Free Republic

A Muslim girl who claimed to be eleven-years-old told American Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to "kill himself" in a video that has gone viral on social media. The incident occurred on Christmas Eve in Times Square in New York City, as anti-Israel activists attempted to 'cancel Christmas' in midtown. The girl approached Rabbi Boteach and told him that if he had a problem with 'Free Palestine,' "go kill yourself." The girl's mother supported her daughter's antisemitism when Rabbi Boteach said that he would report the incident to the police, and the girl declared that she was "not sorry" for calling...

A Muslim family aggressively accosted a prominent Rabbi in New York City's Times Square, telling him to kill himself if he has a problem with a free Palestine. The widely viewed video captured the family's smirking demeanor as a young girl, claiming to be 11 years old and from Canada, delivers the disturbing message. 'If you have a problem with free Palestine, kill yourself,' she said to the man on camera. 'Yeah, go ahead .. you can't do anything about it because I live in Canada.'

NEW YORK (AP) — Singer Dua Lipa is blasting an organization that paid for a full-page ad in The New York Times that called her antisemitic for her support of Palestinians, saying it used her name “shamelessly” to “advance their ugly campaign with falsehoods and blatant misrepresentations.” I n the ad which appeared in Saturday’s newspaper in the main section, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the head of the World Values Network, named Lipa, and the models Bella and Gigi Hadid as three “mega-influencers” who have “accused Israel of ethnic cleansing” and “vilified the Jewish State.”

Last week, though, Holocaust memory in America hit a whole new low. Holocaust memory is dying in America. A recent poll discovered that 22% of American millennials don’t know what the Holocaust is, and an astounding two-thirds couldn’t identify the word “Auschwitz.” Then there is the issue of our own communal belittling of the Holocaust. At a recent city council hearing in the city of Englewood, New Jersey where I live, I personally heard Orthodox rabbis invoke the Holocaust to help sell a commercial assisted-living project, being developed by a donor to both shuls, to the city council. I live...

Such change, moreover, couldn’t have come at a more fitting time For just about as long as there have been efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calls for a two-state solution have choked the global conversation. So much so that many have come to believe that there’s no other way to achieve peace. Suddenly, though, it seems those aren’t the only voices in the room. First, Israelis heard their prime minister vow days before a general election that Israel would be extending its sovereignty over all of Area C, which constitutes the bulk of Judea and Samaria, and which would...

So, Donald Trump delivers a speech in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the anti-Semites are up in arms. He is not the man they thought he was. In reality, he never was that man, which was more a projection of their own ideology than a right assessment of his. As Sam Kestenbaum reported on the Jewish Forward, “Trump Gives A Holocaust Speech — And The ‘Alt Right’ Screams ‘Betrayal’.” How, exactly, did Trump betray the “alt-right”?In his speech, he said, “The State of Israel is an eternal monument to the undying strength of the Jewish people. The fervent...

I am friendly with Donald Trump’s son-in-law and daughter, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. They are both extremely fine people. Jared is a leading advisor to his father-in-law on Israel and is rock-solid on all matters pertaining to the Jewish state. He stems from a famously philanthropically Jewish family who are devoted in every way to the interests of the Jewish community. I am in accordance with Mr. Trump on his strong position on issues of national security, fighting ISIS and terrorism, and tearing up the disastrous Iran nuclear deal which has already been breached by the Iranian government, making...

Rabbi Boteach held the third annual Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala last Thursday.‘Is there a liberal in the room?” One couldn’t help but wonder this while looking around the large ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Midtown last Thursday evening. It was filled with about 1,000 attendees of what could have been called “The Shmuley Boteach Show.” They were loudly cheering a succession of major conservative political figures outdoing each other in their support for Israel, condemnation of President Obama’s foreign policy, and giving voice to the fears about anti-Semitism at home and abroad. The formal name of...

