Free Republic

Last week, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research held an extraordinary conference in New York, with 18 scholars presenting formal papers on "Jews and the Left," addressing such issues as "present-day understandings of Jewish attraction to the Left in the 19th and 20th centuries," whether today's left is "in whole or in part anti-Semitic," and the relationship between the left and Israel. The response to these issues -- coming from a group of scholars who were largely leftists or liberals themselves -- was quite remarkable. In his "Introductory Remarks," Prof. Jack Jacobs of CUNY asserted that "the one-time ties between...

The Occupy Tampa movement posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on their Facebook page on Thursday, which coincided with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. The cartoon, shown below, depicted a Jewish man with a big nose and large beard driving a car with the symbol of the United Nations as the wheel and U.S. President Barack Obama's head as the stick shift. Within five hours the cartoon received more than 400 comments, mostly from outraged users, including many Israelis. "Putting this on Holocaust day just makes it even more sickening than it already is," one user said. "This is an outrage. All OWS...

BERLIN - The German government released on Monday the findings of a two year inquiry into modern anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic, showing that latent anti-Semitism affects one of every five Germans. The 202 page study, entitled "Anti-Semitism in Germany," covered a wide spectrum of German anti-Semitism, including hatred of the Jewish state as a manifestations of anti-Semitism within the Left movement and Islamic-animated loathing of Israel and Jews, especially from Iran's regime and the Turkish media. Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a member of the ten member commission, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, that the "experts came to the conclusion...

Interview Series: Frits Bolkestein, former EU commissioner: "People defer to numbers. There are hundreds of millions of Arabs and less than eight million Israelis...then there is the oil issue". And four more reasons for anti-Israel bias. From 1999-2004, Frits Bolkestein was the European Union’s commissioner responsible for the internal market, taxation, and customs union. Before that, he had been the Dutch Defense Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, VVD. In 2005, he became a professor – of the intellectual background to political developments – at both Leiden University and the Technical University of Delft. Bolkestein observes: “The Israeli ‘file’...

At Power Line, Steve Hayward spots Paul Krugman phoning in his periodic “Keynes Was Right” column, and asks: I wonder if Krugman also credits Keynes’s views on Jews, which British blogger Damian Thompson of The Telegraph brings to our attention. From Keynes’s diary: [Jews] have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, and their presence among us is a living example of the insurmountable difficulties that exist in merging race characteristics, in making cats love dogs … It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who...

Do you know who the latest Zionist on the block is? It’s the man who called Israel, “an aggressive, national socialist state” and suggested that the original World Trade Center bombing may have really been carried out by Israel. Then there’s the solicitation letter which boasted that this courageous fellow was exposing the, “Bohemian Grove–perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress’s Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica.”So how is he a Zionist? Ask Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. According...

When it comes time to discuss Israel, Adbusters finds a way to describe the Jewish State in the most offensive of terms. While not specifically mentioning Jews, Adbusters substitutes other terms to make false and border-line anti-Semitic comments, or trying to set up the Jews/Israel as the scapegoat for America's problems. From an article called Revolution in America: Not content with stripping us as citizens of our sovereignty, our corporate-backed rulers have instituted a foreign policy that delights in permanent war and international instability. From cynically squandering billions of dollars of taxpayer money each year in gifts to the apartheid...

A growing number of Israelis and foreign Jewish groups are expressing concern over the anti-Semitic flavor of some of the "Occupy Wall St." economic protests in the US. From the 13th century expulsion of Englands Jews to the 19th century Russian pogroms to the Nazi Holocaust, sour economic conditions have historically formed the backdrop of rising anti-Semitism.(snip) Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper called the anti-Semitic outbursts ''hard to watch,'' and an Israeli commenter said, ''It's just like pre-World War II Nazi Germany. You think blood libels can't happen in America?''

Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse for the Jewish state. Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on.

