Free Republic

The island country of Cape Verde announced on Wednesday that it will no longer be voting against Israel in the United Nations. The decision came following a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Cape Verde’s President Jorge Carlos Fonseca, who then instructed his envoy at the UN that the island in West Africa would no longer be voting against Israel. Netanyahu welcomed the decision on Wednesday evening. …

There was a spate of headlines last week claiming that new scientific discoveries disproved the historical narrative of the Bible. Headlines included, "DNA vs the Bible: Israelites did not wipe out the Canaanites" and "Study disproves the Bible's suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out." The problem is that the reverse is actually true: The discoveries confirm what the Scriptures explicitly state.Not surprisingly, these headlines didn't come from obscure, Bible-bashing websites. Instead, they came from Cosmos Magazine, Yahoo.com, New Scientist (claiming that the discovery helped unravel the "true fate" of the Canaanites), and others. As stated in the New York...

Shortly before a recent Massachusetts state committee hearing to discuss a proposed “Anti-Discrimination Bill,” the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece criticizing the bill. The Op-Ed, by Columbia University professor Katherine Franke, argued that measures to discourage anti-Israel boycotts “betray” the legacy of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. In fact, Parks was an outspoken and very public opponent of discriminatory anti-Israel boycotts. […] … Along with Coretta Scott King, Bayard Rustin and other civil rights luminaries, Parks was a co-signer of a 1975 letter that described as “repugnant” the Arab world’s boycott targeting Israel, a precursor to today’s BDS movement....

After the scandal involving the ejection of Jewish women carrying Star of David pride flags at Chicago’s Dyke March on June 28, a sister organization in the city has announced that it will follow suit by banning “Zionist displays” from its upcoming protest against sexual violence and “rape culture.”

The journalist who first reported the ejection of three Jewish women from Chicago’s Dyke March tweeted that she was removed from her reporting job because of that article. In a tweet Monday, Gretchen Rachel Hammond wrote to Dyke March’s Twitter account that “You attacked, humiliated and robbed me of a job.” Hammond confirmed to JTA on the same day that she wrote the tweet. Hammond said she could not elaborate on her tweet, citing an agreement with her employer, the Windy City Times. […] The Dyke March itself has fielded criticism for using an anti-Semitic slur, tweeting on July 13...

An editor of the left-wing Haaretz daily chastised French President Emmanuel Macron for calling anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism, praising anti-Zionism as “resistance” against racism and apartheid. Asaf Ronel, the world news editor for Haaretz, criticized Macron’s recent statement that anti-Zionism was a “reinvention” of anti-Semitism. “We will never surrender to the messages of hate; we will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism,” said Macron on Sunday. Responding to Macron’s comments via Twitter, Ronel rejected the comparison, and denounced Zionism as being “inherently racist”. Ronel also praised anti-Zionism for “resisting” the evils of modern Zionism....

After I spoke last Thursday in the beautiful nation of Iceland, a Leftist in Reykjavik poisoned me. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. The international Left has rejected free speech, and has embraced violence as a suitable response to speech contradicting its narrative. My visit triggered a firestorm of abuse in the Icelandic press, all of which was based on American Leftist talking points. Every story about my visit used the same elements. For example, that the Southern Poverty Law Center claims I purvey “hate speech,” which is a subjective judgment used to shut down dissent from the establishment...

Ahead of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s visit to Israel on Saturday, a German government study revealed that nearly 33 million Germans, 40% of the population of 82 million, are infected with contemporary antisemitism — hatred of the Jewish state. The report, which was published on April 24, details in a section titled “Agreement to Israel-related antisemitism” that 40% of Germans who were polled showed approval for the following statement: “Based on Israel’s policies, I can understand people having something against the Jews.” The federal government’s antisemitism report found that the proportion of Germans who agreed with the antisemitic statement increased...

11:45 a.m. Secretary of State John Kerry says that if Israel rejects a two-state solution for peace with the Palestinian people, "it can be Jewish or it can be democratic."

Prominent Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, a leader in the feminist movement, said in an interview published Monday that Zionists cannot be feminists. Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, spoke with Collier Meyerson of the Nation about the relationship between feminism and Zionism, the movement to reestablish and maintain a Jewish nation in Israel, the Jewish people's ancient homeland. Sarsour was dubbed a "champion of change" by the Obama administration and has been active in the feminist movement, serving as co-chair of the Women's March on Washington the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration and helping...

Alleging divestment is anti-Semitic depends on the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Our critiques of Israel’s practices are not attacking people of the Jewish faith or heritage.

… Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control. The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom. […]...

A new sheriff arrived in town with the appointment of Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In her first speech, she indicated the disproportionate contribution by the United States -- 22% of the UN budget and 28% of UN peacekeeping operations -- to the world organization. The UN budget should be subject "strategic cutting," and sometimes withholding of dues. In picturesque language, Haley spoke of the need for a strong U.S. role at the UN. She had already made clear during her testimony on January 18, 2017, to the Senate Foreign Relations...

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said that it was the fault of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that a peace deal was not agreed upon during the Obama administration. Speaking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN, Kerry rejected Amanpour’s assertion that the administration failed to broker a peace deal. “The leaders of the two countries involved — one country and one entity, the Palestinian Authority — have failed to come to the table and reach agreement. You know the old saying — you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink. Now, we...

The US House of Representatives passed a scathing rebuke Thursday night to a United Nations Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed through last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a “one-sided” effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict and encouraging Palestinians from engaging in direct, bilateral negotiations. […] Introduced by California Rep. Ed Royce (R) and New York Rep. Elliot Engel (D), the top two members of the House Foreign Affairs committee, the resolution was co-sponsored 105 other House members,...

"While Secretary Kerry mentioned Gaza in his speech, he seems to have forgotten the history of the settlements in Gaza, where the Israeli government forced settlers to withdraw from all settlements and the Palestinians responded by sending rockets from Gaza into Israel," Schumer said in a statement. "This is something that people of all political stripes in Israel vividly remember.

The Swedish government has welcomed Friday’s UN resolution calling for Israel to end illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with Foreign Minister Margot Wallström calling the decision “very positive”. […] In a statement, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution “shameful”. Sweden is scheduled to join the security council for two years starting in January 2017, and will chair the council during that month. …

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel will re-assess its ties with the United Nations following the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday. The vote was able to pass the 15-member council on Friday because the United States broke with a long-standing approach of diplomatically shielding Israel and did not wield its veto power as it had on many times before - a decision that Netanyahu called "shameful".

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who was refused meetings with Israeli ministers during her visit to the region, on Saturday tweeted about her visit to “Palestine”. “Returning from Palestine. Action is needed to save the two state solution. Settlements and demolitions thwart conditions and hope for peace,” tweeted Wallstrom, who visited Ramallah and met with Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that during her visit to Ramallah, Abbas decorated the Swedish minister with an award he calls the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem. Speaking in a press conference...

Oscar Biscet, a well-known human rights activist from Havana, spent over a decade in Cuban prisons for a host of alleged crimes: dishonoring national symbols, public disorder, inciting delinquent behavior, and, ultimately, crimes against state security. “They put me in a very tiny cell full of tuberculosis patients,” he recalled last week. In another case of the perverse treatment he received for publicly opposing the regime, the prison guards threw him into a small cell with mental patients who had not been given their medication. “They are more subtle than Hitler and Stalin, but they have the same mechanisms,” he...