Free Republic

Don’t take the wrong lesson from Ted Haggard’s fall.The meaning of evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s downfall needs to be well understood by religious conservatives, lest the tragedy be compounded. The pain that has befallen the man — now resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals — along with his family and church is the consequence of his poor decisions. What would be worse than his personal destruction, however, is if the side of the culture war that Haggard ably fought against in his public life were allowed to define his sins as a final proof that religious conservatism...

With Rosh Hashanah upon us, inaugurating 10 days of repentance dedicated to freeing ourselves of negative personal habits, it seems an appropriate time to ask if fundamentalist Islam can be freed from its most bloody and aggressive tendencies. Is the enmity between many Muslims and the West destined to remain a feature of world history until the end? That question lies behind much of the debate about the defensive war President Bush is waging against Islamist terrorism. Bush invaded Iraq as a step toward democratizing the Arab Middle East. According to neoconservative thinking, that’s also a step toward securing our...

Tradition marks this time of year as the occasion for Jewish calamity, and a biblical perspective helps us understand why.The weeks preceding the saddest of Jewish holy days, Tisha b’Av, have seen remarkable displays of anti-Jewish sentiment, from the deadly to the merely despicable. As Israel was slammed with long-range missiles from Hezbollah, the world’s “civilized” nations (with a few exceptions, including the United States) condemned the Jewish state for striking back in self-defense. In Seattle, where I live, a depressed Muslim gunman opened fire on six women at the Jewish Federation office, killing one. Later the same weekend, Mel...

BETRAYING SPINOZA: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity By Rebecca Goldstein Schocken, 287 pages $19.95 WITH most people, if they know anything about the philosopher Benedic tus Spinoza, it's his sensational-sounding excommunication by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 at age 24. But Jewish-style excommunication sounds more awesome than it was. Its impact was merely social. Until the excommunicated person changed his ways, other Jews were forbidden to communicate with him. In her fascinating and highly accessible new biography, part of the Jewish Encounters series, novelist Rebecca Goldstein brings out a much more interesting but lesser known truth about...

I disagree with the president on immigration, education and McCain-Finegold, but I remain one of his biggest supporters. Having said that, I must say that I worry most of all about the safety and security of my children and my grandchildren if a Democrat succeeds to the presidency in 2008. I have this worry because, although President Bush has been immense in protecting us from Islamic terrorists and in standing up to the vituperation heaped on him for so doing, he has NOT succeeded in convincing enough of the country that a global terrorist war is ongoing against us, and...

Did the software in the cell, DNA, write itself? Is genetic information the only information that science has ever encountered that was not generated by an intelligent agent? These are some of the questions raised by the scientific and cultural war going on over Charles Darwin's theory and its modern challenger, intelligent design. In an April 6 Jerusalem Post op-ed, the writer and editor Larry Yudelson took me to task for arguing in numerous venues that the debate about Darwin is a crucial one for Jews who care about Judaism. If it was simply Yudelson offering his personal opinion that...

Since Betty Friedan's death I've found myself wishing that the cause I care about most had a voice like hers to speak for us. That cause is traditional Judaism — which, among many others things to recommend it, offers a wiser and ultimately more humane vision of womanhood than does feminism. Indeed, women under 45 or so have mostly seen through Friedan's idealization of work-outside-the-home as the necessary and sufficient condition of a meaningful life. But never mind that. I envy Friedan's singular gift as a revolutionary consciousness-raiser. Her book "The Feminine Mystique" initiated modern feminism. Today the Jewish world...

From George Clooney to Orthodox rabbis, the list of those who have scathingly denounced Jack Abramoff seems endless. Given the admission of guilt by this Orthodox Jew and former super-lobbyist for Indian gambling tribes, is it possible to discover any grounds for sympathy with him? Actually, yes. But first a disclaimer. As I wrote in the Forward back in May, I am not unbiased. I've met Abramoff on two occasions, including 10 years ago when I was a guest in his home for Sukkot. I once worked for Toward Tradition, the conservative Jewish group for which, before my time, he...

A rule in Jewish law holds that when all the judges on the Jewish high court unanimously condemned an accused criminal, he must be set free. The very unanimity was suspicious and called into question the justice of the proceedings. Talk about unanimity. By now thousands of published articles, ranging from critical to hateful, have appeared about the famous Jack Abramoff — Orthodox Jew, former Washington super-lobbyist, product of an affluent Beverly Hills upbringing and future inmate of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has pleaded guilty to mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. As Abramoff told The Jewish Journal...

