Free Republic

The Anti-Defamation League says its annual survey shows California had the largest number of anti-Semitic assaults, harassment and vandalism incidents in the United States last year. The ADL said Tuesday it identified 275 events in the nation's most populous state in 2009, up 22% from the year before.

Republicans, and some Democrats, are in an uproar over U.S. President Barack Obama’s naming a Medicare chief who backs socialized medicine—and an anti-Israel physicians’ group. The appointment of Donald Berwick, who is heavily involved in the anti-Israel Physicians for Human Rights organization, was made without going through the usual process of securing confirmation by the Senate. Opposition to his appointment was strengthened after it was discovered that Dr. Berwick said in a speech two years ago that the British system of socialized medicine is superior to the American health system.

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Chicago, IL - A Jordanian national from the city’s Far North Side was convicted today in federal court of mailing a bomb threat to a Jewish school in Chicago, officials said. Mohammad Alkaramla, 26, of Chicago, was convicted..." SNIPPET: "Alkaramla was arrested in March 2009 for mailing a threatening letter where he threatened to kill, injure and intimidate individuals and destroy the building, (as was reported by VIN News). The letter was addressed to numerous rabbis and leaders in the Jewish community and mailed to the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, officials said."

President Obama compares slavery to Holocaust and says Israelis are skeptical of his Mideast policies "because my middle name is Hussein." -snip- Playing the race card – unfairly raising the issue of race to delegitimize an opponent – is one of the most distasteful aspects of American politics. President Obama's "my middle name is Hussein" remark is an attempt to export this unattractive practice and use it against the Israeli public, which, according to all polls, overwhelmingly regard him as pro-Palestinian rather than pro-Israel. -snip- President Obama compared the history of slavery to that of the Holocaust, according to the...

SNIPPET - quote: Obama's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism speaks out against "Islamophobia" If Hannah Rosenthal really wants to end "Islamophobia," here is an easy way. She can call upon Muslims to: 1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts. 2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by...

For The Record - The IPT Blog "Arab Journalists Come Out in Support of Israeli Flotilla Actions" by IPT News • Jun 29, 2010 at 6:01 pm SNIPPET: "Journalists in the Arab world have come out in support of Israel in the aftermath of last month's flotilla incident, which left 9 dead after Hamas-tied "humanitarian activists" attacked Israeli commandos with clubs, knives, and other weapons. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released excerpts from an interview with Magdi Khalil, an Egyptian-American writer, aired on June 15 on Al-Jazeera TV. Khalil explains: "The Turkish ship, however, was organized by a...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Mobile, Alabama Man Indicted on Federal Civil Rights and Weapons Charges Related to Desecration of Synagogue WASHINGTON—The Justice Department today announced that a federal grand jury in Mobile, Ala., has returned a three-count indictment charging Thomas Hayward Lewis, 24, of Mobile, with violating and conspiring to violate the civil rights of congregants of the Congregation Tree of Life Messianic Synagogue in Mobile, as well as possession of an unregistered firearm. The indictment alleges that on or about the night of Jan. 3, 2009, Lewis spray painted the Tree of Life Synagogue with anti-Semitic...

Lodewijk Asscher, Amsterdam's mayor, has ordered the new decoy strategy to cut the number of verbal and physical attacks on Jews, amid fears that anti-Semitic "hate crime" is on the rise. "Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighbourhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even attacked," according to local reports. ...The footage showed young men, often of immigrant origin, shouting and making Nazi salutes at a rabbi when he visited different areas of the Dutch capital.

From WKYT News in Louisville, Kentucky:"The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) eliminated 49 more jobs at its Louisville headquarters." "The Courier-Journal reported that the church, struggling financially, announced the cuts on Friday that included a combination of layoffs, voluntary severance and attrition." "The cuts come after the council's governing board earlier thisweek approved an $82 million budget for 2011 and $80 million for2012 - down from this year's budget of $93.8 million." "The newspaper reported that the denomination has been copingwith losses in membership, congregations, contributions andinvestment returns."No wonder,----- read the most the most recent previous post.For those who would like to protest...

Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press correspondents, embarrassed herself, her employer, and the journalism profession itself with her repugnant remarks that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine." Thomas was present on the sidelines of the White House Jewish Heritage Day event on May 27, when she was asked her opinion of Israel by Rabbi David Nesenof. When pressed on the matter, she added that Palestine is a country of occupation, whose occupiers should leave the region, returning to "Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else". Thomas issued an apology on her website, writing “I deeply...

Longtime White House scribe Helen Thomas caused more than a few eyebrows to perk up when video surfaced on Friday of her declaring that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland. Captured by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com, the footage made the rounds on mostly conservative and neoconservative sites, with some private complaints that her comments weren't getting wider play. Thomas would apologize in a written statement, saying she deeply regretted the comments -- which were offered in response to the killing of pro-Palestinian activists by Israel forces and came, ironically, during...

