Free Republic

The current Sheriff is Scott Israel; he was elected to office in November 2012. As Sheriff, Israel has made it a point to reach out to diverse crowds, including those who could be considered enemies of the U.S. and her allies. Broward Sheriff Scott Israel’s 2015 radical Muslim tour began this past January, when he posed for photos with Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout and a member of Zakkout’s Miami-based AMANA group at a local mosque. Zakkout is a big supporter of Hamas. On his Facebook page, one can find Hamas logos and photos of Hamas militants and leaders, including Hamas founders Ahmed Yassin and...

“This requires everyone to intensify efforts to criminalize insulting heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols and places of worship.” What is wrong with this? Who wants to insult “heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols and places of worship,” anyway?One problem with it, among many, is that at a time when hatred and violence are being preached and perpetrated in the name of a “heavenly religion” and justified by reference to a “holy book,” to criminalize criticism of such things would be tantamount to muzzling all resistance to that hatred and violence. And that may be precisely the agenda.“Criminalize...

A tenured university professor in Pennsylvania who previously questioned the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction is under fire again for incendiary remarks about Jews, women and gays. Kaukab Siddique, an English professor at Lincoln University outside Philadelphia, asked on Facebook this month whether Bill Cosby’s accusers took so long to come forward because “many women are sluts.” Another recent post on Facebook attributed the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage on “Obama’s homo uprising,” while a third post referred to “dirty Jewish Zionist White Supremacist thugs.” Lincoln University condemned Siddique’s remarks but said it does not plan to...

A district court judge from Russia’s Udmurtia republic was dismissed from his post this week for posting an anti-Semitic remark on Facebook two years ago. At the time, Ivan Orsinin uploaded a picture of a burning mosque to his Facebook page with the following caption: “You can look endlessly at three things: flowing water, sparkling stars and a burning mosque.” In a comment below the picture, the judge added “and the Jews burning,” an anti-Semitic statement that also has clear Holocaust overtones. …

The strong bias that many European media hold against Israel has been documented for decades by a great variety of analysts. One of the first to do so was The Jerusalem Post editor David Bar-Illan. He gave many examples of media prejudice in his book, Eye on the Media, published in 1983 and based on his columns in the daily. […] During an interview some ten years after the publication of his book, Bar-Illan told me that the BBC was “by far the worst offender when it comes to Israel.” He said that there were hundreds of examples of BBC...

The United Nations approved U.N. accreditation Monday for the London-based Palestinian Return Center in a defeat for Israel which claims the organization is affiliated with Hamas and “openly promotes terrorism.” The center, which describes itself as an independent consultancy dedicated to find a solution for the Palestinian refugees in accordance with international law, has denied the Israeli allegations. It announced last Friday that it was starting legal action against Israel’s U.N. Mission for alleged defamation. […] Israel’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador David Roet said before the vote that the center “is not what it claims to be.” Roet said world media...

Last week's successfully concluded Iran agreement is one of the two most important achievements of an otherwise pretty dismal Obama presidency. Along with the ongoing process of normalizing relations with Cuba, this move shows that diplomacy can produce peaceful, positive changes. It also shows that sometimes taking a principled position means facing down overwhelming opposition from all sides and not backing down. The president should be commended for both of these achievements. The agreement has reduced the chance of a U.S. attack on Iran, which is a great development. But the interventionists will not give up so easily. Already they...

Germany believes Iran should rethink its stance on Israel as last week’s nuclear deal means it must “bear new responsibilities, at home and abroad”, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Monday during his visit to the Islamic republic. […] “With the nuclear agreement and the economic recovery that will surely come after it, Iran will also bear new responsibilities, at home and abroad,” he told delegates at a conference in the capital. “You must understand that for us Germans, the security of the state of Israel is also of great importance. I understand how difficult the debate is, and we...

The NYPD has identified a group of suspicious people who were spotted Friday morning on Staten Island with rifles in their hands, NYPD officials told JP. The group four men and two women, with hijabs, were spotted early Friday morning by a retired NYPD officer in the Midland Beach parking lot with rifles in their hands, in two cars with NJ licence plates. Police were initially trying to determine whether the group were preparing an imminent terror attack, or linked to recent paintball attackers who shot several people last week with paintball guns, police said. The description of the group...

