Free Republic

A Pulitzer-nominated New York Times photographer named Wissam Nassar hailed on social media the terrorists responsible for a drive-by shooting that claimed the life of a 4-day-old baby, and praised the perpetrator of an execution-style murder of two other Israelis.

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, in a Wednesday speech to the United Nations, called for violent resistance against Israel and advocated expanding Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a phrase used by those who believe that Israel should be eliminated. Hill, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, made the remarks at a U.N. event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He said the international community should boycott Israel and allow Palestinians more space to engage in violence against the Jewish state, arguing that violence was also employed to end “American apartheid.” "Tactics otherwise divergent...

Six participants from various Arab nations and the UK have pulled out of this year’s Pop-Kultur festival due to a small amount of Israeli funding. Is this a legitimate means of protest or an example of anti-Semitism? When the 2017 Pop-Kultur Festival kicks off in Berlin on Wednesday August 23, the lineup will be slighter smaller than originally planned. Four musical acts from various Arab countries as well as one British-based music collaboration and a British-born panel member won’t be showing up — as a way of protesting against event co-sponsor Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and occupation of the West...

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On U.S. campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so...

Open letter signed by likes of Ken Loach, Roger Waters and Young Fathers urges band to join cultural boycottHigh-profile figures from the arts world, including Ken Loach to Roger Waters, have called on Radiohead to cancel an upcoming gig in Israel as part of a cultural boycott. An open letter also signed by the South African archbishop Desmond Tutu and the actors Maxine Peake, Ricky Tomlinson, Miriam Margolyes and Juliet Stephenson asks the band to reconsider performing in a country “where a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people”. Also among the 47 signatories are the Wolf...

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists. The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group. In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These...

For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy.

We do not yet know the policy of the next administration toward Israel and Palestine, but we do know the policy of this administration. . .I am convinced that the United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short. The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership. . .

A spokesperson for Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström has hit back at a Jewish human rights organization ranking some of her comments among the most anti-Semitic or anti-Israel remarks of 2016. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which is headquartered in Los Angeles, lists the Swedish minister's comments in eighth place in its ranking of the “ten worst global anti-Semitic/anti-Israel incidents”. […] A spokesperson for the Swedish foreign minister hit back at the center on Wednesday. “The list is clearly not serious,” wrote Erik Wirkensjö in an e-mail to public broadcaster SVT. “It mixes up anti-Semitism and criticism of the State...

Everyone has heard of “useful idiots,” a term coined decades ago and widely attributed to Vladimir Lenin, the leader of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, who promised to bring down capitalism from within. But the Muslim Brotherhood, a leader in the global Islamic movement, learned a lot of tricks from its old communist buddies, say those who have studied the organization. They, too, have learned how to borrow from within. The Brotherhood’s revealing document, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for North America,” which was seized by the FBI in 2004, states that the brothers “must understand that their work...

WASHINGTON — National Public Radio’s (NPR) ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen released an explanation and apology Monday for a map published on the news organization’s website that erased Israel from the Middle East. On January 24, NPR’s blog Goats and Soda, which covers health and culture issues around the world, ran a piece titled, “What Are You Afraid Of In 2016? Globetrotters Share Their Fears.” The post focused on travelers’ anxieties for the coming year, and included an illustration of the Middle East and North Africa, the region of the world that travelers most perceive as being at risk. “The map portion...

Early in December, a 13-year-old Israeli girl, Shachar Rabinovitch, asked ex-Cambridge professor Dr. Marsha Levine for some assistance on a school assignment that was related to her field; Dr. Levine is an expert on horse domestication. It was an innocent inquiry, which violently turned political when Dr. Levine refused to help Rabinovitch until "there is peace and justice for Palestinians in Palestine" (via JPost): I'm from Israel," her e-mail began. "I'm doing an assessment for school about horses, and it will be great if you can answer a few questions that I will ask." Instead of receiving answers to her...

A group of 40 British filmmakers and artists have sent an open letter to The Guardian on Monday calling for the Curzon and Odeon cinema chains to stop screenings of an Israeli film festival opening in London this week. Seret 2015, the London Israeli Film and Television Festival, will open Thursday with a gala screening at Bafta, followed by a number of screenings at the aforementioned theaters in the days to follow. Denying the boycott is about refusing to show films by individual filmmakers, the letter stresses cinemas should cancel the screenings because the Israeli state is “promoting this festival...

Obama: “I am the Closest Thing to a Jew that Has Ever Sat in this Office”Posted By Daniel Greenfield On June 2, 2015 @ 12:21 pm In The Point | 19 Comments [1](Insert long string of Yiddish curse words here) David Axelrod recalled Obama venting in a moment of contemplation, telling him, ‘You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office. For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse,  anti-Semitic, it hurts.’ Either this quote is real [2] or it was made up by David Axelrod. I’m...

“Was George Washington any different from Palestinian terrorists trying to protect their country?” “Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Did he really think of a slave as a sub-human while writing the Declaration of Independence?” These questions were written for use in the classroom by Grant Wiggins, a Pearson Education author, partner, and Common Core professional development trainer. In partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, Pearson Education provides lessons, texts, professional development, and other resources to states implementing the Common Core State Standards.

On Saturday evening, November 8, 2003, I addressed a free-standing feminist “networking” conference of mainly African-American and Hispanic-American women at Barnard College. The conference was sponsored by WERISE (Women Empowered through Revolutionary Ideas Supporting Enterprise), which was described as a grassroots, multi-cultural, multi-generational, and multi-disciplinary organization for women in the arts. The women ranged in age from 20 to 65 and were dressed in corporate business suits, colorful African and ethnic attire, and youthful jeans. A few days before the conference one of the organizers asked me about my most recent book and I told her it was The New...

Cyber activist group Anonymous has released an internet video which threatens Israel with an “electronic Holocaust” on April 7, in a massive cyber attack planned to fall just over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 16, known in Israel as Yom HaShoah. The video shows a masked figure in a suit and tie delivering a prepared statement, warning that the group will eradicate Israel from cyberspace “for... crimes in the Palestinian territories”. “We will erase you from cyberspace in our electronic Holocaust,” says the video’s masked figure. "As we did many times, we will take down your servers,...

JNS.org - A group of students at the University of New Orleans has launched an initiative to both combat the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement against Israel and call on the U.S. government to stop funding the Palestinian Authority (PA). The “Allies of Israel” group, which calls itself a “grassroots college organization dedicated to the promotion of the Jewish state of Israel as a sovereign nation rooted in Jewish principles, and serving as a haven for Jews all over the globe,” issued a petition intended “to raise awareness about the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority against...

Chief of Staff Denis McDonough says that Israel’s government must match up ‘words with actions and policies,’ warns Netanyahu’s statements can’t be willed away WASHINGTON — White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough called for the end of Israel’s “50-year occupation” and doubled down on the Obama administration’s critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a warmly received speech to the lobbying group J Street in Washington Monday. Speaking to the dovish group’s national conference, McDonough became the latest in a series of Washington officials to highlight the administration’s displeasure with Netanyahu, while also talking up the permanence of US-Israel...

After staying mum on Israeli issues in the run-up to the election, the White House on Wednesday broke its silence -- answering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory with fresh criticism and making clear that a new rift has opened between U.S. and Israeli leaders, this time over Palestinian statehood. In its first public response to Netanyahu's election triumph, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama still believes in a two-state solution. This was after Netanyahu, shortly before the vote, reversed his stance and stated he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Earnest acknowledged Wednesday that...