Free Republic

Last August, I wrote bluntly on The Huffington Post about the "Jew Tax;" that's what I called the portion of my synagogue dues going for surveillance cameras, alarms and a security guard. Now, in the wake of the recent massacres in France, taxpayers in all Western nations find themselves facing a version of that same fee. My article was prompted by the surge in anti-Semitic violence coinciding with the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. But as a report from the Anti-Defamation League made clear, that outbreak was just the latest manifestation of decades of anti-Jewish prejudice deliberately instigated by...

What is the New York Times’ first response after Muslims massacred secular cartoonists and Jews? Start immediately collecting Muslim whining to bolster claims of Islamophobia. (via Israel Matzav) In the aftermath of the Paris attacks last week, the New York Times is understandably interested in hearing about the experiences of minorities in Europe these days. That is commendable. It’s just the kind of journalism that sheds light on everyday life of people facing adversity the world over. It’s important and informative and insightful, and we applaud it, and look forward to reading it.Scratch that. Actually, the Times is obsessively...

Churches Burned and Shops Raided in Charlie Hebdo Protests in West Africa Demonstrators in Niger attacked the French cultural center, set fire to churches and raided Christian shops on Friday, as protests erupted against Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in several Muslim West African countries. Police in Niger's southern city of Zinder, the second largest in Niger, fired tear gas at a crowd of hundreds of people who burned French flags and tires in the streets. "The protesters are crying out in local Hausa language: 'Charlie is Satan — let hell engulf those supporting Charlie,'" said Aboubacar Mamane, a shopkeeper, by telephone....

Stone-throwing demonstrators set fire to two churches in Niger's capital Niamey on Saturday, in the latest protest in France's former African colonies at French newspaper Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. .... The death toll from Friday's clashes in Niger's second largest city of Zinder, rose to five after emergency services discovered a burned body inside a Catholic Church.

The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, has emerged over the past tumultuous week as one of the West’s most vocal foes of Islamism, though he’s actually been talking about the threat it poses for a long while. During the course of an interview conducted before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he told me—he went out of his way to tell me, in fact—that he refuses to use the term “Islamophobia” to describe the phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, because, he says, the accusation of Islamophobia is often used as a weapon by Islamism's apologists to silence their critics. Most of my...

In 2014, the year before the murder rampages at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the kosher supermarket in Paris, about seven thousand French Jews (out of a community of about half a million) emigrated to Israel.With Muslim and other antisemitic harassment and violence constantly intensifying in France, that was twice the number of the previous year, and a record high.Even before this monthÂ’s terror attacks, a higher number of French Jewish immigrants to Israel was expected for 2015. Now, after the attacks, a higher number yet is expected, possibly fifteen thousand. There is even talk of the Jews leaving...

If President Obama believes that terrorists who identify as Islamic aren’t true Muslims, why does he treat them as if they are? Media are fixated on the Obama administration’s latest ridiculous refusal to admit any link between Islam and terrorism, despite video of the Paris mass murderers shouting, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad!” The point here is not about Islam per se. It’s about the irreconcilability of Obama’s words with his actions. In his 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt, Obama claimed to “seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” while at the same...

Twelve cartoonists are dead in Paris for violating Islam’s blasphemy law. Four Jews are dead for being among the people that the Qur’an claims are “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” (5:82). Muslims have recently attacked and killed police officers in New York City, Canada, and France. And Thursday, Muslims fired on police who were raiding their terror operations, and two of the jihadis were killed. Europe is under siege. As is the free world.

It is settled: The Paris terror attacks had almost nothing to do with Islam. If there is any doubt about this, consider that on the one hand, you have the chilling new tape of the Charlie Hebdo attackers declaring, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” and on the other, you have the tortured reassurances of White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Which are you going to believe? The Obama administration’s mind-bogglingly determined refusal to say that we are at war with “radical Islam,” together with the left’s evasions about Islamic terrorism, means that there has been a haze of euphemism and...

On Sunday, at the great Paris rally, the whole world was Charlie. By Tuesday, the veneer of solidarity was exposed as tissue thin. It began dissolving as soon as the real, remaining Charlie Hebdo put out its post-massacre issue featuring a Muhammad cover that, as the New York Times put it, “reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities.” Again? Already? Had not 4 million marchers and 44 foreign leaders just turned out on the streets of France to declare “No” to intimidation, and pledging solidarity, indeed identification (“Je suis Charlie”) with a satirical weekly specializing in the most...

Could this argument be any dumber? The Obama administration has forced America and much of the world into a debate no one wanted or needed. Namely, does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with Islam. This debate is different than the much-coveted "national conversation on race" that politicians so often call for (usually as a way to duck having it), because that is a conversation at least some people want. The White House doesn't want a conversation about Islam and terrorism. White House spokesman Josh Earnest says, "We have chosen not to use that label [of radical Islam] because it...

Thousands of Israelis showed their support and sympathy at the funeral of the four victims killed by a terrorist attack on the kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher in Paris. The victims were buried today at noon Israeli time in the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. All the victims were Jewish; Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Phillipe Barham and Francois-Michel Saada. Although the victims were French citizens, their families asked the Israeli authorities for permission to bury their bodies in Israel. Israel’s government agreed, and made the necessary arrangements. The funerals were attended by many Israeli public figures, as well as key figures...

Following the deadly Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris last week, the Obama administration finally set a date for its global summit on dealing with “extremism.” However, the conclave will not be focusing on Western and Arab governments’ support for extreme jihadists in Libya, Syria, and beyond; or on extreme gun-control schemes that left French citizens defenseless in the face of terrorism last week; or on extreme anti-free-speech policies purporting to ban criticism of Islam pushed by the United Nations, the European Union, and the Socialist French government. Instead, the White House “extremism” summit will focus primarily on expanding the...

Legendary Cartoonist Robert Crumb on the Massacre in ParisThe ex-pat artist, who has lived in France for 25 years, talks to the Observer about his new cartoon of Muhammed Robert Crumb is considered by many to be the single best cartoonist America has ever produced. The creator of counter culture icons like Fritz the Cat, the Keep On Truckin guy and Mr Natural, Mr. Crumb was inducted into the comic book Hall of Fame in 1991, the same year he moved his family to France, where he has resided ever since. Writer Celia Farber reached him at his home on...

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.

The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all the brave words and feel-good marches, little significant action will be taken to prevent such atrocities from happening again. In the absence of clear thinking and recognition of fact, responses to this latest example of Muslim violence reflect ideological fever dreams. “Nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” as French president François Holland said of the attacks, is a perennial favorite. Such apologists invoke shopworn Marxist...