Free Republic

One of the more insane claims in Ron Paul’s newsletters was that the Israelis were behind the WTC bombings in 1993: Whether [the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. This claim is of course so ridiculous and absurd that even Paul has to protect himself by claiming that “a Jewish friend” told him about it. What a handy rhetorical device! If only Paul had had the foresight to couch all his racist remarks in the newsletters...

Hamas was encouraged and started by the Israelis as a tool to counteract Yasser Arafat, so says Ron Paul. Need I say more? Skip to 1:20 (Video at link) (via Hotair) *** UPDATE: Ed Morrissey described earlier today how Hamas came to be, and it wasn’t as Paul suggests: So who started Hamas? Was it really Israel? Er … no, not really, and the suggestion that Israel wanted Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO is simply ludicrous. Hamas developed from a network of Muslim Brotherhood charities in Gaza in the mid-1980s. The Muslim Brotherhood was one of the most...

When it comes to media bias, I'm a hard guy to surprise. That the Washington Post often sees the world in topsy-turvy terms, I take as a given. Nevertheless, the exchange between Howard Kurtz and Post reporter Tom Ricks, on yesterday's Reliable Sources, leaves me speechless: Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other? THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian...

Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah's attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon – i.e, the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing and ravaging an African-American community because Black Panthers had ambushed and killed cops. If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead...