Free Republic

Whenever the media takes note of the antics of Norman Finkelstein, the former DePaul University professor and anti-Israel activist, a flood of disinformation seems bound to follow. Finkelstein’s arrest in Israel last week was no exception. The facts of the case are clear. Finkelstein had attempted to enter Israel last Thursday to travel into the West Bank. There he would likely have lent support to Palestinian extremists. Unquestionably, he would have caused trouble. And while Israel generally does not prevent foreign trouble makers from entering the country (a highly naive and short-sighted policy), it made an exception this time: Finkelstein...

I am often reminded of Martin Luther King’s statement about anti-Zionism: “You declare that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely anti-Zionist. And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops…When people criticize Zionism they mean Jew; we are talking anti-Semitism….Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land… Anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic and ever will it be so. And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of...

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, in explaining his state's abolition of the death penalty, announced that he knew "from my heart and from my soul" that no murderer should be put to death. As it happens, I know from my heart and from my soul that not putting any murderer to death is a cosmic injustice; it cheapens the worth of human life and greatly diminishes the revulsion society feels toward murder. So, what does this mean? Does it mean two intelligent and decent people have very different hearts and souls? (This question assumes that pro-capital punishment readers will acknowledge...

"... Hand in hand, arm in arm, we will protect your land, Palestine... "The land is Arab in history and identity "Palestine is Arab in history and identity... "From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah "From Bethlehem and Jaffa, from Beersheva and Ramla, "From Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron." These lines, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, are some lyrics of a song played many times daily on Fatah-TV, the television outlet of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s party, beginning about six weeks before the Annapolis conference in late November. The song, in...

The Global Warming movement has been compared to a religion -- albeit one without God, but with a vision of sin and repentance, damnation and salvation. Not quite. Real religion is about improving the human condition by encouraging moral conduct in obedience to the will of God. The proponents of Global Warming are creating a suicide cult, which -- if followed to its logical conclusion -- will lead to human extinction. Forget the Kyoto Treaty. Forget the Luddite Lieberman-Warner bill to cut so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2050, which would cost the U.S. an estimated $1 trillion and...

Like Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, "The Golden Compass" (an atheist's stealth attack on faith) was unleashed on December 7. Unlike Yamamoto's attempt to sink the U.S. Pacific Fleet, there isn't much bang to "The Golden Compass." The $150-million blockbuster is as flat as cola left in a glass overnight. The first in a planned cinematic trilogy intended to rival "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" and "The Lord of The Rings," "Compass" may turn out to be the "Heaven's Gate" of juvenile fantasy films. The movie is based on a series of children's books ("His Dark Materials"),...

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel's permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response. Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state," Olmert announced on November 11, the Annapolis-related talks would not proceed. "I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state."...

Democrats in Washington just can't seem to help it. Even when great opportunities arise that would allow them to look like patriots, they sponsor yet another bill to cut off funds for our troops in Iraq. Last week, Democrats in the House of Representatives voted yet again to fix a firm deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. It was their 40th such vote. Luckily, their motion died in the Senate, where the Party of Surrender failed to muster enough votes to survive a presidential veto. Also last week, House Democrats passed a measure, inappropriately titled the RESTORE Act...

An American Secretary of State should be in Baghdad brokering a reconciliation between Iraqi factions and locking down a victory for which nearly 4,000 Americans gave their lives. Iraq is the central front in the holy war against the West being waged by al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and an American defeat in Iraq would lead to an escalation of that war to proportions that would make the current conflict in Iraq seem tame by comparison. Instead, Condoleeza Rice has been shuttling between capitals in the Middle East in an attempt to feed a piece of Jewish meat...

How much does it matter that the Iraqi Parliament has not yet passed an oil law? According to war critics, it is the only thing that matters: Iraqis' failure to complete "reconciliation" by passing "benchmark" legislation as required by Washington is evidence not only that the current strategy has failed, but also that any strategy will fail and the United States should simply leave now. Underlying this argument is the belief that a stable peace in Iraq can occur only after the Iraqis have worked out their own basic problems. This is a remarkably unrealistic claim. The suggestion is that...

Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, arrested the provisional government, and installed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in its place. Though the Russian revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by the Russians, who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612), I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the anniversary, I reread Ten Days That Shook the World, the famed account of the revolution written by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow-traveler. Then I reread last week's press reports of the...

During the week of October 22-26, David Horowitz and his Freedom Center held a series of events at 100 campuses for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, intended to counter standard academic nitwitery about the war on terrorism ("America is evil," "We brought it on ourselves," "9/11 was a Republican conspiracy"). Admirable though this was, attention must be called to an even more imminent threat. By the authority vested in me (by myself), I hereby designate the week of November 5th Left-Fascism Awareness Week -- a time to consider the clear and present danger to free speech emanating from the Left, from academic...

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Scott W. Carmichael, the senior security and counterintelligence investigator for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as the lead case agent for the DIA on the Ana Montes espionage investigation. He has been investigating attempts by foreign intelligence services to penetrate DIA operations worldwide for nearly twenty years. Prior to that he was a Chinese-Mandarin linguist in the U.S. Navy and a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. His contributions toward the successful resolution of national security matters have earned Carmichael the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal and Award for Meritorious Civilian Service,...

The Muslim Honor Killing Hollywood Doesn't Want You to See   By Debbie SchlusselFrontPageMagazine.com | 8/17/2007 To update an old Mark Twain (and Benjamin Disraeli) quote, there are lies, damned lies, and Hollywood scripts. Sometimes the lies are not what is in the script, but what is removed under pressure from whining, politically correct interest groups. These days, those groups are primarily Muslim and Middle Eastern. Honor Killing Scene Deleted From "ICE, The Movie" a/k/a "Crossing Over" Muslim groups have successfully gotten scenes--accurately depicting them as terrorists and murderers--removed from scripts or changed to another, more acceptable nationality. Brilliant...

Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon. I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget. On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of Europe." If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes...

Delivered to the United States Senate, Washington, DC, on Tuesday, July 17, 2007.Mr. President, I rise tonight to play my small part in this pointless political play put on by the Senate Majority Leader. It is an insult to the brave men and women in our Armed Forces and to the American taxpayers that we are here tonight for no other reason than for a publicity stunt. Instead of following the script written by "Move On" like my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I want to be honest and frank with the American people. I hear Democrats...

As we go to press, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is hosting a rare all-night filibuster in the Capitol, hoping to advance a bill pulling troops out of Iraq in 120 days. In itself, the filibuster is a meaningless gesture intended to embarrass those who support winning the war in Iraq, but it occurs against the backdrop of the Democratic Party's desire to snatch defeat from the jaws of potential victory. The troops are surging. Baghdad is hemorrhaging. Democrats are pouncing. Republicans are defecting. And it appears the Iraqi front of America’s War on Terror is crumbling. Last week alone,...

Evenness of temper has never been one of John McCain’s signature virtues, but yesterday the Arizona Senator had a good excuse for loosing his cool. Henpecked by California’s Barbara Boxer about the poor polling of the Iraq war, of which he has been a resolute supporter, a visibly vexed McCain fired back that “a lot of us are not driven by polls. A lot of us are driven by principle. And a lot of us do what we think is right no matter what the polls say.” Even apart from the deteriorating fortunes of his presidential campaign, McCain was right...

"Let me get this straight, Gen. Washington: You want us, the representatives of the Second Continental Congress, to fund a sneak attack on British troops starting on Christmas?" "That is correct, sir. After we declared our independence from King George, he was most unhappy. He ordered his army to attack us. The Brits have made tremendous gains on our homeland." "Gains, Washington?" "Sir, whereas our Continental Army is something of a motley crew, the Brits are well-trained and well-funded. Their forces include Hessian mercenaries, professional fighters who are most skilled at the art of war." "Your point, Washington?" "The Brits...

When he spoke this week at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Islamic Center of Washington, President Bush said: “In the Middle East, we have seen instead the rise of a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination. This self-appointed vanguard presumes to speak for Muslims. They do not.” There we are again. The Administration and the mainstream media (both Left and Right) take it as axiomatic that the jihad we see all over the world today represents a perversion of Islam, repudiated by...