Free Republic

Much of the scholarly discussion about the circumstances of JesusÂ’ death relates to the question of who was responsible for his arrest and crucifixion.Who was responsible? The Jews or the Romans?Historically, the primary responsibility has been placed on the Jewish leadership and the Jews in Jerusalem. Throughout the centuries, this has sometimes had tragic consequences, resulting in anti-Semitism and violence against Jews.More recent trends in scholarship have shifted the blame to the Romans.The tendency to blame the Jews, it is said, arose in the decades after the crucifixion with the churchÂ’s growing conflict with the synagogue and its desire to...

In speeches to fellow Jews around America, I often point out that many American Jews are experiencing cognitive dissonance. The institution Jews most admire -- the university -- turns out to be the most significant source of Israel hatred in America and the rest of the West. At the same time, the people many Jews most distrust -- Christians (especially evangelical and other conservative Christians) -- turn out to be the Jews' and Israel's best friends. Given that these two facts are undeniable, how do many American Jews deal with this dissonance? They largely ignore the Israel hatred on campuses,...

LIVINGSTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — A sizable crowd gathered at a synagogue in Livingston, New Jersey Sunday to hear three survivors of the Parkland, Florida school massacre speak. As WCBS 880’s Ethan Harp reported, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students David Hogg, Ryan Deitsch, and Matthew Deitsch all took part in a rally at Temple B’nai Abraham in support of what they call common sense gun legislation.

The United Nations, naturally, disapproved. Pope Francis, more enigmatically, protested, too, when President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. By 2019’s end, the Trump administration plans to open the American Embassy in Jerusalem.There's a reason Muslims living in Israel proper—1.5 million of them—don't migrate to the adjacent Palestinian Authority. They're better off in Israel. Should Jerusalem, East and West, be recognized formally as the capital of Israel only, under Jewish control alone; Christianity's holiest sites will be better off. Judaism's holy sites will be safer. And so will Islam's. Jerusalem is no settlement to be haggled over;...

Can we trust the judgement of think-tanks who have labeled Twitter users as part of a ‘Russian influence campaign’ as sound when those same entities provide little evidence, and their high-level members include former Clinton supporters?At the beginning of 2017, an initiative was launched by a non-partisan think-tank called the German Marshall Fund US (GMFUS) under the name “The Alliance For Securing Democracy” (ASD).During the Summer, ASD started working on a project they called the “Hamilton 68 Dashboard“, an effort that was presented to the public as a means of monitoring Russian disinformation efforts on Twitter, apparently boosted by...

A photograph of then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that was taken in 2005 at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC, was released Saturday after a 13-year cover-up to protect Obama’s political career. Journalist Askia Muhammad told TriceEdneyWire.com that he took the photograph after Obama had engaged “in a warm conversation with constituent and fellow Chicagoan Minister Louis Farrakhan.” However, he realized that the photograph could endanger Obama’s presidential ambitions, which were already being widely discussed. Farrakhan is a black supremacist and antisemite who also holds anti-gay views. Rumors of an...

On Tuesday judges in a regional court in the capital ruled that Wolfgang Gedeon, an Alternative for Germany politician, may be described as a Holocaust denier. After Gedeon had initially filed a complaint involving president of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, judges in the Berlin court rejected it. Schuster had accused Gedeon in a media report early last year of denying the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis, referring to books written by the AfD politician. But 70-year-old Gedeon, a member of the state parliament in Baden-Württemberg, rejected the accusation. The court justified its decision by stating...

The Caliber 3 training facility takes down pics of the famous comedian snapped during a family visit Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is taking heat from fans after photos of him at a West Bank “anti-terrorism” course were posted online earlier this week. The Caliber 3 training facility, located near the settlement of Efrat south of Bethlehem, posted the photos of Seinfeld on its Facebook page with the message, “Finally we are allowed to tell you! Jerry Seinfeld and his family were in Caliber 3. During their visit to Israel last week, they came to us for a special and exciting activity...

