Free Republic

It seemed like routine business for the student council at the University of California, Los Angeles: confirming the nomination of Rachel Beyda, a second-year economics major who wants to be a lawyer someday, to the council’s Judicial Board. Until it came time for questions. “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, began, looking at Ms. Beyda at the other end of the room, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” For the next 40 minutes, after Ms. Beyda...

Pogroms. Genocide. Jihad. These are the devices our enemies have directed against us throughout the ages, for no other reason than because we are Jews. Yet for all that, the commitment to mercy and justice that defines us as a people and sets us apart from the other nations of the earth ensures that we would never seek the destruction of another people simply because of who they are. Or wouldn't we? You shall erase the memory of Amolek from beneath the heavens. < snip > In short, Amolek introduced the world to the tactics of terrorism, launching a suicide...

In the U.S.-Israel dispute over Iran's nuclear program, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has emerged as an unlikely protagonist -- siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than President Obama. In his joint address to Congress, Netanyahu made a point of recognizing the 86-year old Wiesel, who sat in the Speaker's Box with the prime minister's wife, Sara. With us today is Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel." "Elie, your life and work inspires to give meaning to the words, 'never again,'" he added, as lawmakers gave Wiesel a standing ovation. "And I wish I...

How did the famous Vulcan hand salute come to be? Leonard Nimoy "Spock" gives us the answer.

A student's Jewish affiliation became the subject of a heated debate at University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) earlier this month, after the student government nearly scrapped her acceptance due to her background. Student Rachel Beyda applied to be a member of the UCLA Judicial Board in February, and presented herself as a candidate in front of the Board. However, the meeting quickly dissolved into a debate over whether her Jewish background and affiliation with Jewish life on campus is a "conflict of interest," as can be seen in the video below. The debate begins at 47:30.

The UK’s hideously compromised Channel 4 (of course, when speaking of any mainstream media outlet in Britain, “hideously compromised” is a given) interviewed the maker of this video, and ended up asking him if walking through Paris wearing a yarmulke was an “act of provocation.” And people wonder why the UK is in the fix it’s in

(AFP) Dozens more graves have been vandalised at French cemeteries, the interior ministry said Wednesday, as prosecutors said that the desecration of hundreds of Jewish graves over the weekend in Sarre-Union had a clear “anti-Semitic motive”. The interior ministry said crucifixes were overturned and gravesites disturbed in Tracy-sur-Mer, a tiny town next to the D-Day landing beaches, as well as in Saint-Beat in southwest France in the latest vandalism. Swastikas were found in two other towns, the ministry said. The discoveries came as five teens faced preliminary charges for desecrating hundreds of graves at a Jewish cemetery in the eastern...

Five adolescents aged 15 to 17 have been taken into custody in eastern France for questioning over a massive vandalism attack against Jewish graves, a local prosecutor said on Monday. All five are from the region of Sarre-Union in Alsace, where around 300 tombs were defaced over the weekend. The youngest came forward after being shocked by the massive reaction across the country to the vandalism, prosecutor Philippe Vannier said. "Apparently, he was very very affected by the scale of the reaction to this affair, including the statements from the highest state authorities," Vannier told reporters. The boy, who was...

Feb. 15, 2015 Hundreds Of Jewish Tombs Damaged In Northern France Hundreds of graves have been vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, in what the president called an "odious and barbaric" anti-Semitic act against French values. The vandalism comes at a time of growing insecurity among French Jews and amid general religious tensions in Europe, after Islamic radicals attacked a kosher market and a satirical newspaper in Paris last month and similar attacks hit Denmark this weekend. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement Sunday that a criminal investigation team is at the damaged cemetery in...

The civilian who was shot and killed earlier on Sunday in the terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue in central Copenhagen, Denmark, was revealed to have been a member of the Jewish community, who was guarding the synagogue at the time of the shooting. Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, head of the local Jewish community told Danish television a few moments ago that around 80 people from the community were gathered inside the house of worship for a bat-mitzva celebration at the time of the attack. “The Community is in shock, it is like the shootings in Paris,” Rosenberg Asmussen said, “we...

**SNIP** Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), who convened the private meeting with other lawmakers, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is all but saying that Netanyahu is not welcome to address Congress. “I don’t know whether the prime minister would consider not coming, but I think there’s some considerations about whether that should be considered,” Mr. Israel said. “Hopefully a way will be found to defuse an unnecessarily tense situation.” Democrats are worried that Netanyahu’s speech will show the world just how big of a rift exists between the U.S. and Israel. Talk about showing someone the back of their hand, as...