Drudge Report has a bad habit of linking to and promoting articles written and contrived by anti-Israel AP and Reuters "stringers".Unless Drudge changes it today sometime after this is posted, currently as of this writting there is not a single Israeli account of the interdiction of the so-called "peace-activist" Gaza flotila on the Drudge Report.No links to Jpost, Israel National News, or other Israeli media articles on the incident.The current [ 9:47am EST 05/31/10] page of Drudge Report lists the following headlines on this matter:Israeli commandos storm aid flotilla; 10 killed... Israelis say self-defense; were attacked with knives, sticks, gunfire...France: Profoundly shocked, Europe calls for...

Hezbollah is running weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, from secret arms depots in Syria to its bases in Lebanon, according to security sources. The Times has been shown satellite images of one of the sites, a compound near the town of Adra, northeast of Damascus, where militants have their own living quarters, an arms storage site and a fleet of lorries reportedly used to ferry weapons into Lebanon. The military hardware is either of Syrian origin or sent from Iran by sea, via Mediterranean ports, or by air, via Damascus airport. The arms are stored at the Hezbollah depot and then...

The explosion in the blogosphere about the crowning of a Muslim Miss USA comes at a time when Americans have been tested to the limit, at least for the many patriots who recognize the threats to the American way of life since the declaration of the War on Terror. Some pressing issues: Questions about Barack Obama’s Muslim sympathies are still unresolved, complicated by his pitiful bowing to American enemies and plans to build a mosque on ground zero, a site of grief and trauma for New Yorkers and fellow empathizers. So now with the crowning of a Muslim Miss America,...

JERUSALEM – Moshe Hirsch, an American-born anti-Zionist rabbi and close associate of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has died in Jerusalem, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group said Monday. He was 86. Hirsch was a leading figure in Neturei Karta, a tiny ultra-Orthodox sect that opposes Israel's existence as a Jewish state and has embraced its enemies. He was born in New York and attended a rabbinical academy in New Jersey. Arafat, who died in 2004, appointed Hirsch his adviser on Jewish affairs. The group is known for its members' 2006 trip to Iran, where they embraced the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

Jews Have More Claim to Jerusalem than the French in Paris or Germans in Berlin Posted by smoothstone It is a mistake to think of Judeophobia being a mostly Muslim problem, since we already know that Islamism is a culture of Jew-hatred that permeates books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, the Internet, television and radio in the Arab Middle East. Sadly, Judeophobia is a global problem. As Joel Hilliker writes, history shows undeniably that the greatest persecutions of Jews have come at the hands of Western Christian society—tracing back clear to the first Roman Empire. But in spite of the hatred that...

The few serious contributions by socialist writers towards understanding Jews and Jewish history are normally entitled The Jewish Question (Abram Leon's book) or The Jewish Problem (Isaac Deutcher's essay on 'The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem'). Also, reactionary writings on this subject have similar titles—for instance Marx's article and Sack's book on The Jewish Question. What is really at issue here is a non-Jewish problem. It is a non-Jewish problem every time a Jew on the Left comes out as Jewish and is immediately requested—with grave suspicion by the person making the request—to give their position on ... zionism....

John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security, called Jerusalem “Al-Quds,” praised Saudi Arabian religious tolerance, and is encouraging of Hizbullah. Speaking to an apparently Muslim audience at New York University in February, at a forum co-hosted by the White House and the Islamic Center at New York University." Brennan first told a story in Arabic, evoking laughter and concluding with, “Don’t tell the folks who don’t speak Arabic what I said.” He then said that his favorite city in the Middle East is “Al Quds, Jerusalem.”

Exclusive: Officials deny US changing view on Israeli nuclear policy. The Obama administration has “screwed up the messaging” about its support for Israel over the past 14 months, and it will take “more than one month to make up for 14 months,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday to a group of rabbis called together for a meeting in the White House. “During the elections there were doubts about President Obama’s support for Israel, and now they have resurfaced,” Emanuel said, according to one of those who participated in the meeting. “But concerning policy, we have...

Islamic activist Amir Abdel Malik Ali spoke at noon Thursday at UC Irvineas part of "Israeli Apartheid Week" presented by the Muslim Student Union. He said before a crowd of several hundred that a movement is occurring in which people aren't afraid of being called anti-Semitic for criticizing Zionism and calling attention to Palestine. Click here to watch his speech. Malik Ali has spoken at UCI in previous years and been among the more controversial speakers to talk at the university. UCI became a microcosm for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week as hundreds of students, faculty and visitors took...