Free Republic

BDS Flounders Amid String of Humiliating Defeats How anti-BDS legislation has neutered the group and hampered its ability to function. May 31, 2016 Ari Lieberman    It’s been a really bad month for the anti-Semitic BDS movement, a strange alliance of radical leftists and Islamists who advocate the destruction of Israel through economic and cultural boycotts.  The hate group suffered a number of major setbacks in recent weeks. Some of these reversals represent mere moral victories but others have far reaching consequences that may well spell doom for BDS’s future operations and ability to function.  In May, the Strasbourg-based...

President-elect of France's umbrella of Jewish communities warns of alarming anti-Semitism, vows to fight hard. French Jews are experiencing the most difficult situation they have encountered since the end of World War II, the newly-elected president of France's umbrella of Jewish communities said. Francis Kalifat, 64, said Sunday that his first priority as president of CRIF is to fight against the anti-Semitism that he said was responsible for the situation he described. "The fight against anti-Semitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experience since World War II," Kalifat said during an...

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has been fired from his radio show, in response to anti-Semitic comments made last month. Livingstone has already been suspended from the Labour Party, where he was until recently a senior policymaker, after claiming in an interview that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, and appearing to back some of the Nazi dictator’s earlier policies before he “went mad.” “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews,” Livingstone...

An Egyptian political commentator said on national television that Israel, the “filthy Zionist entity,” is behind the tragic crash of EgyptAir Flight 804.

Dutch police do not believe that the stabbing Monday of a Jewish woman at a kosher café in Buitenveldert, Amsterdam was anti-Semitic, according to Dutch news station AT5. It is not yet clear what motivated the stabbing, which took place at southern Amsterdam’s Grand Cafe Rimon, though the culprit is believed to be mentally ill. The possibility that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism created turmoil within the Amsterdam Jewish community. Authorities are now investigating the case. Although the extent of the victim’s injuries are not yet known, she was reportedly in stable condition when transferred to the hospital.8:20 According...

A school built in Gaza using German funds is educating their students on hatred and violence for Israel and providing children with military training At the end of March, a Hamas-affiliated news agency distributed a video showing a Palestinian teacher indoctrinating school children with hatred for Israel and support for an armed struggle against it. The teacher used the letters of the Arabic alphabet as a didactic tool to teach them "the fundamental Palestinian national principles" even before they learn to read. The video did not specify the name of the school; however, data collected by the Intelligence and Terrorism...

A bill that would have banned the Canadian province of Ontario’s public institutions from doing business with companies which support an anti-Israel movement was shot down Thursday, reports The Toronto Sun. The bill, co-sponsored by Progressive Conservative MPP Tim Hudak and Liberal MPP Mike Colle, would have prohibited the government from entering into contracts with businesses that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. It was defeated by a vote of 18-39, with largely Liberal and NDP MPPs voting against the measure, according to The Sun. Hudak challenged the majority government to adopt the measure and accused Liberal MPPs...

A senior Iranian military commander claimed that U.S. officials are quietly encouraging the Islamic Republic to keep its illicit ballistic missile tests a secret so as not to raise concerns in the region, according to Persian language comments. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the Islamic Republic’s commitment to last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement. “At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if...

In recent months I’ve had cause to interview several Holocaust survivors. And though each story — can we call them stories, it sounds so banal? — is different, the themes remain unilaterally unsettling: fear, heart-breaking, wrenching separation from a loving mother or desperate father, arbitrary brutality, unimaginable savagery. But the harrowing testimony of these now elderly men and women also offers an enduring postscript, as each survivor exhorts those who listen to never forget man’s inhumanity to man. For Jews like me, well, how can we forget? […] To remain in Europe is to transfer sovereignty from Westminster for Brussels....

Former President Bill Clinton delivered an impassioned defense of both his own foreign policy legacy and that of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is currently the Democratic front runner for presidential elections later this year. During a Friday campaign event in Ewing Township, New Jersey, Clinton was heckled over his wife's support for Israel - prompting the former president to hit back, blaming the Palestinians for turning down generous peace offers. "She and the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt stopped the shooting war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza," Clinton responded to the heckler, who had shouted "What about Gaza?"...

A “terrorism” flier sparked a huge protest among Muslim students at San Diego State University, and they literally mobbed the police car that was attempting to escort university president Elliot Hirshman off campus, preventing the car from moving for about two hours. Watch this video of mob-fest protest around the vehicle with the university president stuck inside. More to this story follows video.

