Free Republic

Had they not died as part of the Charlie Hebdo killers' final act, I wonder how much publicity the murders of Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, and François-Michel Saada at a kosher grocery store would have attracted. An Islamic fanatic killed another quartet of Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last spring, and it was a big story for a couple of days, and then faded away. Over the last decade, the Continent seems to have developed a certain psychological ease with the routine murder of Jews. What remains of Jewish communal life in Europe now takes place...

Once again the mainstream media peddled the spoon-fed propaganda that world leaders "led the march" to honor the victims of the Paris shootings last week. Glorious photo-ops of Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko, David Cameron (oh, and not Barack Obama) were smeared across front pages hailing the "unity in outrage." However, as appears to be the case in so many 'events' in the new normal managed thinking in which we live, The Independent reports, French TV has exposed the reality of the 'photo-op' seen-around-the-world: the 'dignitaries' were not in fact "at" the Paris rallies but had the photo taken on an empty...

Paris magazine at center of terror attacks usually prints 60,000 copies. But reports say that demand for the issue is such that even its plans to ramp up printing to one million copies and then three million were insufficient.Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine at the center of the recent terror attacks in Paris, has increased the print run for its current issue to 7 million copies, nearly 120 times its usual run. The magazine, the focus of a brazen January 7 attack in which its editor and several other staffers were killed by Islamist terrorists, normally runs 60,000 copies. But...

The famed French weekly Charlie Hebdo has continued to draw a somewhat contradictory reaction across the Muslim world. Many Muslims have expressed disgust at the deadly assault on the magazine’s Paris office by Islamic extremists who killed 12 people. However, many also remain deeply offended by the magazine’s record of publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Those passions were further inflamed this week when the magazine’s first issue following the attack carried a cover cartoon depicting Muhammad holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign. According to mainstream Islamic tradition, any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad—even a respectful one—is considered blasphemous....

Jewish Emigration from France to Israel 1994-Present Data from JewishVirtualLibrary.org via Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. 2013 & 2014 figures are rounded numbers (3,300 & 7,000), and 2015 is the estimate (10,000) from Natan Sharansky, CEO of the Jewish Agency. [Graph created by Scott Ott for PJMedia.com] Some say the bad European economy, high French taxes and the inviting business atmosphere of Israel are behind the veritable exodus of French Jews from their country to Abraham’s promised land. But it’s hard to discount Jew-hatred and the threat of violence reminiscent of 1930s Germany, as radical Islam burns with rage and...

What to do when you are no longer the next universal vision for humanity? ___ In the age of globalization, brand has become more important than where something is made. Quality counts, but it is the brand you buy into. How well the French understand this. They remain tenacious on EU laws that aggressively defend their marques of origin like the bubbly “Champagne.” France is, after all, a nation of immortal brands – so much so that they seem to undergird French national identity itself. Simply, for the national brand to be sustained, France must also grow, but here the...

Praying With A Muslim Colleague Ruined My Career, Says Christian NHS Worker Claims by Christian NHS worker that she was discriminated against on religious grounds after saying a prayer for a Muslim colleague come during a tense period in relations between Islam and other faiths, following the Paris terrorist attacks Victoria Wasteney was suspended by the NHS Photo: Patrick Sawer 17 Jan 2015 It was intended, she says, as a simple but heartfelt gesture of comfort and support for a troubled colleague. Victoria Wasteney put her hand on her friend’s knee and, asking if she could pray for her, said...

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Greek police have arrested several people over alleged links to a suspected terror plot in Belgium. One of the men is alleged to have been in contact with the cell in Verviers, Belgium, where a shootout with police left two suspects dead on Thursday. Europe is on high alert after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris. More than 20 people have been arrested in Belgium, France and Germany. SNIP Earlier on Saturday, Belgian media said authorities were seeking Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Brussels resident of Moroccan origin suspected of being the ringleader of the jihadi cell, and in hiding...

A full 185 Arab residents of Gaza were given rare permission by Israel to hold prayers last Friday on the Temple Mount, where they promptly waved banners of the Hamas terrorist organization and burned French flags, protesting satire magazine Charlie Hebdo's recent cartoon of Mohammed. The magazine's Paris headquarters were targeted in an Islamist terror attack two weeks ago, with 12 people including senior staff brutally murdered over its depictions of the founder of Islam. Defiantly the paper last week released a new edition with Mohammed on the cover, which has sold out in record time. The nearly 200 Gaza...