A graphic design agency in Paris risks prosecution after allegedly posting a job advert online specifying that candidates should be “not Jewish if possible”. The advert, which was removed after less than an hour, triggered a flood of complaints. The anti-racism organization SOS-Racisme said it had started legal proceedings. Initially, the agency, NSL Studio, told a reporter from the news website, Les Inrocks, that it was seeking a non-Jew because of its long working hours. …

Two soldiers on patrol near a Jewish community center in Nice were wounded in a knife attack on Tuesday as France maintains heightened security measures in the wake of the Paris terror attacks last month. One soldier was stabbed in the cheek and the other in the arm. Their injuries are not serious. A third soldier with them was unhurt. The assailant, named as Moussa, was arrested; but two people who may have been with him were believed to have fled, a police union official said. The attacker was carrying two knives. He was arrested thanks to the intervention of...

<p>EILAT, Israel – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party hit back Sunday at a U.S.-linked organization staffed with former Obama campaigners now working to defeat Netanyahu in an upcoming general election.</p> <p>Victory 2015, or V15, attracted U.S. media attention after it hired 270 Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior leadership is comprised mostly of former top staffers for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.</p>

DAVIS (CBS13) – A Jewish fraternity woke up to the hate symbols spray-painted on their home Saturday morning. Two red swastikas were found painted on Alpha Epsilon Pi’s house, an off-campus fraternity. The Davis Police Department says they are investigating the incident as a hate crime. AEPI brothers believe the vandalism was done in retaliation to their support for Israel, as this week the student body voted to pass an act that will urge the UC Regents to divest from companies that provide resources to Israel. The frat brothers say they’ve been very outspoken at those “divestment meetings” and believe...

Jewish community leader trapped inside Auschwitz concentration camp after getting locked in while filming a television show on the 70th anniversary of its liberation. The head of Rome’s Jewish community found himself locked into Auschwitz on Tuesday night and then arrested when he tried to escape. Riccardo Pacifici was doing a television interview after the ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, when he realised the camp’s gates had been closed. Mr Pacifici was locked in with Jewish community spokesman Fabio Perugia, the television host and two technicians. Mr Pacifici, whose grandparents died in the camp, spent...

Recent developments involving the Islamic Republic of Iran can fairly be characterized as grave. Iran has announced that it has begun construction on two more nuclear plants, and the authorities have imprisoned a Washington Post journalist on mysterious charges. **SNIP** On behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition put out this statement: What exactly was President Obama suggesting when he said opposition to his Iran policy is due to “donors”? No one would say opposition to his Russia policy is due to ‘donors,’ or his Cuba policy is due to “donors,” or his general...

Tablet has one of the best articles I've seen from Paris, capturing the mood of French Jews--and the meaning for them of the state of Israel. Here are excerpts: Anyone who wants to understand how the Jews of France—and most other places in the Diaspora, including the United States—feel inside, especially at times when we are targeted by men with guns who represent a radical, fascistic ideology bent on killing us, should take a look at these two videos from the Grand Synagogue of Paris after a solidarity rally that brought an estimated 1.5 million people into the streets to...

Bess Myerson, whose death at age 90 was revealed this week, was a Miss America who lived through nearly a century of change in the perception of "the ideal American woman." She paid for being a celebrity in the way many celebrities before and after her paid with fame and (mis)fortune. She was crowned in 1945, when the Miss America Pageant was taken more seriously than it is today, and she was anything but the typical "queen of femininity." But she was something special in certain ethnic neighborhoods, crowned just days after the bomb wrote finis to World War II...

Daily Caller France’s Multiculturalist Agenda Makes Jews Pack Their Bags 4:50 PM 01/06/2015 Ryan Girdusky Political Consultant As more French Jews face anti-Semitic attacks, many are leaving for Israel. Most of the attacks have come from Muslims, whether immigrants or French-born, many of whom have not assimilated into French society – if not rejecting French society entirely. Compounding the dangerous situation, France’s left-wing government refuses to acknowledge the scope of this crisis, apparently more afraid of losing Muslim votes they depend on than in defending France’s half-million Jews. Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption is expecting “Little Paris” neighborhoods to pop...