the body of a dog.

Andrew Breitbart, the self-described “biased journalist” who first released photographs “sexted” to various women by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), closed out the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Summer Bash on Sunday night, June 12. By the time Breitbart took the stage, all but one of the television cameras and most of the members of the local and national press who had come to cover the foreign policy speech given by Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich earlier in the evening had packed up and left. In an interview earlier in the evening with the Jewish Journal, Breitbart called the former House speaker “a...

Conservative columnist and commentator George Will has slammed Sarah Palin saying she should not be trusted with nuclear weapons. Will was speaking on ABC yesterday and his damning words,coming from the right, may give many people pause. Here is what he said: "Two things are infinite. One is the expanding universe, and the other is media attention to Sarah Palin, who is a genius at manipulating it. But she has several political problems. The first of which is there's no undecided vote in this country anymore about Sarah Palin. Sure, second, the threshold question, not usually asked, but it’s in...

[...] Ailes is the most successful executive in television,.... So it must have been disturbing to Ailes when the wheels started to come off .........Last summer, he’d invited Christie to dinner at his upstate compound along with Rush Limbaugh,....he fell hard for Christie, .......He still speaks almost daily with George H. W. Bush,... [...] “He thinks things are going in a bad direction,” another Republican close to Ailes told me. “.....He thinks the election of Obama is a disaster. He thinks Palin is an idiot..." [...] For Ailes, Tucson was a turning point,.... Ailes began to doubt Palin’s political...

Conservatives for Palin is rejoicing for the same reason some of you now have a dark cloud of fear hanging over your Saturday night. The fundie vote is up for grabs now that Huckabee is out and the second in line candidate is Sarah Palin. Yes, that’s right. Sarah Blood Libel Palin. One day years ago, after the sportscaster fill-in job didn’t work out, a young Sarah Palin told a friend she wanted to be President one day. Today she wants it so bad she chokes on her own bitterness every time she has to say “Obama”. Palin has still...

<p>Before Sarah Palin posted her infamous “Blood Libel” video on Facebook on January 12, she placed a call to Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. In the wake of the Tucson massacre, Palin was fuming that the media was blaming her heated rhetoric for the actions of a madman that left six people dead and thirteen others injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.</p>

I understand from a recent news article that former U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart over a video Breitbart released in July of last year. Sherrod’s lawsuit claims that the clip “damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.” I don’t have a problem with this at all, as I feel after the facts came out that Breitbart edited an old video of Sherrod to purposely deceive and whip his conservative followers into a frenzy. I’m assuming then that Sarah Palin has hundreds if not thousands of possible...

Today's big political sensation seems to be a video released by Sarah Palin providing her presumably definitive commentary on the shootings in Tucson, the controversy over her PAC's targeting of Gabby Giffords with what looked like a bullseye on her district, and the broader argument about the possible connection of violent anti-government rhetoric with acts of violence against government officials. Most of the commentary on the video has focused on her use of the term "blood libel" to characterize accusations of conservative responsibility for the outbreak of violence in Arizona. The term originally referred to persistent medieval claims that Jews...

Bull flop can be measured in velocity metrics. ... I watched a local tragedy whelp a national spectacle of intellectual indecency. ... His You Tube videos were a display of highly disorganized “thinking” which attempted to correlate terrorism, the government and numerology as applied to theology. In other words, he was about as mentally stable as my congressman. ... Within an hour of the event and a day before any hard facts were widely disseminated, twitter users started making some rather stunning statements, blaming Sarah Palin for the murders, not a 22 year old acne-ridden male with previously demonstrated psychological...

As my colleague Janet Daley notes, ConservativeHome USA has declared war on Sarah Palin, rounding up US conservatives who think she’d be a disaster as the next Republican presidential candidate. What I find strange, however, is the way it’s gone about it. In a piece signed by “The Editors”, ConHomeUSA has awarded anti-Palin Republicans the melodramatic title of “Truth Tellers”. And, rather bizarrely, it is recruiting for more: If you are a Truth Teller, or want to recommend a commentator who is, email us here. Don’t get me wrong. I think Sarah Palin is basically nuts, as I suggested when...

For Israelis, the American Left's assault on Sarah Palin and the conservative movement in the wake of Jared Loughner's murderous attack in Tucson was disturbingly familiar. Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner's actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right - from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO - of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Just as Palin and her fellow conservatives are accused...

