Free Republic

Our occasional correspondent Joel Mowbray (jdmowbra@erols.com) reports: J-Street suffered a humiliating defeat yesterday on Capitol Hill -- which means Israel scored an important victory. The George Soros-funded "pro-Israel" group inexplicably mobilized its machinery to oppose a bipartisan letter that merely called on President Obama to pressure the Palestinian Authority to end its longstanding practice of inciting its people to commit terrorism against the Jewish state. Even in a town where tin-eared stupidity is commonplace, essentially protecting the PA's ability to encourage violence against its Jewish neighbors is jaw-dropping. The straightforward letter, authored by Reps. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) and Steve Austria...

It did not come with the promise of 72 virgins, but newly released Guantanamo Bay detainees managed to make it to paradise after all. What the fawning media neglected to mention was that these supposedly friendly lads all trained at an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist camp in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Not that you’ll hear any such inconvenient facts from the mainstream media, of course. While many in the mainstream media are not-so-privately cheering Obama’s planned closure of Guantanamo Bay, does their fervor excuse them from meeting even minimal journalistic standards?/ ... Assuming that the facts are actually as they appear, though, paying...

Media Downplay Seattle Terror Attack by Joel Mowbray Posted Aug 10, 2006  Hiding behind potted plants, Naveed Haq laid in wait for a 14-year-old girl he could use as a hostage. With a gun in her back, he pushed his way past security and through the door. He coldly, deliberately shot six women. When a wounded Pamela Waechter tried to flee up some stairs, he followed her, leaned over a railing and killed her. Are these the actions of a crazy person? A crazy person might cause harm to himself, maybe even someone close to him. Haq, though, did...

The Enemy Within Two cases suggest the next terror strike on U.S. soil will be carried out not by foreigners but by Americans By Joel Mowbray Lodi, Calif., is nestled in a sleepy agricultural area 35 miles outside of Sacramento. The Pakistani population in the city of about 60,000 has grown exponentially over the past several decades and now numbers several thousand. Local non-Muslims, when interviewed by media, have given little indication they suspected virulently anti-American Islam was practiced there. Yet prior to coming to the United States, the imam of a local mosque encouraged his flock to travel from...

After the terrorist attacks in London, the Sun Online in the UK published a special feature of Islamic terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world since 1993.The newspaper listed the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, the explosion on a Philippines Air jet in 1994 that killed one and injured 10, the Khobar Towers bombing that killed 26 U.S. servicemen in 1996, the East Africa Embassy bombings in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, September 11, bombings in Bali and Jakarta, recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, the 3/11 Madrid bombings, and several others.The world map posted by the Sun for...

When we think of Palestinian terrorism, often forgotten are its other victims. For most, it is an unintentional oversight; for terror’s apologists, it is an absolute necessity. For terror’s avowed supporters, however, the other victims are not considered victims at all; they are thought of as heroes. Speaking at a conference on Islam and Democracy in April, journalist Anisa Mehdi suggested that the only reason we consider Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah terrorists is because Americans aren’t “pro-Palestinian.” She added that if we were, we would call them “Palestinian partisans,” not terrorists. After her speech, this columnist asked Mehdi what...

In the first of its kind for an event organized by a major national Muslim organization, Kamal Nawash and the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC) recently held the Free Muslims March Against Terrorism. Not surprisingly, the leaders of every other major Muslim organization shunned the march and declined to take a public stand against terrorism and extremism. Noticeably missing from the list of over 80 sponsors Nawash rounded up was any of the Muslim groups that claim to be moderates, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Though these groups pay lip service to...

Facts are stubborn things—except when you create your own. When I was asked about the “Jenin Massacre” by a Muslim student during an event at Old Dominion last week, it became clear we were coming from two very different perspectives: reality vs. mythology. There was no “Jenin Massacre.” Period. The only “massacre” that took place at Jenin was that of the truth. Palestinians, long masters of media manipulation, went by the hundreds to foreign media—whom Israel kept outside of the armed conflict—to claim that over 500 innocents had been slaughtered. The man at the front of the prevarication parade was...