A French anti-Semitism watchdog group reports that a Jewish family was attacked and robbed in their suburban home Wednesday. According to the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) report, three masked men, described as of African descent, broke into a home in Le Blanc-Mesnil, a few kilometers outside of Paris. They then held the parents and son captive while they searched the home. The criminals allegedly told the family that they chose to break into the apartment “because they are Jewish and Jews have money.” …

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday criticized Israel’s opposition to the nuclear deal agreed upon by six world powers and Iran, Reuters reported. According to the report, Steinmeier said the agreement would help contribute to security in the Middle East. “This is a responsible deal and Israel should also take a closer look at it and not criticize the agreement in a very coarse way,” he was quoted as having told German broadcaster ARD. …

Last December when there were mass protests about the Smith/Garner cases a group of employees at York College (part of the public owned CUNY) in Jamaica, Queens, left their work stations and went outside to lay down in the street to protest the verdicts. It was staged of course but still these these workers could have been injured, bringing law suits against the city. Now I don't fault anyone for protesting what they think is wrong but on WORK HOURS? These are CITY OF NEW YORK employees. Your tax dollars payed for this time they were not at work. York...

Argentina’s Jewish community is outraged over President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s comparison of the country’s debt crisis to William Shakespeare’s infamous character Shylock, Haaretz reported Wednesday. Kirchner made the remarks on Twitter last week, while recounting her meeting with 10-year-old schoolchildren in Buenos Aires’s Villa Lugano neighborhood. To understand the nation’s economic problems, Kirchner asserted, the children should read Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” in which the Jewish Shylock is portrayed as a money lender seeking revenge. […] “No, don’t laugh. Usury and bloodsuckers have been immortalized in the greatest literature for centuries,” she added in another tweet. …

They're blowing past deadlines with zero consequences and making excuses for Iran's noncompliance with the terms of various existing interim agreements, so what's the point of erecting meaningless deadlines at all? It's becoming increasingly clear that the Obama administration will secure a deal with Iran -- no matter how watered down its requirements may be and regardless of how long the process takes. It's come to this: International powers negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran failed to meet another deadline on Tuesday, the second missed target in a week, raising the prospect of an open-ended diplomatic process over an issue on which President Barack Obama...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The NYPD is investigating another possible hate crime in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There have been four attacks against the Orthodox Jewish community in a week — the most recent came late Monday night. As CBS2’s Ilana Gold reported, a 65-year-old man was attacked around 11 p.m. across the street from his home near Wilson Street and Wythe Avenue. A teenage boy and girl ran up to him from behind and started punching him in the face and laughing about it, investigators said...The neighbor said his son heard the victim screaming for help and then the son ran...

Hillary Clinton is privately signaling to wealthy Jewish donors that — no matter the result of the Iranian nuclear negotiations — she will be a better friend to Israel than President Barack Obama. But, even as donors increasingly push Clinton on the subject in private, they have emerged with sometimes widely varying interpretations about whether she would support a prospective deal, according to interviews with more than 10 influential donors and fundraising operatives. Clinton’s private responses in some ways resemble a foreign policy Rorschach test; donors who see a deal as important to world peace have come away thinking that...

On June 30, 2015, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ voted to single out Israel for an economic and propaganda war. Ignoring the violent state of affairs in an unstable region, the plague of terrorist groups, and the victimization of millions of Christians and other minority groups, the UCC elected to boycott Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. Giving a pass to Hamas rockets aimed at Israeli children and the prohibition of any Jews to enter Palestinian-controlled territory, the UCC jumped on the bandwagon of slander to demonize Israel. Deletion and Replacement of Jews...

Hate crimes have spiked in New York City in 2015, according to New York Police Department (NYPD) statistics released Sunday—particularly against Jews. Hate crimes overall rose 9%, with 127 reported crimes during the first week of June in 2015 compared to 116 at the same time in 2014, the New York Post reports. Of those, anti-Semitic attacks rose 27% during that period, with 56 over 44 last year. …

UN has lost its way, as so vividly illustrated by the moral equivalence, if not worse, it applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the massacres in Syria The United Nations celebrated the 70th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter on June 26th. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the UN Charter “an expression of hope.” Commemorating the signing of the UN Charter at its birthplace in San Francisco, the Secretary General added that the Charter “symbolizes the hope and aspirations that we can bring the world as it is a little closer to the world as it should...

A document released in late May by pro-Muslim Brotherhood clerics incited the Egyptian population to “strive for the complete elimination” of their current government, according to a new report. Calling the military-backed government a “criminal and murderous regime,” the radical clerics said public figures associated with it should be put to death, in accordance with Sharia law. The document also demands the release of Morsi, who it refers to as the “legitimate elected president.” […] “According to the Sharia, it is the duty of the ummah—its leaders and its people—to oppose this regime and strive for its complete elimination by...