Swampland alum KT pointed out to a few of us this weekend something we’d missed in the already much-discussed Sarah Palin video that followed the Tucson shooting: the American flag placed behind Palin to add a presidential air to the recording is on the wrong side. Big deal, you say? Actually, yeah. The U.S. Flag code was passed by Congress nearly 70 years ago to provide exact rules for the use and display of the Stars and Stripes. One of the many rules dictates the positioning of the flag relative to a speaker: When displayed from a staff in a...

Get it? America's assassins drape themselves in the American flag and are motivated by some misguided sense of patriotism. Maybe that's not how they actually view it. Maybe I should read the articles...but right now I'm judging this book by its cover, and I'm not sure how else this illustration is supposed to be interpreted. The message this cover conveys is, of course, in total contradistinction to the REAL patriots in America. They don't wave the flag, much less wear it like a super-villian costume. They don't want to carry the burden of arrogance to ask for God's blessing...

I believe that people who underestimate Sarah Palin do so at their own risk — but according to recent polls, a lot of people are willing to take that risk. She has been battered by her use of cross-hairs in an ad targeting the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot on Jan. 8 along with 18 others in Tucson. Palin has used fighting words like “Don’t Retreat, Reload,” and she also used the slur “blood libel” to defend herself in a recent video. As a result, she has built up some pretty high unfavorable ratings in the...

In the past week, the focus of the media narrative has been centered upon language.In the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, the media has cleverly diverted attention away from discussing depictions of violence within the culture and guided the debate toward conservative rhetoric. Something that has become apparent is that the same people who dismiss conservative speech as promoting fear and suspicion have gotten into the paranoia game themselves. Along with serving as an excuse to distract from the childish premise that Sarah Palin was to blame for the Arizona shootings, the left-wing media have crafted an aimless conspiracy around...

Perhaps the only thing left to be said about the Jan. 9 shootings in Tuscon is that so much of the early speculation now appears to have been reckless, groundless and wrong. The strength of the 24/7 TV news networks has always been their ability to quickly focus resources on a breaking national story. That works well when they have a tornado, snowstorm, hurricane or flood to cover. But in some cases, like the Tuscon shootings, the facts available simply could not fill the time allotted, even when they were repeatedly endless. The audience suddenly had a huge appetite for...

MUD LIBELJanuary 19, 2011 The same people who had blamed Sarah Palin for the massacre at the Tucson Safeway and then taunted her for her "silence" were enraged when she responded. Last Tuesday, the night before Palin responded, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann mocked Palin's silence throughout his show: -- "And why is the ever self-promoting Miss Palin so quiet?" -- "And it's quiet, isn't it?" -- "It's too quiet." -- "The silence is deafening from the great Northwest." It was deemed an admission of guilt that she hadn't spoken about the Tucson shooting or denied the accusations that she had...

On Wednesday, controversial former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) mocked former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, outlined death threats he and other Members received last year and detailed inflammatory rhetoric, asking his supporters to “stand against it.” “[T]here has been a stream of violence and threats of violence by the right wing against Democrats. [Rep. Gabrielle Giffords] warned against it, and then became a terrible victim of it. Palin has instigated it, and then tried to pretend that it doesn’t exist,” Grayson wrote in an e-mail to supporters. Grayson said it was Palin’s appearance on “The Sean Hannity Show,” where she complained...

Very well done video. Link

Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) places blame directly on Sarah Palin and Republicans for last week's deadly Arizona shooting in an email to supporters on Wednesday. Grayson, a one-term Democrat who was ousted by Rep. Daniel Webster (R) by 18 points in November, is widely expected to run again in 2012. And while the note isn't an explicit appeal for money, there is a "contribute" link at the bottom of the message. "When I opened my web browser yesterday, at yahoo.com, there was Sarah Palin, smiling at me," Grayson writes. "'Oh God,' I said to myself, 'what has she done...

Well, this really was what the inside-the-beltway Republicans were hoping for—Sarah Palin has effectively sunk her campaign for president, just as she was trying to launch it. Last week she gave a fireside chat that was to connect her with “average Americans,” a straight-look-into-the-camera moment for eight minutes without a cutaway or even a camera push-in or pull-out, an attempt to show that she could be “presidential” on the very day the president was in Tucson delivering one of the most compelling speeches of his life. The Republicans, who follow politics closely, work in the campaigns, and run the party,...

