Free Republic

Liberals believe that social engineering can bring about universal success; conservatives want to foster individual responsibility and initiative. For liberals, the failure of an individual is a failure of society; for conservatives, individuals should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own merits. There are degrees, of course; most conservatives eschew Social Darwinism or Ayn Rand’s egotism, and most liberals do not believe in the strict application of the Communist maxim, “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” But that is the bright line that divides us conservatives from the liberals.Why are (most)...

When a 73-year-old man opened fire on two Jewish facilities in a Kansas City suburb last year, killing three people, police called the attack a hate crime.

As Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex) announced last week that he was running for president, his Virginia audience cheered. He dropped applause line after applause line on some 10,000 students at Liberty University, which bills itself as the largest Christian university in the world. Cruz riffed, unimaginatively, on an “imagine” theme, asking the young audience to “imagine a president” who would repeal Obamacare and perform other feats. There was applause throughout. But one line prompted the students to erupt into a roaring, 30-second, standing ovation: “Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with...

Members of Turkey’s Jewish community attend the reopening ceremony of the Great Synagogue in Edirne on March 26 after a five-year government restoration project. REUTERS Photo Just a week before Passover, Turkish Jews woke up to a morning full of excitement and hope. They got on the buses waiting to take them to Edirne, to the city that their families once had to leave following the Thrace pogroms in 1934. It was the reopening day of the Great Synagogue, which had been left in ruins for decades. “I was the last rabbi that had served in the synagogue,” said David...

I grew up Jewish.  When I was growing up, being Jewish meant you supported Israel.  I lived through the 1967 war (I was a toddler), the 1973 war (I was in third grade), and the “troubles” since then.  Israel always seemed invincible. As I got older, things became more complicated.  Today I read about Jews of my generation who question their loyalty to Israel, who, in fact, disclaim Israel as their birthright, as if it were something that could be disclaimed. Certainly, the images of dead Palestinian children can make anyone with a shred of human decency’s heart break.  I...

"I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president," vented Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Boston Herald Radio last week. It was a small controversy in the grand scheme of things, easily overlooked during a week when: a German pilot turned a routine flight into a murder-suicide mission, Ted Cruz drove the media batty by announcing he will run for president as Ted Cruz, an Army sergeant and Taliban captive the White House touted as a hero was charged with desertion, and America...

American Jews are anything but monolithic in opinion. The first great conservative leader of postwar America was also the only major party nominee of Jewish descent: Barry Goldwater. During the Cold War, individual American Jews made enormous contributions to the cause of liberty. Admiral Rickover almost single-handedly created the most effective part of our Triad Defense System: nuclear submarines. Morris Childs, the highest-ranking FBI agent in the Communist Party USA, provided our government with priceless intelligence collected within the Kremlin’s inner sanctum, knowing that if caught he would be tortured to death. AT contributor Herb Meyer, when in the Reagan...

American Jews on the left were beside themselves last week. Israel's Jews did something that utterly infuriated these American Jews: Israel's Jews overwhelmingly voted for a man of the right (or for other right-of-center parties). And not just any right-winger, but the only leader in the Western world to publicly differ from their hero, President Barack Obama. To understand their fury, one must first understand that no one is more certain of their moral superiority than the left. This is true the world over, and among Jews it is particularly so. For the leaders of the American Jewish religious left...

On the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress the level of hysteria among American Jewish liberals has reached cascading proportions. From full-page advertisements in The New York Times to anguished columns in The Times of Israel expressions of outrage pour forth. They are furious lest an Israeli prime minister implicate them in such a heinous deed as warning against the imminent surrender of the Obama administration to Iranian nuclear ambitions. All the usual suspects on the Jewish left chimed in. J Street released a petition with 20,000 signees protesting: “I’m a Jew. Bibi does NOT speak for...

* Jewish comedic legend said Hamas militants 'want to squash Israel or eliminate Israel' * The US president, he claims, believes 'there's no reason why they shouldn't be given a chance to operate' * Mason thinks Hollywood has become anti-semitic because successful 'retarded ... morons' with guilt complexes see Palestinians as underdogs * He wil be in London June 1-3 doing standup act * Comments came on Tel Aviv-based 'Aaron Klein Investigative Radio' show A legendary and outspoken Jewish comedian is blasting President Barack Obama – and the Hollywood community – for letting Israel twist in the wind following Benjamin...