John Galliano, the fallen fashion designer, has been found guilty of hurling anti-Semitic abuse at fellow drinkers in a bar in the French capital, but escaped a prison sentence as the judge took into account his apology to victims. The flamboyant 50-year old Briton was not present in court for the verdict, in which he received a suspended 6,000-euro (£5,200) fine, meaning it goes on his criminal record but he will not pay the fine unless he re-offends within five years. The Paris court found him guilty of "public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity" during two...

A man and woman were injured this afternoon after a white van mounted the pavement at a bus stop on Upper Clapton Road. Police were called shortly after 4:00pm this afternoon (Monday, 1 August) to a report of a van in collision with two people. Both were taken to hospital by Hatzolah, an emergency service that serves the Jewish community and are not suffering life changing or threatening injuries. A posting on Twitter claimed the man suffered a fractured leg and shoulder, while a police spokes person told Hackney Hive that the man had a serious leg injury, the woman...

"Some of my friends tried to stop him by talking to him. Many people thought that it was a test ... comparing it to how it is to live in Gaza." Eyewitness statement the day of the shooting. (ABC News) The day of the Norway shooting, I was blindsided by one of the survivor's statements to the press immediately after the shooting (see above). It was so outside the box, I thought it was the kneejerk response of an anti-semite in shock. I didn't blog on it because I thought it anecdotal, badly anecdotal. But the more that is revealed...

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."

David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match. Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least. One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the...

Colorado will end coverage for routine circumcisions under Medicaid next month, adding to what's become a national debate over the once widely-accepted procedure. The change will take effect July 1. Lawmakers agreed to end funding as part of a package of cuts to balance the budget.

There is no lack of antisemites today. But it is very hard to talk about the identity of the vast majority of them. Indeed, Yale University has just revamped its institute on antisemitism, apparently because it spent too much time talking about the overwhelming problem with antisemitism today–Islamic and especially Islamist antisemitism. In other words, the real antisemites are whitewashed, while those fighting antisemitism are called antisemites. The supporters of Israel are called enemies of Israel by those who themselves are generally enemies of Israel. The truth is the exact opposite of what Milbank wrote. Beck is the leading purveyor...

The Republican campaigns of 2006 and 2008 consisted of long litanies of dropping the ball when it comes to the Democrats' vulnerabilities. I refer specifically to John McCain's and Rick Santorum's inexcusable failure to call their opponents out for indefensible racist, anti-Semitic, and/or anti-Catholic connections. Casey's acceptance of MoveOn.org's support should have disqualified him, especially in a state with a large Catholic population. MoveOn.org Promoted Anti-Semitic and Anti-Catholic Hate Speech In 2006, I joined Jan Poller and Robert Goldberg in exposing MoveOn.org's exercise of editorial control in favor of anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and other forms of hate speech at the organization's...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu lectured President Barack Obama in his own office, warning him not to chase "illusions" of Middle East peace and opening a deep rift in US-Israel ties. In a dramatic Oval Office appearance on Friday, after 90 minutes of talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically vowed Israel would never return to its 1967 borders and laid down a set of non-negotiable conditions for peace talks. The exchange, which left hopes for Obama's peace drive more remote than ever, came a day after the US president called on Israel to accept a return to territorial lines...

I’ve been thinking about race, and prejudice, a lot over the past week. The world has been quick to condemn John Galliano for his anti-Semitic rant. I condemned him a long time ago, firstly for portraying women on his catwalk as adolescent boys and, secondly, for his wanton, unthinking use of fur.

A vile, homosexual-themed anti-Semitic musical play that was performed at Concord-Carlisle High School (CCHS) in December 2009 is the subject of community outrage. The high school has long been a center of aggressive homosexual indoctrination and the accompanying hostility toward religious belief. Intimidation of students and parents with traditional religious values has become an everyday occurrence there. Recently a group of CCHS teachers publicly "came out" as homosexuals and lesbians to a group of students - and encouraged the students to do the same -- in a widely celebrated after-school event. But this was possibly the most outrageous and insulting...