Video: Sarah Palin on Hannity: I receive a lot of death threats—my children do. In Sarah Palin’s first TV interview since the Arizona shooting, she was finally able to express herself at length and answer the hordes of liberal attack dogs who have been exploiting the shooting in tying it to her. In an interview that lasted almost a half an hour, Palin succeeded in putting certain things into perspective after a week when the liberal media essentially blamed her for the murder of six fellow Americans. Viewed in the right context, there is no doubt at all that the...

Monday, January 17, 2011Blood Libel ? You Betcha! Before I begin this column, I'd like to make a declaration: I am Jewish and quite proud of it. I love bagels and lox. I complain when I'm too close to a vent. I use my hands when I talk. My favorite phrase is: "Let me speak to the manager". Believe me, I'm reminded I'm Jewish every time I look down when I take a whiz, if you catch my meaning. I am also a Levite, which means I can open the Ark of the Covenant without melting like Toht did in...

Please Click Here To See Preview From Fox 'n Friends This Morning Sean Hannity spoke with Fox & Friends this morning to preview his interview with Governor Palin that airs tonight at 9:00 PM EST, 8:00PM CST and 6:00PM PST on Fox News Channel.Get comfortable, sit back and prepare to watch Governor Sarah Palin finally have her chance to speak freely about what's on her mind after being *blood libeled* by the haters in the demonic-rat party, the media, both lamestream and not, (including some of her *Fox*colleagues*) and by no less than the idiot, demonic-rat sheriff in charge of...

I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not yet qualified to be president, but my admiration for her continues to grow. Her interview with Sean Hannity, just aired, was almost pitch-perfect. It was dignified. It was well-modulated. It was strong. And it was thoughtful. She kept her composure even as Hannity put on the screen some of the vilest, most vicious attacks against her -- the sorts of things that were so bad that if they were said about me they might shake me to my core. She explained her thought process after hearing about the shooting in Tucson,...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says Democrats have used maps using targets to identify congressional districts they wanted to win. Palin appeared Monday on Fox's Sean Hannity show to defend herself from criticism following the shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Critics have noted that Palin's political action committee used crosshairs to identify congressional districts, including that of Giffords. Palin said the graphic was not original. As she spoke, a Democratic map appeared on the screen that had circular targets on congressional districts. Palin said she and other conservatives were being...

Chutzpah: a man murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he is an orphan. Chutzpah certainly describes the National Jewish Democratic Council's recent condemnation of Sarah Palin for calling accusations that she somehow incited the alleged crime of Jared Lee Loughner as blood libels. It is a matter of record that NJDC has itself posted material that could be used to incite hatred of Jews as well as a blood libel of the Christian computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces." Here is what David A. Harris had to say about Palin: Instead of dialing down the...

[...] As a lifelong liberal democrat, I am no political supporter of Sarah Palin. I also oppose her use of rifle cross hairs as political symbols. Yet I have no problem with her use of the term blood libel to characterize what she perceives to be false charges that her rhetoric and symbols were partly responsible for the deaths and mayhem in Tucson. The term blood libel has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. [...] Language changes over time by usage. Whether Palin was or was not aware of the theological roots of the term she used,...

Don’t worry, though, because the New York Times’ public editor (their term for ombudsman) “shares the view to an extent� (emphasis mine) that the Times and the media rushed to put the Tucson shootings in a political context. Well, that’s certainly a relief. So whose fault was it that the Times pursued it to the extent of having its editorial board issue an essay the very next day putting the blame on the Right, saying that “it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced...

Now we come to the Tucson atrocity. Six people including a nine-year-old Christian girl were murdered, and a congresswoman and others severely wounded, by a deranged assassin. The mass murderer was apparently a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of mind control by the government. Nevertheless, the liberal media blame conservatives for creating a “climate of hate.” On the contrary, liberals spew more vitriol than conservatives, as noted by Michelle Malkin and James Taranto. But the liberal media never seem to notice the beam in their own eye. Question: Do those who falsely and repeatedly accuse a whole group of having “blood...

