Free Republic

Last year, Kulanu MK and former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren received heavy criticism in some circles for his book Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. With the release of the book’s Hebrew edition, Oren spoke to Arutz Sheva, discussing in depth the tensions between Israel and the Obama administration and the push back he received for the English edition. The book, which created controversy for what some considered an unfair portrayal of President Barack Obama, elicited rare public condemnations from senior officials, including former US special envoy to the Middle Easy Martin Indyk. “When I wrote...

“Mara Carfagna: ‘If the West abandons Israel, it will be abandoning itself,'” a translation of “Mara Carfagna: ‘Se l’occidente abbandona Israele, abbandona se stesso,’” L’Informale, February 11, 2016: Mara Carfagna, the Minister for Equal Opportunity from May 2008 to November 2011, among Italian politicians has been one of the stoutest defenders of Israel. Mindful of ethical issues and civil rights, she was chosen by Berlusconi to be in charge of the civil and human rights section of his party, Forza Italia.We wanted to speak with her not only about Iran, but about the growing antisemitism in Europe, and the boycott...

The president of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC rebuked of Donald Trump on Tuesday, scolding him for his harsh comments about President Obama. “Last evening something occurred which has the potential to drive us apart, to divide us,” AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus said during the final day of the organization’s annual policy conference in Washington. “We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks and we take great offense against those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage.” “While we may have policy differences, we deeply respect the office of...

Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London, Penny Green, is the first candidate for the role of the UN envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories, a position that the Human Rights Council in Geneva will soon fill. Ms. Green would be a truly “impartial” choice. She accuses Israel of being a “criminal state”, of being guilty of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” and she even compares Israel to the Islamic State. Green has also complained that the US and the UK have not yet begun to bomb Israel for its “massacres”. The other “impartial” candidate, Canadian Professor Michael...

… A statement Wednesday says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pleased that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government decided to restart the funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. Canada discontinued the funding in 2010 during the administration of Conservative leader Stephen Harper amid criticism that the agency funded schools that had become hotbeds of anti-Israeli extremism. …

University of California officials are proposing to include "anti-Zionism" as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus, according to a long-awaited draft statement on intolerance released Tuesday. The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state. Scholars were similarly divided over whether a statement meant to express the UC regents' principles against intolerance should include Zionism -- historically an international movement to establish a Jewish homeland and...

Indirectly invoking the left-wing and Islamic narrative of Israel’s existence as the cause of political dysfunction in the Middle East, Senator Bernie Sanders implied to supporters at a campaign rally on Monday in Dearborn, Michigan - home of one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities - that “hatred and warfare” in the Middle east region were the fault of Israel. Praising former Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for their presumably good faith-endeavors to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict, Sanders implied that America unjustifiably treated the various parties unequally. In other words, allegedly favorable treatment of Israel at...

The Anti Defamation League, who chastised Donald Trump for his lack of response after being endorsed by infamous KKK leader David Duke, said on its official website on Tuesday that anti-Semitic Islamic religious leader Louis Farrakhan has thrown his support behind the bombastic presidential hopeful. Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Farrakhan delivered his statements in support of Donald Trump during his 2016 Saviors’ Day ser­mon on Sunday at the NOI’s Mosque Maryam in Chicago in which he also made anti-Semitic accusations of Jew­ish gov­ern­men­tal control. "[Donald Trump] is the only mem­ber who has stood in front of [the] Jew­ish com­mu­nity,...

On a recent TV show, Lebanese politician Vera Yammine said that the Holocaust was "shrouded in unclarity," and that the Jews "always fear exposure about the Holocaust, and are always eager to use it as a pretext." Yammine, a member of the political bureau of the Marada Movement, said: "Zionism has taken hold of the West and is taking hold of the East, and especially of the Arab world." She further said: "There is no such thing as ISIS or the Al-Nusra Front. All these terms have emerged from a single womb, the womb of Zionism. The show aired on...

The British government is to announce measures aimed at preventing local councils, unions and other public institutions from launching boycotts against the State of Israel this week. [...] The guidelines would enable the government itself to take action against organizations which boycott Israel, as well as empowering other bodies to take boycotters to court. They would prevent any public body from promoting a boycott of country signed up to the World Trade Organization's government procedural agreement, the paper (The Times) reported. ...

Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul blasted the presidential hopeful, Donald Trump for being “authoritarian” on Alan Colmes’ Show recently. Paul’s comments about Trump came about when he was asked if Donald Trump was good or bad for the Republican Party, to which Paul replied, chuckling, “Well I don’t even care whether he’s good or bad for the Republican party. I don’t have much interest in that per se. But, I think he’s a dangerous person and a lot of people find him kind of funny and they love him, even libertarian types love him…” When Colmes presses Paul to explain...

For over eight years the Israeli company SodaStream has been dealing with ongoing attacks by the BDS movement, calling to boycott it over its factory in Mishor Adumim to the east of Jerusalem that eventually it was forced to move to the Negev in late 2014. Large economic losses inflicted by the BDS boycott movement forced the company to make the move - but the big losers in the story are the hundreds of Palestinian Arab employees of SodaStream who lost their jobs and income. SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum spoke to Yedioth Aharonoth about the hardships which came to the...

A brutal ISIS torturer wasn't the only jihadist terrorist who traveled with former British MP George Galloway to Gaza, it has been revealed. According to a recent report, Alexander Kotey left the UK on Galloway's "Viva Palestina" convoy to Gaza in 2009, and from there eventually made his way to Syria to join the Islamic State terror group. [...] As many as eight Muslim extremists who would later be convicted of or involved in terrorist activities joined the convoy, according to The Times. Among them were Amin Addala and Reza Afsharzadegan, both known associates of Emwazi from west London; and...

WASHINGTON — National Public Radio’s (NPR) ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen released an explanation and apology Monday for a map published on the news organization’s website that erased Israel from the Middle East. On January 24, NPR’s blog Goats and Soda, which covers health and culture issues around the world, ran a piece titled, “What Are You Afraid Of In 2016? Globetrotters Share Their Fears.” The post focused on travelers’ anxieties for the coming year, and included an illustration of the Middle East and North Africa, the region of the world that travelers most perceive as being at risk. “The map portion...

In an article published on National Public Radio's (NPR) website Monday, a map of the Middle East failed to include Israel, labeling Palestine in its place. The map was an illustration accompanying the article "What Are You Afraid Of In 2016? Globetrotters Share Their Fears." The article referenced travelers' fears of Islamic radicalization and extremism in the region. Immediately following the publication, the website's comment section was flooded with criticism from readers and journalists who questioned the online publication's decision to use an illustration of this nature. As a result of the abundance of complaints, NPR removed the photo and...

A senior British MP has compared a violent anti-Israel riot at a London university last week to kristallnacht, as condemnation of the violence carried out by pro-Palestinian activists continues to mount. In an interview with Sky News on Sunday morning, Sir Eric Pickles - a former minister who now serves as the United Kingdom's Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues - likened the incident, in which windows were smashed and at least one Jewish student was physically assaulted, to the Nazi pogrom in which anti-Semitic thugs ransacked Jewish-owned synagogues, shops and other establishments in Germany. ...

China supports the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during an Arab League convention in Cairo. The Palestinian issue "should not be marginalized," Xi said, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency. "We are in favor of putting in place a new mechanism to promote peace as to the Middle East question, and support efforts made by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation toward this end," said the leader of the world's most populous country and its second-largest economy. Xi declared that that Beijing "firmly supports the...

A group of 71 British physicians have begun to exert pressure on the World Medical Association (WMA) to revoke the membership of the Israel Medical Association (IMA), it was revealed in a Knesset meeting on Wednesday. IMA representative Dr. Ze'ev Feldman announced the disturbing new step during a Knesset Science and Technology Committee meeting on the subject of boycotts against Israeli academic institutions. "The sword of the boycott has been raised against the scientific medical community in Israel," he declared, warning that Israel’s medical doctors are "in grave danger." "The professional British journals have adopted the idea of letters to...

Jewish immigration to Israel from western Europe has reached an all-time high as a result of a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, a leading nonprofit group said Thursday. The Jewish Agency, which works closely with the Israeli government and acts as a link for Jews around the world, reported that 9,880 western European Jews immigrated to Israel in 2015 -- the highest annual number ever. The vast majority, close to 8,000, came from France where a rise in anti-Semitic attacks has shattered the sense of security of the world's third-largest Jewish population. ...

WASHINGTON--A former top US diplomat suggested Washington foment Arab Spring-style Palestinian protests as a method of pushing the Israeli leadership into making moves, a new batch of emails from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton shows. On December 18, 2011, Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to Israel who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under former president Bill Clinton, emailed Clinton a recommendation to spark Palestinian demonstrations, led by female protesters, to push Jerusalem into talks. Upon receiving the message, Clinton asked an aide to print it out. Without detailing how the US would spark these...