Free Republic

n which our host, Andrew Klavan, points out that the leftists behind the current Boycott, Divestment and Sanction, or BDS, efforts against the State of Israel are not at all anti-semitic. They just hate Jews and want to kill them... TRANSCRIPT: RT: WHO PUT THE BS IN BDS? I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth. Many people have voiced disapproval of the BDS movement. Personally, I feel if some hapless schmuck likes to be chained up while a woman smacks him with a whip that’s nobody’s business but... No, wait, maybe that’s BDSM, the sex thing. BDS is...

At one point during this this week’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the hundreds of delegates, known as commissioners, gleefully bounced scores of red balloons in the air. At another point, they collectively broke into dance, confirming that most Protestants, especially if they’re old, white and Anglo, don’t look so great wiggling around. (Here’s a video, for mature viewers only.) Mainline Protestantism, at least in its official curia, has been liberal for nearly 100 years. But for most of that century it was a thoughtful, dignified liberalism that still roughly adhered to historic Christianity’s moral architecture, even if...

The anti-Israel movement has made academia its breeding ground, and new initiatives to boycott Israeli academics and research are frequently introduced to student and professorial bodies. But the BDS movement was dealt a crippling blow on Wednesday, after one college turned the tables - introducing the first anti-BDS resolution at an American university. The student government at Western Washington University (Associated Students WWU) voted unanimously Wednesday that it will not consider boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) based on national origin, according to Israel advocacy organization StandWithUs. The 7-0 vote represents the first time ever that a North American university’s student...

The Rolling Stones were taking the stage in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and were extremely excited to perform in Israel for the very first time. Ahead of the milestone show they decided to travel to Jerusalem where they visited the Western Wall. While Keith Richards skipped the outing, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts were all photographed at the holy spot, also known as the Kotel or Wailing Wall. Mick, 70, was paying his respects at the sacred site, and was spotted placing a hand on the Wall after following the lead of two men in kippah. Ronnie, who...

Recently, two surviving founders of Pink Floyd sent the rock band equivalent of a diplomatic cable — an open letter published in Salon — to the Rolling Stones. They asked Mick Jagger and his crew to cancel their first-ever concert in Israel to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle against occupation. But Pink Floyd hit a wall. The Stones not only went on with the show Wednesday night in Tel Aviv but delayed their opening by 45 minutes to allow devout Jews time to reach the concert after the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, during...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Jed Babbin. It’s not unusual for left-wing billionaire activist George Soros to be opposed or even protested by conservatives. But when Soros is attacked by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, it’s nothing other than political fratricide. The goal of the BDS movement is to stop investment in Israel and keep countries from importing products from Israel. There is more than a little irony in the announcement last Wednesday that the BDS Movement is supposedly boycotting Soros and his network of funds and foundations because of his investment in SodaStream and...

Leaked messages from an internal listserv of university professors involved in the debate surrounding an effort to boycott Israel have revealed a deep bias against the Jewish state and anti-Semitic accusations that Zionists and Jewish people control academia. The highly charged rhetoric about Israel, revealed last week on a leaked listserv, show that some professors involved in the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) resolution to boycott Israel are motivated by the belief that Jewish people are nefariously pulling the strings in American academia. The leaked comments have spurred accusations of anti-Semitism in the MLA’s ranks and prompted outrage among Jewish leaders...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a lawsuit brought by anti-Bush protesters who claimed the Secret Service violated the First Amendment in 2004 by moving them away from President George W. Bush while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain closer to him. The case stemming from Bush's visit to a Jacksonville, Ore. inn about three weeks before the 2004 election appeared to ally the court's conservatives, who traditionally side with police, with liberals who are more skeptical of law enforcement but are often quite deferential when presidential security concerns are at stake. "No decision of which we are aware...would alert...

Almost two years after a Haifa court ruled that Israel was not negligent in the 2003 death of American activist Rachel Corrie during a protest against IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, the Supreme Court heard her family’s appeal of the verdict Wednesday afternoon. Speaking before the hearing in Jerusalem, Craig Corrie, the activist’s father, said the lower court’s ruling had given the army “immunity and impunity.” “I think that’s very dangerous,” he said. “I hope the Israeli high court will change the findings, but if they don’t, I hope the world and the world press will bring it into...

