Free Republic

Six Jewish vigilantes were jailed in Paris yesterday over a "savage gang attack" targeting attendees at a fundraising event for Gaza in 2009 in the French capital. The defendants used iron bars, baseball bats and bike chains in the onslaught, in which they deliberately targeted anybody who looked like a Muslim. Among their victims was a 22-year-old singer who suffered a “lynching” by the 20-strong mob who chanted “Death to Arabs” and “Long live Israel”. All were leading members of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a notorious vigilante group that is outlawed in both America and Israel because of its...

The Israeli left as a democratic political movement is dead. That piece of bad news was delivered by a recent survey which shows that only 8% of Israeli Jews identify with the left, 55% with the center and 37% with the right. In the last election, the establishment Labor Party had to dress up as a wolf in Zionist centrist clothing by renaming itself the Zionist Camp (it still lost). The left had to create two other fake centrist parties to stop Netanyahu, but just ended up having to roll them into his center-right coalition. The Israeli left still controls...

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...

Bernie Sanders Meets with Leader of Designated Terrorist Group CAIR’s Rasha Mubarak and her Jew-hating history. March 16, 2016 Joe Kaufman    On March 10th, the Florida chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) posted on its Facebook page a photo of its Orlando Regional Operations Coordinator, Rasha Mubarak, shoulder-to-shoulder and smiling beside an equally smiling US Senator Bernie Sanders. Next to the photo, CAIR stated that the two were together “for a meeting with local Orlando leaders.” Question: Why was a leader of a group with so many connections to terrorism invited to such a meeting...

The official U.S. Visa Service for foreign citizens website, to help them travel to the United States, is surprisingly not part of a government Internet domain. Apparently this service has been outsourced by the US government to another firm, possible Computer Sciences Corporation. It really is the official US visa site, though, and a number of US embassy and consulate webpages point there. This one says explicitly that it is "the ONLY authorized website for the payment of visa fees." The reason this is interesting is the page from this official visa site that offers individuals to choose which country...

Anti-BDS Bill Fought By Hamas Associates and Group Justifying Knife Attacks in Israel Bill on desk and ready to be signed into law by Florida Governor Rick Scott. March 8, 2016 Joe Kaufman    On March 3, 2016, a bill was sent by the Florida Senate to the office of Florida Governor Rick Scott that, if signed into law, would prevent government agencies from giving public funds to companies based in Florida that are engaged in a boycott of Israel. The legitimacy of the bill can be shown merely by exposing the groups who are protesting its passage, groups...

The Indiana Senate near-unanimously approved a bill on Tuesday banning state funds from investing in entities that support the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement, which aims to demonize, delegitimize, isolate and ultimately destroy the Jewish State has begun to appear in Indiana, especially on college campuses. [...] BDS promotes intimidation, fear and violence across campuses in Indiana according to the bill, and is "unethical and deeply damaging to the cause of peace, justice, equality democracy and human rights for all people in the Middle East." ...

A 12-foot-tall inflatable Pinocchio prominently featured in a pro-Israel installation at Columbia University has been permanently deflated, according to one of the students in the group that had erected it. The news came Thursday from Columbia’s Student Governing Board (SGB), nearly 48 hours after it held a special meeting to discuss Pinocchio’s fate. “SGB decided not to approve it,” Rudy Rochman, a co-founder of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI), told The Algemeiner. “We will put the rest of our display back up, without the Pinocchio.” When The Algemeiner asked Rochman whether SGB had given a reason for...

Trump Gains Among Christians in the Middle East By Ray Hanania February 18, 2016 Donald Trump may have angered Muslims with his broad swipes at Islamic terrorism and violence, but he has garnered more positive sentiment from Christians in the Middle East. ...snip... Trump's comments have gained strong support among Arab Christians and Middle East Christians who feel as though mainstream Muslim activists have failed to fully confront extremists. Though Muslims reject the radicals' tactics of terrorism and violence, arguing that they twist the true face of Islam, their leadership fails in strategic communications. Trump is honest and compensates for...

The chief executive of SodaStream International Ltd. says he has been forced to lay off hundreds of Palestinian workers after a factory was targeted by an international boycott movement and moved from the West Bank into Israel. [...] The global boycott movement seeks to ostracize Israel by lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state. ...

