Free Republic

It started 3,500 years ago in the land of Egypt "we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt," the story of Exodus says. The final plague hit the firstborn sons of every Egyptian. To avoid the plague Jews smeared the blood of a slaughtered lamb on the doorposts of the Jewish homes, the death passed over them. Since that day, The Passover blood libel has followed us everywhere we go and continues even today, al-Durah, nuclear tipped warheads in Lebanon, targeting innocent children in Gaza etc. And these libels are being perpetuated by the established media such as the BBC, CNN...

Now that leaves the only effective alternative - for the Israel Defense Forces to take control of the rocket launching sites in the Gaza Strip. Over 60 years ago, in World War II, the Allies understood that the only way to put a stop to the shelling of London by German V2 rockets was for Allied armies to reach the launching sites in Western Europe. Much has changed since then, but the rockets are essentially still the same (the Qassams and Grads fortunately have considerably less range than the V2s). So that leaves the job to the IDF ground forces....

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received - hatred. The great creators... stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went...

Israel plans to send one of its most senior security officials to Moscow tomorrow to express concern over Russia's decision to renew contacts with Iran for the sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Haaretz has learned. Israeli officials said the government will send the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau Maj.-Gen. (res) Amos Gilad to try to dissuade the Kremlin from supplying Iran with S-300 missiles - which would significantly complicate any military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

For decades most of the organized Left has fought against Republicans and conservatives more than against the world's greatest evils. During the Cold War, starting in the late 1960s, one heard little if anything from the Left about the evils of Communism or of Communist societies such as the Soviet Union or Communist China. But one heard a great deal about the evils of American anti-Communists; Ronald Reagan was vilified much more than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. But last week, a new line seems to have been crossed. The organized Jewish Left -- i.e., left-wing Jewish organizations that claim to...

Last Wednesday, New York's Jewish Week reported that the editor of Israel's self-described "newspaper of record" asked the US secretary of state to rape his country and told her that his erotic fantasy is to watch America rape Israel. On September 10, at a dinner at the home of US Ambassador Richard Jones, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with a group of Israeli "elites." Among the elitists was Haaretz editor David Landau. According to the Jewish Week, Landau "referred to Israel as a "failed state" politically, one in need of a US-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored...

(IsraelNN.com) Haaretz’s Chief Editor asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “rape” Israel, using other unsavory terminology as well in his request for American pressure. The comments were made during a confidential briefing by Rice on September 10, during one of many visits to the Jewish state. The meeting was attended by about 20 heads of the most senior Israeli think tanks and media leaders, including Landau, at the residence of US Ambassador Richard Jones. Following the briefing, those present at the dinner offered their views and comments on the state of affairs in the Middle East. Landau, who...

Israel's Left has always hated "talkbacks". Those are the little responses that people can write to articles on the web versions of newspapers. In Israel, where the newspapers are largely under the hegemony of the Left, and especially at Haaretz, whose concept of political pluralism resembles that of Pravda back in the happy days of Brezhnev, "talkbacks" are the main or only venue in which non-leftists get to have a say. But in Israel talkbacks - a bit like radio phone-in shows in the US (and in Israel) are dominated by the non-Left. Even at Haaretz, which almost never allows...

To lead the nation in a war to victory was just too much for them. Too heavy a burden for their narrow shoulders. That trio - Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni - asked and received a mandate to lead the people of Israel, promising to take our fate into our own hands and unilaterally establish Israel's borders by evacuating Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, and turn Israel into a country "in which it will be a pleasure to live." We do not know and probably will never know if they would have been up to that...

So many people are asking "When will it all end?" But the answer is so simple. It will not end until Ramat Aviv is attacked massively by rockets and missiles. How do we know Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz are still playing games? When the newspaper headlines read: "In heavy fighting today 6 terrorists were killed." When it says, "In heavy fighting today, 10,000 of the enemy were killed," then we will know that Israel has stopped playing. In the meantime, however, even the Israel of today is not the same country as the Israel of a month ago. The...