Talking teddy bears recreate the debate as to whether Sarah Palin and the Tea Party were behind the Tucson Massacre:

Onetime Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Sunday defended Sarah Palin’s response to critics who placed partial blame for the shooting that injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) on the former Alaska governor. But Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) questioned the wisdom of her response. Several days after the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., Palin posted a video statement on her Facebook page charging her critics in the media had committed a “blood libel” for pinning blame on her. Her critics said she had helped create a political atmosphere that could lead to such an event by previously...

Andrew Sullivan: Palin Is “Playing Games” And “Doing Performance Art”by Matt Schneider | 12:23 pm, January 16th, 2011 Frequent Sarah Palin critic and Senior Editor for The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, did not disappoint in his appearance on The Chris Matthews Show. In responding to Palin’s video response to the Arizona shooting, Sullivan dismissed Palin as a political “game-player” who should have realized that “I don’t think this was the week to play a game.” Sullivan said Americans are sick of games in politics and was disgusted that Palin, in her video, was “playing games a la Karl Rove and doing...

Media outlet after media outlet panned Sarah Palin's video response to last Saturday's Tucson shootings with some going so far as claiming it ended any chance she might have of becoming president assuming that's even her goal. Destroying this myth was a new poll published by Media Curves that actually found Americans seeing the former Alaska governor as more likeable, sincere, and believable after watching her speech: Respondents were asked to rate Sarah Palin on a scale from 1-7 regarding likeability, believability and sincerity, with 1 representing “not at all strong in this attribute” and 7 representing “extremely strong in...

I don’t know about you, but I have actually tried to begin this new year as a “real” American. Call it a “New Year’s Resolution” if you like. Consider my current definition of a “real” American to be someone who is not constantly tied to electronic media; and, granted, that may be a complete misnomer. Despite my attempts, however, I have not been able to escape the news of the recent events in Tucson. I was actually doing really well, though. I did not hear of the tragedy via Blackberry, Facebook, text message or email. My wife and I actually...

In case you didn’t think enough people were talking about Sarah Palin, earlier today Chris Matthews weighed in. He heavily criticized Palin’s upcoming Hannity appearance…and even had help from Republican strategist guest Todd Harris. Matthews dismissed the appearance as an “infomercial” and “like…selling makeup foundations.” And while Harris said he had no problem with going on Hannity, he does have a problem with Palin not trying harder to broaden her audience, saying that “she’s missing a real opportunity if that’s all she does.” Matthews even predicted how part of the interview will go: “She’ll come up with some contortion of...

Most Americans have soundly rejected every crazy idea put forward by the liberal media regarding the root cause of the Arizona shooting. A new theory is now being advanced by some in the media. The phrase "blood libel" used by Sarah Palin in her video was really some kind of a super-secret code to be used as a signal to Palin's base. Jennifer Epstein of Politco writes: Sarah Palin’s use of the charged term “blood libel” may not have been an accidental blunder, but a deliberate “‘dog whistle” appeal to her evangelical Christian supporters for whom the expression has meaning,...

Jack Cafferty's Palin Derangement Syndrome reached a new level on Thursday's Situation Room on CNN, as he attacked the Republican for her reply to those who tried to tie her to the Arizona shootings: "It was just awful, defiant, [and] inflammatory." Cafferty also ripped Palin for using the "blood libel" phrase and stated that the reply would "effectively end her chance of ever being elected president." The commentator devoted his 5 pm Eastern hour Cafferty File segment to his rant against his perennial nemesis: "Sarah Palin may have done herself in this time. The tragedy in Tucson presented an opportunity...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday will go on Fox News for her first television interview since she touched off a firestorm over the media's coverage of the Arizona shooting spree. Fox News spokesman Stephanie Kelly confirmed a New York Times report Thursday that Palin will appear on host Sean Hannity's program for an extended interview. Palin (R) found herself at the center of a media firestorm on Wednesday after she accused the media of committing "blood libel" by connecting the rhetoric of her and other conservatives to the shooting Saturday that left six dead and 14 wounded, including...

Sarah Palin’s ‘blood libel’ speech may have confirmed that she has a tendency to say the wrong thing in the wrong way, but it would be foolish not to recognise that it also shows why she is a force to be reckoned with. “…Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible." When I heard those words for the first time and read the press coverage of them my immediate reaction was "Uh oh, here she...