The European Union fears Mediterranean migrant smuggling gangs are reviving a route from Egypt, officials told Reuters, putting thousands of people to sea in recent months as they face problems in Libya and Turkey. "It's an increasing issue," an EU official said of increased activity after a quiet year among smugglers around Alexandria that has raised particular concerns in Europe about Islamist militants from Sinai using the route to reach Greece or Italy. Departures from Egypt were a tiny part of the million people who arrived in Europe by sea last year; more than 80 percent came from Turkey to...

His name was never spoken in two hours of speeches, but Donald Trump's anti-Islamic rhetoric and the Islamophobia it has churned up were roundly repudiated Sunday, as Bay Area civic and religious leaders told Muslim residents and neighbors: You are one of us and you are not alone.

Ever heard about the 'Khazar' myth pushed by the Neo-Nazis/KKK? In fact, Jews are both a nation and a religion. the percentage of those with any roots in khazaria is so minimal, that there was only one non-historian "writer" that came up with the idea to say that the percentage is higher. As a penpal who is of Jewish background told me once: 'Before the WW2 Were were told to go BACK to Palestine where we came from... now the same haters don't even grant us that...' Hitler VS Khazar mythOddly enough, Hitler's "aryanism" and anti-Jewish sick obession was AGAINST...

Penning an article for the Financial Times, historian Simon Schama, a liberal belonging to the establishment, writes that “the problem of the left with the Jews has a long and unfortunate history” and that “criticism of Israeli government policies became a rejection of Israel’s right to exist”. Schama then asks: “Why is it so much easier to hate the Jews?” This is an article that should be sent to all those intellectuals, journalists, writers, academics who for years, every day, in Italy and the West, demonized the Jewish State. The good people on the left who feel that it is...

Senators urge president to enforce provisions 'as enacted and intended' Leading Democrats are taking aim at the Obama administration for its opposition to newly passed legislation that aims to bolster the U.S.-Israel economic relationship and combat boycotts of Israel, according to a statement issued this week. The Obama administration announced that it opposes portions of a bipartisan trade bill that would strengthen economic ties between the U.S. and Israel and force trade partners to sever ties with backers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an anti-Israel movement that seeks to economically isolate the Jewish state. President Barack Obama...

Senate Democrats have opened a rare public feud with President Barack Obama over a congressional effort to discourage America's trading partners from targeting Israel with politically motivated boycotts and sanctions. Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats voiced their objections to Obama's decision not to implement provisions in a trade law that instructs U.S. negotiators to protect Israel from being punished economically for its treatment of Palestinians. [...] Obama is opposed to the boycott movement and has pledged to fight it "as long as I am president." But his administration took issue with part of the bill that it said...

President Barack Obama has announced in a rare statement that he will not follow newly passed measures aimed at boosting the Israeli economy and strengthening ties between the United States and the Jewish state, according to a statement issued by the president. Obama stated that while he would sign the new trade resolution, portions of which focus on combatting economic boycotts of Israel, he would not enforce certain pro-Israel provisions that order the United States to stop partnering with countries that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which aims to isolate Israel. The president’s rejection of these...

On a recent Sunday afternoon at a Rami Levy supermarket in the West Bank, an Israeli soldier patrolled next to a rack of toothpaste, on a two-for-one sale. Outside, Israeli and Palestinian customers walked through a new black metal detector on their way in; it was installed just an hour before.Rami Levy, the founder of the eponymous discount supermarket chain, touts his stores as an example of coexistence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Jews and Arabs work and shop together. It's an image that Palestinian activists have rejected as a mere illusion of harmony when Israelis control the land...

In yet another blow to the BDS movement seeking to stir up an international boycott of the Jewish state, the international singer-songwriter phenomenon Sia announced on Tuesday she will be performing in Israel this August. The Australian pop star announced on Facebook she will be playing at Rishon Lezion's Live Park on August 11. The tickets went on sale starting today on her tour site, and start at 299 shekels going up to 799 shekels. Sia's announcement further caps a string of top pop stars performing in Israel this summer, as Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez are both to perform at...

A prominent Palestinian Arab human rights activist received death threats from radical BDS protestors during a lecture at Chicago University last Thursday. While Israelis speaking abroad at universities have frequently been targeted by anti-Israel movements and campus groups in the past, now even pro-Palestinian human rights organizations are feeling the heat. Bassem Eid is the head of the Palestininian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), an organization and a former member of the far-left wing Israeli group B’Tselem. While Eid would appear to be an unlikely target for anti-Israel smear groups, BDS demonstrators nevertheless showed up to disrupt his lecture at...