Time was, you knew where you stood. For decades, since the Labor Party lost its innocence and its public standing in the Yom Kippur War, Israelis have associated the Likud with manhood itself, pelt-chested, barrel-bellied, loudmouthed machismo. If you called yourself a leftist or a dove, the people who called themselves The People had another name for you: Yefeh Nefesh. There was a whole world of associations behind those two little words, whose literal meaning is Beautiful of Soul, but they boiled down to one thing: Homo.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie: By now your open letter to the world, "A Call to Action; Rachel's Words Live", has been reprinted in many different media outfits, including the viciously anti-Jewish Counterpunch magazine , in the Guardian, and was even published in Hebrew in Israel's far-leftist anti-Zionist daily Haaretz.  You begin your epistle by recalling that your daughter was "killed by an Israeli bulldozer", but you neglect to mention the circumstances under which she was so killed (nor the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care). You then add, "She had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent...

ROME - Israel's two chief rabbis will meet with Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a landmark Vatican document on relations with Jews, and will likely urge his support in fighting anti-Semitism and terrorism, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See said. Israel needs the Vatican's support at "this very dire hour" now that it has completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Ambassador Oded Ben-Hur said on Wednesday. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar will call on the pope at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills south...

A driver who made a wrong turn and entered Kfar Chabad on Tuesday night says he was nearly lynched by residents and security officials in the ultra-Orthodox village outside Tel Aviv. The driver was on his way to Jerusalem when he inadvertently entered Kfar Chabad. He said local security officers began to chase him and opened fire on his vehicle. Local residents joined in the chase, throwing stones and concrete blocks at him, the driver said. Other residents were apparently wielding axes.

There has been much written and said about the 'self-hating Jew'. But little has been written and said about one particular kind of self-hating Jew, one unfortunately increasingly important and disturbing: the self-hating Israeli. The self-hating Israeli may be someone raised within Israel society, someone who knows its institutions and people well, someone who is even a part of its academic, journalistic, legal or political elite. This familiarity and knowledge of the society he is criticizing gives his criticism particular force and even authenticity. It legitimizes the criticism of Israel-bashers, even anti-Semitic Israel-bashers, as they will exultantly proclaim, "But we...

AMERICAN JEWS CHOOSE HARRI-KERRY FOR ISRAEL By Don Feder Where do American Jewish voters go for guidance? Apparently, this year we’re heeding advice from Tehran, from the rabidly anti-Semitic former prime minister of Malaysia and – of course – from our pals in the Palestinian Authority. Sorry, that’s a bit of black humor. What I mean to say is that – in one of those ironic twists of fate -- it’s likely that this year a majority of Jewish voters will cast their ballots for the presidential candidate favored by Israel’s most implacable enemies. According to The American Jewish Committee’s...

Dec. 23, 2003 All war and no play By FRIMET ROTH For a secular nation, we excel at self-flagellation. Monks could take lessons from us. Despite our already strained consciences, we seem eager to shoulder the blame for every injustice floating around. And often we get a little help from our European friends, kindly pointing a reproachful finger at us. So I suppose I should have expected an article like Ruth Sinai's in Haaretz, "Humiliation can scar a boy for life" (December 1), about the UNICEF Conference on "How to Protect Israeli and Palestinian Children from the Intifada." UNICEF has...

Our (Israel) Newspapers Fail Us - (UPDATED) September 28, 2003 Editorial - Israel News Agency "Over at the Jerusalem Post, Israel's venerable English language daily newspaper, rumblings of publisher/staff dissatisfaction are being heard loud and clear. Long-time managing editor, Avi Hoffman was fired last week after he recommended pulling an ad that included language he felt would expose Israel to charges of war crimes. New Post editor Bret Stephens apparently agreed. Publisher Tom Rose was furious and ordered Hoffman fired. The full page ad appeared last Friday. According to Aviv Lavie writing in the rival Haaretz English edition, senior staff...

Haaretz is Israel’s most radically Far Left and Post-Zionist newspaper. Its notion of “pluralism” is to run a single non-Leftist article (often by Moshe Arens) for every 100 or so Leftist articles that it runs. It features among its stable of Near-Solid-Pink commentators such illuminati as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, people who have never heard of any Palestinian atrocities committed against Jews worth denouncing, or that were not the understandable response to “occupation”. My colleague at the University of Haifa, Arnon Sofer, has suggested that the paper change its name to Al-Ard, “Haaretz” in Arabic. Its editorials are generally...