These are troubled times for Jewish-Christian relations. In November, two of the most influential American Jewish leaders, representing large swaths of the Jewish community, gave major speeches vilifying politically conservative Christians. As an Orthodox Jew who has long worked with Evangelicals, Catholics, and other serious Christians, I would like to propose an ameliorative measure aimed at furthering inter-religious peace and friendship: Let every Christian gently ask a Jewish friend for a moment of his time. Tell him you’ve been following the news about some of the statements issuing from Jewish organizations in regard to conservative Christians. Tell him you’re confused...

Recently, Lisa Klinghoffer e-mailed me about an important anniversary: the murder of her father, Leon Klinghoffer, by Islamic terrorists. 20 years ago, this past Saturday (October 8), Leon Klinghoffer -- a helpless 69-year-old in a wheelchair on a cruise ship -- was cruelly murdered for the dual crimes of being a Jew and an American. After hijacking the ship, cowardly Palestinian terrorists assassinated Klinghoffer by gunshot and threw his body overboard, a plot masterminded by Abu Abbas. Leon Klinghoffer: American Hero in Life & Death Here's what one of many, who've written posthumous notes to Klinghoffer over the years through...

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure of which every American can legitimately feel a sense of personal ownership. Considering this, I'd imagine widespread displeasure as more Americans become aware that senior scientists at the publicly funded Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have reportedly been creating a "hostile work environment" for one of their colleagues merely because he published a controversial idea in a biology journal. The controversial idea is Intelligent Design, the scientific critique of neo-Darwinism. The persecuted Smithsonian scientist is Richard von Sternberg, the holder of two PhDs in biology (one in theoretical biology, the other in...

Last week certainly was instructive about the epic... United Nations Oil for Food program. First came Monday's hearings in Norm Coleman's Senate Subcommittee on Investigations where we learned that Saddam Hussein gamed the program for twice as much unmonitored revenue as previously thought -- $21.3 billion, up from $10 billion. Also fascinating was chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer's testimony that he believes, based on what high-level Iraqi sources have told him, that U.N. Oil for Food director Benon Sevan did in fact profit from Iraqi oil vouchers. Mr. Sevan continues to deny the allegation. Then on Wednesday Henry Hyde's House...

For years, Abu Abbas was one of the world's most wanted terrorists, the mastermind of the hijacking of an Italian cruise ship in which an American in a wheelchair was shoved overboard. Now, no one seems to want Mr. Abbas, leader of a faction of the Palestine Liberation Front, who was captured by American Special Forces here in April and is in American custody. The Americans would like the Italian government, which convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to life in prison in 1986, to take him and put him in jail. But the Italians have made no move...

<p>Was the capture of Abul Abbas really some turning point in the war on terrorism?</p> <p>The administration spins it that way. The State Department called it "a major victory in the global war against terrorism." President Bush said: "Terrorists and tyrants have now been put on notice, they can no longer feel safe hiding behind innocent lives."</p>

The United States believes it can indict captured Palestinian leader Mohammed Abbas (better known as Abul Abbas) for murder, and that his immunity under the Oslo Accords applies only in Israel and the PA, not in the U.S. Although no legal steps have been started to charge Abul Abbas, U.S. administration sources say this is expected to be done as he is responsible for a terrorist act - the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship - during which an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered. The Americans are also debating how to treat a request to extradite Abul Abbas...

Achille Lauro What happened during the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985? AP Photo Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, 1985 On October 7, 1985 four heavily armed terrorists representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, with some 100 mostly elderly passengers on board, in Egyptian waters. The hijackers demanded that Israel free 50 Palestinian prisoners, and to prove their determination, they shot and killed a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and threw his body overboard with his wheelchair. After a two-day drama, the Egyptian government, unaware that Klinghoffer...

Wednesday, April 16, 2003 The daughters of an elderly man who was killed by a violent Palestinian group during the hijacking of a cruise ship in 1985 hailed the arrest of the faction's leader and said it will send a message to other terrorists. "We are delighted that the murderous terrorist Abul Abbas is in U.S. custody," Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, the daughters of Leon Klinghoffer, said in a statement provided by family friend and spokeswoman Letty Simon on Tuesday night. Abbas, who led a faction of the Palestine Liberation Front, was taken by American special operations forces during a...