The Muslim population in the US is growing at a rate of around 100,000 per year By the year 2040, Muslims will replace Jews as the second-largest religious group in the US after Christians, according to projections by a leading American think tank. Pew Research Center estimates there were some 3.45 million Muslims living in the US in 2017, accounting for around 1.1 percent of the country’s total population.

In Paris's 12th arrondissement, on Bercy Street by the banks of the River Seine, on the 13th floor of the Ministry of Finance is France's tax authority headquarters. Something has been afoot there recently that is liable to upset French Jews and spook their relations with the country in which they live. Under the radar, a secret department has been created with the sole purpose of handling tax evasion by French Jews. "Globes" can reveal for the first time the details of the secret department that is targeting Jews in France and new immigrants from France in Israel.

I'm very proud to be the Prime Minister of Israel. A country that says Merry Christmas, first to its Christian citizens, and to our Christian friends around the world! #MerryChristmas

In recent days, rage directed at the United States, Israel, and Jews has caught fire in Istanbul’s roiling streets. Making matters worse, Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have intentionally fanned the flames. This all began Dec. 6, when President Donald Trump declared: “In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city — and so importantly — is Israel’s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months...

...There were many people who, enthralled by the appealing lifestyle of the Greeks, sought to discard their Jewishness and embrace the new customs: they were the Hellenists, in whose eyes all of the traditional practices were impractically archaic. To perform circumcision or refrain from eating pork could only further the Jewish particularity and distinctiveness, which was what the Hellenists were fleeing from. For them, the solution was to proclaim all of the Jewish customs unbinding and irrelevant... t the other extreme were a group of people led by the Maccabees, whose only concern was defending their heritage. Their indignation was...

A Jewish chapel in the southern Swedish city of Malmo was the target of an antisemitic firebomb attack on Monday evening marking the second firebombing on a Jewish building in less than a week in the country.

Sara Silverman recounts a time when she “felt very weird” and “scared”: when her boyfriend at the time was raising an American flag in his yard.

A man waving a Palestinian flag launched an attack on a Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam just hours after Trump announced that the US now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Video filmed by a bystander shows the man using a piece of wood to smash in the windows of the kosher venue in Willemspark, one of Amsterdam's most affluent neighbourhoods, on Thursday morning. The man was reportedly screaming 'Allahu Akbar' - God is Great - during the attack on the restaurant, which a Dutch Jewish organisation has branded 'an act of terror'.

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor students involved in the finally-after-15-years-passed Israel divestment measure were caught on a clandestine recording rejecting the nationhood of Jewish people and preventing a Jewish student from joining a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No sooner had it become a national holiday than America’s Jews took to its growing repertoire of rituals with gusto. Thanksgiving was a day in which “all classes and masses participated and delivered the same Yankee Doodle with slight variations,” observed one San Francisco Jew in 1884. Much like their neighbors, America’s Jewish citizens prepared a sumptuous repast at home and saw to it that the underprivileged among them, especially those of their coreligionists in orphanages and old-age homes, were treated to a turkey with all the trimmings. [snip] Focusing on what they had in common rather than on the...

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia issued a ruling forbidding war against the Jews and proclaiming that Hamas is a terror group. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, issued a surprising religious ruling, saying that fighting against Israel was inappropriate and that Hamas is a “terror organization.” The Muslim cleric issued the ruling while answering a question on a television program regarding the Palestinian riots surrounding the Temple Mount in July, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported. Israel’s Communications Minister Ayoub Kara welcomed the unexpected decision and invited the Mufti to visit Israel.

There are about 3.35 million Muslims in the United States right now, according to recent Pew Research Center’s Factank figures. But by 2050, that particular population is projected to grow — from about 1 percent of the U.S. population to about 2.1 percent. If it does, that means America will be home to more Muslims than Jews. Just something to think about, post New York City terror attack — a terror attack that we now know was committed by a radicalized Muslim who professed allegiance to ISIS. President Donald Trump, in a tweet, wrote: “We must not allow ISIS to...