Stone-throwing demonstrators set fire to two churches in Niger's capital Niamey on Saturday, in the latest protest in France's former African colonies at French newspaper Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. .... The death toll from Friday's clashes in Niger's second largest city of Zinder, rose to five after emergency services discovered a burned body inside a Catholic Church.

While appearing on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes," Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said the Obama administration was correct in refusing to refer to Islamic terrorists as "Islamic extremists," the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday. The reason, she explained, is that doing so would anger them and possibly cause them to engage in even more terrorism. "They’re responsible for ensuring our national security. We have to be careful in our language and how we — I don’t want to see any more anger and hostility or violence in the world," she said. "Our response to terrorism is a response that...

Matthew 7:15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. It seems all the conservative commentators cannot understand why the Onazi regime continues to make a pretzel appear straight with their explanation of the Islamic barbarians in Paris. They cling to their Koran and thuggish tactics like a terrorist holding an infidel’s head while reporters try to explain the unexplainable. After he snubbed the biggest march in history against Islam, the world asked in astonishment how the leader of the free world could not lead a procession for freedom of...

It’s official: our foreign policy has devolved to singing.Having found our previous #hashtag foreign policy no longer effective we’ve moved on to a different course of action. It consists of springing old pop songs, and old pop song purveyors, on both our friends and enemies in order to express our heartfelt concern and whoa, whoa, whoa feelings. I can only presume that the intended end game is sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya. No word from Iran just yet on when that might occur.In a piece titled “That time John Kerry got James Taylor to sing ‘You’ve got a friend’...

Churches Burned and Shops Raided in Charlie Hebdo Protests in West Africa Demonstrators in Niger attacked the French cultural center, set fire to churches and raided Christian shops on Friday, as protests erupted against Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in several Muslim West African countries. Police in Niger's southern city of Zinder, the second largest in Niger, fired tear gas at a crowd of hundreds of people who burned French flags and tires in the streets. "The protesters are crying out in local Hausa language: 'Charlie is Satan — let hell engulf those supporting Charlie,'" said Aboubacar Mamane, a shopkeeper, by telephone....

It all started when a University alumnus made a $3 million dollar donation to fund the position of Director of Islamic Studies at Duke University. Bettye Martin Musham, who gifted the Islamic Studies Center with the vast sum of money, said that she was convinced that it was the right thing to do after hearing a lecture on the meaning of jihad. Musham said that she and her husband would later become “hooked with the importance of Islam.” Dr. Omid Safi was appointed to run Islamic Studies at Duke University in July of 2014. He has been the point of...

Germany’s Angela Merkel was there arm and arm with French President Francois Hollande. They were there to show solidarity in the face of the gruesome murders of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and policemen. Binyamin Netanyahu was there. So was Mahmoud Abbas, who was strangely smiling in a sea of glum faces. Also present was David Cameron. Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita also went. Putin did not go, but sent his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. King Abdullah II of Jordan also went along with many leaders from around the world. But no Obama. Joe Biden and John Kerry did not go...

The manager of the Paris kosher shop that was attacked now plans to move to Israel, his brother told a German newspaper. Patrice Oalid, 39, who was shot in the arm and is recovering in the hospital, told his older brother, Joel, that after just surviving the Jan. 9 attack, and seeing his customers and employees murdered, he cannot stay in Paris any longer, Joel Oalid told the Bild newspaper on Sunday in what the German daily said was an exclusive interview. He expects many more French Jews to follow suit, Joel Oalid said his brother told him. The gunman,...

- video at link - John Kerry listens on as his friend James Taylor performs You've Got A Friend at an event in Paris after the terror attacks.

In 2014, the year before the murder rampages at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the kosher supermarket in Paris, about seven thousand French Jews (out of a community of about half a million) emigrated to Israel.With Muslim and other antisemitic harassment and violence constantly intensifying in France, that was twice the number of the previous year, and a record high.Even before this monthÂ’s terror attacks, a higher number of French Jewish immigrants to Israel was expected for 2015. Now, after the attacks, a higher number yet is expected, possibly fifteen thousand. There is even talk of the Jews leaving...