This week, students at DePaul University are being asked to get involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and vote on a non-binding resolution that asks the university to divest from companies that do business in the Jewish State. But for some Jewish students on the Lincoln Park, Chicago campus, the campaign behind the proposed measure has created an atmosphere of intimidation, not free speech. Rachel (last name withheld), a sophomore at DePaul, explained that the “DePaul Divest” campaign, begun two months ago, has transformed this campus from one that used to be “safe and community-giving.” “This entire campaign and entire sit-in...

George Soros, the leftists’ billionaire version of Sheldon Adelson, has bought $24.3 million worth of shares in the Israeli-Based SodaStream company, which has a factory in the same Judean Desert claimed by the Palestinian Authority and for which Sorors has donated millions of dollars.

A Jewish student at UCLA who refused to sign a Muslim-sponsored “ethics statement” against traveling to Israel on Jewish-funded trips has won re-election to the student government, where he will serve as Internal Vice President.

Two founders of the Pink Floyd rock band have called on the Rolling Stones to cancel a concert in Israel in an op-ed for news website Salon.com. In the article, titled “Why the Rolling Stones shouldn’t play in Israel”, Roger Waters and Nick Mason wrote: “Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid.” The aging rockers added that the Rolling Stones’ Israel concert comes at “a critical time in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom and equal rights.” The Stones are due to perform on June 4 at Tel Aviv’s...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Rashid Khalidi’s False Narrative of Israeli HistoryPosted By Andrew Harrod On May 1, 2014 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Palestinian-American Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi addressed America’s role in the Arab-Israeli peace process on April 17, 2014, at Washington, DC’s Jerusalem Fund, a pro-Palestinian think tank.  Describing Israel’s “entirely false narrative” into which “we have all been brainwashed,” Khalidi revealed his own myopia before an audience of about forty mostly likeminded, middle-aged people.John Halaka’s “Portraits of Denial and Despair” photo exhibit currently displayed in Jerusalem Fund hallways set a worrying...

What if the United States has been waging the wrong war against the wrong enemy for the last 13 years in Afghanistan? Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall, who's spent more than a decade covering Afghanistan since 2001, concludes just that in her new book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014.

The greatest work of art George W. Bush ever took part in was in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at his head. “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” screamed the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who had been arrested twice by U.S. forces during the occupation.Bush dodged the shoes with the same ease with which he’d had dodged consequences all his life; those for drunk driving, for ruined companies, stolen elections, war crimes, the destruction of Zaidi’s country.After he dodged the shoes, Bush joked about free countries. Meanwhile, guards beat Zaidi bloody. Police tortured him...

Desmond Tutu is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end apartheid in South Africa, and has long been a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent means to challenge the Israeli occupation of Palestine and is the initiative being attacked by these bills. Tutu notes that these legislative initiatives are aimed “at punishing and intimidating those who speak their conscience and challenge the human rights violations endured by the Palestinian people.”

Dr. Qanta Ahmed is a subspecialist board certified sleep disorders specialist and faculty attending physician in the Department of Medicine as part of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care Medicine at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York. Dr. Ahmed is appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (Stony Brook). She practices sleep disorders medicine in Garden City at the Winthrop University Sleep Disorders Center where she treats adolescents and adults of all ages. Dr. Ahmed is also a non-fiction author. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women (Sourcebooks 2008) details her experience...

A pro-Palestinian activist on the University of Michigan’s campus recently posted what experts described as “an overtly threatening” photo of himself wearing a traditional Arab headscarf and jamming a knife into a pineapple. The emergence of the photo comes just days after Palestinian activists on the University of Michigan’s campus leveled death threats and racial epithets at pro-Israel students who opposed a resolution to divest from Israel. Pro-Palestinian campus activists, angered by the student government’s recent decision to reject their divestment measure, leveled death threats at one student and have reportedly called other pro-Israel students “dirty Jew” and “kike.” The...

The University of Michigan would not explain how it is responding to death threats and racial epithets that were reportedly issued by pro-Palestinian activists at students who oppose a resolution to divest from Israel. University of Michigan police were first contacted last week after two pro-Palestinian activists shouted “threats of violence” at a student who refused to support their boycott initiative during a “sit-in” at the student government’s headquarters. The Washington Free Beacon has further learned that the pro-Israel student received death threats and that others have allegedly been called “kikes” and “dirty Jews” by backers of the virulently anti-Israel...