Three Republicans, including an Englewood rabbi, are seeking the GOP nomination to run in the new 9th Congressional District. The three are vying for a chance to compete against Rep. Steve Rothman or Rep. Bill Pascrell, both Democrats, are engaged in a primary fight for the redrawn 9th District. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a talk show host and author of books including “Kosher Jesus” and “Kosher Sex,” told Bergen’s Republican Organization he wants to be the nominee, according to a report on politickernj.com. The congressional run is Boteach’s first bid for public office. Boteach and Rothman, a former Englewood mayor, were...

My friends tell me that I'm the Jewish Forrest Gump, a man who unexpectedly finds himself in strange and surprising situations. But the place I find myself in now surprises even me. I've just discovered that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi is going to be my neighbor. Quite literally. In about a month. In New Jersey. I knew when I moved into our home ten years ago that the property adjoining ours was the residence of the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations. But for many years the large estate was derelict and neglected. Overgrown with grass and shrubbery, it was...

I was on vacation with my family in Iceland when my office called and shared the terrible news of Michael Jackson's passing. My wife and children were with me in the van. We could scarcely believe what we had heard. The children all remembered Michael fondly. He had given them their dog Marshmallow who is a member of our family until today. My daughter teared up. And while I was heartsick at the news, especially for his three young children, I was not shocked. I dreaded this day and knew it had to come sooner rather than later. In the...

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but. The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for...

This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue. What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning...

The outrage over John Edward's admitted affair with a filmmaker transcends what we have seen with most recent sex scandals. This partly results from his repeated denials of the affair. Much more important, of course, is the fact that it took place while his wife was battling cancer. The two of them had already dealt with the tragedy of losing a teenage son, and the public is furious that Edwards caused his wife, who agreed to campaign for him even after being diagnosed with incurable bone cancer, more pain. Why, people want to know, do men who have it all...

The sickening specter of a monster like Samir Kuntar being welcomed home in Lebanon as a conquering hero should turn the stomachs of all who repose faith in humanity. Even for a generation neutered to horror stories, his crimes stand out. In April, 1979, after killing a police officer and then shooting Danny Haran at close range in the back in front of his four-year-old-daughter Einat, Kuntar proceeded to smash the head of the little girl on beach rocks and then crushed her skull with the butt of his rifle. The coup-de-grace was when, in an attempt to hide her...

Dr. Laura Schlesinger has a penchant for inane and knee-jerk moralizing. But last week even she outdid herself, as she blamed Elliot Spitzer's long-suffering wife, Silda, for her husband's unfaithfulness with a prostitute. Speaking on the Today show, Dr. Laura opined: "When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot...

America is talking about teen pregnancy. Britney Spears's baby sister Jamie Lynn, all of 16, is pregnant. The father, her 19-year-old boyfriend Casey Alridge, who may or may not face statutory rape charges for having sex with a minor, is someone she met at church. Then there is Juno, a satirical comedy about a tortured but well-meaning 16-year-old who gets pregnant and decides to give her baby to a childless couple who later want to divorce. It has been fascinating to watch the debate sparked by these two moms-to-be, with the principal question in each scenario being, "Why didn't she...

 The next president of the United States will need to address the crumbling social fabric of this great nation. America is richer than ever, but its families have never been so impoverished. Presidential contenders, from left; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).Photo: Office of John McCain, US Senate, City of NY, AP The main problems are: first and foremost, the 50-percent divorce rate; second, children who do not interact with their parents; third, a shallow and degenerate culture that especially degrades and exploits women;...

The invitation by Columbia University to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran beggars belief and brings one of America's foremost institutions of higher learning into disrepute. Columbia's distinguished president, Lee Bollinger, defended the invitation as being in keeping with "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate." Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to...

Christopher Hitchens's rancorous attack against religion, God Is Not Great, is the number-one book in America. Three years ago he and I debated religion in New York City (the debate is available on my Web site). I looked forward to the debate because I had always admired Hitchens's iconoclastic mind and barbed pen. In our debate, he did not disappoint. He began with a typically acerbic attack against religion, saying that Stephen Hawking had more wisdom in his tiny little finger than all the pages of the Bible combined. When my turn came, I responded that the great, wheelchair-bound physicist...