Free Republic

With the gruesome attacks last week in Paris, Islamic terrorism once again announced itself as one of the foremost cancers facing our world today. Led by a phalanx of world leaders, three and a half million people marched throughout France in a mass call for an end to extremist Islamic violence and in solidarity with its most recent victims. And yet we’re still at a loss as to how to fix this. World leaders lack a clear strategy and dance around the key issues, unable to confront them. There’s a lot we’re getting wrong but I’ll focus here on one...

Former president Jimmy Carter told a group of reporters that they should give Barack Obama a bit of a break for not attending the recent solidarity march in Paris, which dozens of other world leaders attended. “I don’t think there’s any need for criticism,” he said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “The president sometimes can’t go where he’d prefer to go,” Carter continued. “He’s just come back from vacation so I think he’s probably got a lot on his desk.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was among the factors that led to the deadly attacks last week in Paris. Carter made the assertion Monday night during an appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. “Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it,” Carter told Stewart. He called the training in the...

In recent interviews former President Jimmy Carter has once again taken to blaming Israel for all that is wrong in the Middle East. Carter, to his mind, has always viewed the Jewish state as ultimately being responsible not simply for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but for the “unrest” that is historically endemic to the region. Islamic extremism, he has intimated, exists because Israel does. In no less a non-serious venue as Comedy Central, Carter told host Jon Stewart that “the Palestinian problem” is part of the reason why terrorist attacks like that which took place last week in Paris. “Well, one...

There is "heightened concern" about the risk to the UK's Jewish communities following last week's terror attacks in France, counter-terror police say. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said police were holding talks over "more patrols in key areas" after "anti-Semitic rhetoric from extremists". Authorities are also considering enhanced security measures to protect police officers, he added.

Secretary of State John Kerry sought to show the United States’ support of France after the recent terrorist attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” at a Paris press conference. Nile Gardiner, director of Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, blasted this decision, calling it “embarrassing” and “cringeworthy.”

Protesters took to the streets after midday prayers in the port city of Karachi, the eastern city of Lahore and the capital of Islamabad to protest Charlie Hebdo's publishing this week of another cover depicting the prophet — an act deemed insulting to many followers of Islam. The weekly's new issue with a drawing of Muhammad, a tear rolling down his cheek and holding a placard that says "Je Suis Charlie" — a saying that has swept France and the world — was an act of defiance in the wake of last week's terrorist attack at the paper's Paris office...

Scores of people in Istanbul held funeral prayers on Friday to honor Cherif and Said Kouachi, the gun-toting brothers who killed 12 people last week in Paris. Some 160 people — all of them men — shouted "God is great!" They held a banner showing former al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden's picture on one side, and the Kouachi brothers superimposed over the Parisian skyline on the other.

Could any or all of the victims in the Paris attack have survived if they had guns to protect themselves? One Texas gun group tried to find out by organizing a simulation on a set designed to look like the offices of Charlie Hebdo, hoping to learn how things might have been different in Paris or any other mass shooting. KTVT's Andrea Lucia reports.

Dozens of terror suspects were arrested in Belgium, France, and Germany early Friday, a day after Belgian authorities said that they halted a plot to attack police officers by mere hours. Eric Van der Sypt, a Belgian federal magistrate, told a news conference Friday in Brussels that 13 people had been detained in Belgium in connection with the plot, with another two arrested in neighboring France. He added that a dozen searches had led to the discovery of four military-style weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles. On Thursday, Belgian police had moved against a suspected terrorist hideout in the eastern town...

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it." That maxim of Voltaire was among those most invoked by the marching millions in Sunday's mammoth "Je Suis Charlie" rally in Paris. This week, in the spirit of Voltaire, French authorities arrested and charged Cameroonian comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, and 54 others, with "hate speech." Yes, Monsieur Voltaire, there are limits to free speech in France. Dieudonne's crime? He tweeted, "I am Charlie Coulibaly," the last name of the killer of four innocent Jews in that kosher market. A...

When top US diplomat John Kerry rushed towards the French president, arms open, to warmly embrace him on Friday, what followed was a cringeworthy culture clash that has befuddled many a visitor to France. The French are just not that into hugging. Kerry had given fair warning to his French counterparts that some American-style affection was on the cards. "My visit to France is basically to share a big hug for Paris and express the affection of the American people for France and for our friends there who have been through a terrible time," he said on the eve of...

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...

On a recent Sunday, my family and I only showed up 10 minutes early for Mass. That meant we had to sit in fold-out chairs in the spillover room, where the Mass is relayed on a large TV screen. During the service, my toddler had to go to the bathroom. To get there, we had to step over a dozen people sitting in hallways and corners. This is business as usual for my church in Paris, France. I point this out because one of the most familiar tropes in social commentary today is the loss of Christian faith in Europe...

Lassana Bathily, the Malian Muslim employee who helped save the lives of several customers during last week’s deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, will be awarded French nationality, France’s Interior Bernard Cazeneuve announced Thursday. In a statement applauding Bathily’s “act of bravery,” Cazeneuve said that the young man will become a French citizen during a ceremony on January 20. The move comes following an outpouring of public support for Bathily, whose striking story of courage trickled out in the days after the hostage crisis at the Hyper Casher supermarket in eastern Paris. The 24-year-old shop assistant was in...

Some 12% fewer cars were set alight on Wednesday compared with 2013, in a measure of what has effectively become an annual event in French suburbs since riots in 2005 in Paris and elsewhere. The number of vehicles torched fell from 1,067 a year ago to 940, the interior ministry said in a statement. Security was high in France overnight following a series of street attacks. While the car-burning can be easily traced back to 2005, some correspondents say the idea of burning cars as a form of protest in France dates back into the 1990s.

A hostage situation is underway near the French capital of Paris, a week after the deadly Islamist attacks in the city, local media report. An unconfirmed number of people are being held at gunpoint at a post office in Colombes, on the northwestern outskirts of Pairs. Early reports suggest it might be a robbery gone wrong. The area has been cordoned off by security forces, with a police helicopter hovering over the scene.

Even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris, the French prime minister was concerned about the continued viability of Jewish life in France. In an interview with The Atlantic prior to the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres, Manuel Valls made a grim prediction:"If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure."His misgivings were far from groundless. An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately...

Secretary of State John Kerry literally brought musician James Taylor to Paris in order to play his hit song “You’ve Got a Friend” to the French after the United States sent no high-end representatives to a massive solidarity march last week. The United States took heat from around the world, and inside its own borders, after millions of people marched in the streets of Paris last week to show terrorists that they will not be frightened away from practicing free speech and expression. President Obama, Vice President Biden, nor any cabinet members attended the rally, even though Eric Holder was...