A group of Jewish families that included elderly people, pregnant women and children were taken off an EasyJet passenger plane in Barcelona waiting to depart for Paris, according to a report on the European Jewish Press. One of the passengers, a Holocaust survivor, said the behavior of police who came to take the travelers off the flight was similar to that of the German Nazi SS police during World War II. The families were removed after the plane had been sitting on the tarmac for more than two hours, waiting for departure. Many of the Jewish men were wearing kippahs,...

Have you ever been played? Like a fiddle? Manipulated by narratives and stories that replace the actual facts about a situation? How did you feel when you discovered the actual story? Did you ever wonder why the Obama administration was so opposed to the Keystone pipeline, insisting that oil be carried by rail from the Canadian Sand Flats? And now, suspicious wildfires threaten those very oil operations to the point where rail traffic may be suspended, likely eliminating the world's crude oil glut and driving prices back up? Did you realize that the average age of a news reporter is...

Following a presentation on law enforcement of Jewish radicals who attack West-Bank Palestinians at the UN, the Venezuelan ambassador accused Israel of carrying out 'final solution' for Palestinians. Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN Rafael Ramirez accused Israel of implementing a "final solution" against the Palestinians in the UN Security Council on Friday. "Is Israel trying to impose a 'final solution' on the Palestinians in the West Bank?" Ramirez asked at the Security Council meeting. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon immediately condemned the statement, and Ramirez apologized to "the Jewish people, if they were offended by my statement." The...

Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is no stranger to controversy, with a legacy of questionable statements on Israel and the US government. In 2013 the former chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Israel was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In 2007 Wilkerson appeared in a Dutch documentary, claiming that American foreign policy was dominated by “the Jewish lobby”. Despite his history of inflammatory rhetoric and frequent conspiracy theories, Wilkerson was tapped to serve as a military and foreign policy adviser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015. In the wake...

Just be pragmatic, please. There is nothing Israel can do or offer to "make peace" with the Arabs here. And only once Israel accepts this reality, will the terror calm down. Because part of this acceptance is to admit that the Arab terrorists are not ordinary criminals with legal rights to defend themselves. They are fantastic ideological monsters lacking in accepted human values. Their murderous terror does not come from poverty and hopelessness. Bus bomber's family: 'Only you Israelis are guilty' Terrorist's family tells Israeli media bombing was 'self-defense,' reveals 19-year-old terrorist grew up with wealth and had his own...

Ex-mayor and Labour councillor calls to deport Israelis to US, claims Israel behind US school shooting and ISIS terror attacks. Yet another member of the UK Labour Party has stirred up controversy with a series of virulently anti-Israel comments accusing the Jewish state of a litany of atrocities and calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. After a week in which both former London mayor and Labour activist Ken Livingstone and Labour MP Naz Shah were suspended for anti-Semitic comments, the former mayor of Blackburn has come under fire for social media comments posted less than a year...

As a young boy, I used to think my grandma very strange. In her bedroom she kept a suitcase, packed and ready for use at a moment’s notice. “Just in case,” she’d tell me when I asked where it was that she was always waiting to go to. “You never know when they’ll turn on the Jews.” Her house in Northwood was epitome of suburban comfort, and I couldn’t understand what on earth she meant. Until, that is, I learned some history – including the history of the Jews. Which is, in short, that pretty much everywhere, they have turned...

Seventy years ago this month, a committee of 12 scholars and statesmen completed an 80-page report that is all but forgotten today. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Regarding the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, consisting of six British and six American members, was a British idea. Under pressure from President Harry Truman to allow 100,000 Jewish survivors in Europe’s DP camps to emigrate to the British Mandate, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin proposed the joint committee as a way to outflank the White House. Between January and March 1946, the Committee heard testimony in Washington, London, numerous sites in Europe,...

A good week and a good summer to all of you. You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard how the British Labor Party has been overrun by anti-Semitism, and how that's come to a head in the last week or two. But Britain is not the only place that's happened. Anti-Semitism, politely described as anti-Zionism, has become synonymous with the Left in every Western country. Two important weekend pieces look at this phenomenon. The first is Stephen Pollard in the London Telegraph. Pollard concentrates on what's going on in his home country, Britain, and...