On Thursday, the press announced that the Obama administration would fully consider abandoning Israel in international bodies like the United Nations. According to reports, President Obama finally called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him – but the “congratulations” was actually a lecture directed at forcing Netanyahu to surrender to the terrorist Palestinian regime.

Noma Chomsky is America's most famous anti-Israel intellectual. I came across this interview that he did, where he revealed that his Paternal and Maternal grandparents were ultra-Orthodox Jews http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/50260/qa-noam-chomsky This revelation is evidence of the damage that our Marxist universities inflict on young people from religious families. The more prestigious a university is in the eyes of the liberal media, the more Marxist it is. This should alert Freepers who are hoping to send their children to college in the next few years, to be very careful in their choice of college. Your son might end up becoming like Michael...

Radical Islamists threaten violence, while BDS intimidates door-to-door. In August 2013, we noted that Jews in Europe past their expiration date, based on the superb article You Only Live Twice by Michel Gurfinkiel in Mosaic Magazine: There is no future left for Jewish communities in Europe.That’s the inescapable conclusion of You Only Live Twice by Michel Gurfinkiel in Mosaic Magazine.The lengthy article is a long trip down the death during World War II and then rebirth of Jewish communities in Europe, and how that rebirth is being snuffed out by renewed anti-Semitism from multiple directions, particularly leftist demonization of...

Migration, the mass movement of communities for natural, economic, political, religious reasons or because of oppression, dates back almost as far as the history of mankind. It is certainly a difficult thing to leave the land where one was born and is familiar with and to move somewhere entirely different. Forced relocation is the most ruthless and painful form of migration. World history is full of stories of forced migration in which millions of people were obliged to leave their homes and live in places they had never been before. The violence and troubles suffered by these people forced from...

Trudeau compared Harper’s view on Muslims and the niqab to the refusal of Canada to accept Jews who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939 What took place in Canada during the last week isn’t exactly Godwin’s Law but it is close. The law postulates that if an online discussion goes on long enough, eventually someone will compare something or someone to Hitler or the Nazis. A couple of federal MPs didn’t disappoint. Last Monday, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau gave a speech on, of all things, liberty. The leader, as progressive always do, went on and on about diversity and inclusion...

Many Jewish bodies in Europe are being bankrupted by the growing need for security measures, the State Department's special envoy on anti-Semitism said on Friday, according to AFP. Jewish communities in Europe are on edge after being targeted by Islamist gunmen in recent attacks in France and Denmark. But even before that, many said they were victims of a growing tide of anti-Semitic crime, with the number of Jews leaving France for Israel nearly doubling between 2013 and 2014. "Every Jewish community in western Europe certainly needs security support. Many of them are being bankrupted by the money they have...

<p>Jews in the Baltics fear a series of disturbing events in the three-nation region of Eastern Europe may be signaling a revival of the Holocaust-era hatred that once nearly wiped out their numbers.</p> <p>Across the countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Jewish leaders say their communities are feeling increasingly uncomfortable as anti-Semitism once again appears to be on the rise. An Estonian museum exhibition mocking the Holocaust, a stage musical celebrating the life of a notorious Latvian Nazi mass murderer and the repatriation of the remains of a Lithuanian leader long linked to Nazis have all contributed to a climate of hate that has Jews on edge.</p>

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...

Berlin - Israel's Ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, said he “does not envy any Jew living in Europe today” and invited those who feel unsafe in the wake of recent anti-Semitic attacks to “come to [Israel] at any time.” In an interview published Sunday in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, Hadas-Handelsman echoed last week’s invitation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Jews in Europe “consider Israel your home.” Germany saw a wave of violent anti-Semitic attacks in 2014, including the torching of the Wuppertal synagogue. A court there, however, agreed with the explanation provided by three German Palestinians that the...

What Netanyahu also knows is that President Obama seems to have blind spot when it comes to the growing anti-Semitism that resembles what existed in the 1930s in Europe In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, representing 1.7% of the total European population which, in turn, was about 60% of the Jewish world population, estimated to have been 15.2 million. By 1945, in the wake of the Holocaust, two out of every three Jews would be dead. By 2012 the global Jewish population by had reached 13.75 million. That is less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population....