In naming Condoleezza Rice as his pick for Secretary of State, President Bush is sending his most loyal adviser to his most disloyal agency: the State Department.  But no matter what changes she makes—and many are needed—the bureaucracy at State is entrenched almost to the point of being impenetrable, meaning real reform could well prove illusory.Ms. Rice will soon take the reins of a massive 47,000-employee operation that is literally sprawled out across the world.  It is an insular institution that operates remarkably similarly from one administration to the next, typically viewing presidents, as one Foreign Service Officer puts it,...

Two former MTV producers have accomplished what the entire mainstream media thus far has not: they’ve captured the real life and times of the Iraqi people. They didn’t do it alone, however.  Producers Eric Manes and Martin Kunert sent 150 digital cameras into Iraq this April with very simple instructions: “Videotape your neighborhood, shopping area, where you live and work, pray, relax, and play” and interview “people who have the most meaning in your life.”  (See the entire instructions here.)The cameras were passed on to friends and family members, and the handheld devices eventually made their way to the Shia...

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry By Joel Mowbray SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq. An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past...

The past couple weeks have seen a swirl of anonymous allegations of supposed spying and espionage, including implications that the Pentagon civilian staff might be teeming with double agents for the Jewish state. Thing is, almost none of it is true. Beyond mishandling of classified documents—not an inconsequential offense, to be sure—every other accusation leveled by unnamed State Department and intelligence officials appears part of a carefully calculated campaign to question the loyalty of several Pentagon civilian employees by name, as well as a much larger group by implication. According to someone with intimate knowledge of the draft presidential directive...

IF al Qaeda wants to strike on U.S. soil be fore the elections, it still has available to it a gaping loophole it exploited pre-9/11: Saudis' easy access to U.S. visas. Despite supposed reforms implemented by the State Department, current statistics obtained by this columnist reveal that nearly 90 percent of all Saudi visa applicants get approved. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found in an October 2002 report that "consular officers in Saudi Arabia issued visas to most Saudi applicants without interviewing them, requiring them to complete their applications or providing supporting documentation.

Now that President Bush is turning his attention to reforming the national security apparatus, one policy prescription not explicitly endorsed by the panel could prove to be one of the most effective: enforcing existing visa laws. Though it sounds simple enough, the State Department has yet to reform meaningfully this crucial component of the war on terror. The beauty of using visa policy is that no new laws need to be written; State merely needs to enforce existing ones. The backbone of visa policy for temporary travelers, a category which included all 19 hijackers, is a law known as 214(b)....

Continuing his quest to be more all over the map than the Grateful Dead in the band's heyday, John Kerry has offered yet another new position on the Iraq war. He’s for it—for now. Uttering words no sane person ever predicted would pass through his lips, Kerry started his statement with, “I’ll answer it directly.” (Editor’s note: That quote is authentic. We couldn’t believe it either.) President Bush had challenged his opponent to announce whether or not he would still authorize the war knowing what we know today. The rest of Kerry's response? “Yes, I would have voted for the...

Backward Bounce By Joel Mowbray FrontPageMagazine.com | August 2, 2004 For very good reason, the rule of thumb is that a presidential candidate gains ground following his party’s convention: It almost always happens. It happened four years ago, despite Al Gore’s nearly incoherent rant. It happened in 1984, after Walter Mondale reaffirmed his pledge to raise taxes. It even happened for Jimmy Carter in 1980 after a brutal civil war with Ted Kennedy. But it didn’t happen for John Kerry. According to the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, conducted Friday and Saturday, Kerry lost a total swing of 5 points from the...

Despite the media’s obsession with President Bush’s failures in Iraq and the blame cast on him even for the CIA’s mistakes, John Kerry should be soaring in the polls. But he’s not. Iraq is easily the dominant issue—although the jury’s out on how many votes it will sway—yet Kerry’s polling has barely budged. After all, not being the unpopular guy often counts for a lot in elections. But this is Kerry’s quandary: he’s not exactly a supporter of the war, though he voted for it, yet he’s not quite anti-war either. Fudging positions on intractable issues where clarity can only...

Despite the media’s obsession with President Bush’s failures in Iraq and casting the blame on him even for the CIA’s mistakes, John Kerry should be soaring in the polls. But he’s not. Iraq is easily this election’s dominant issue—although the jury’s out on how many votes it will sway—yet Kerry’s polling has barely budged. After all, not being the unpopular guy often counts for a lot in elections. But this is Kerry’s quandary: he’s not exactly a supporter of the war, though he voted for it, yet he’s not quite antiwar, either. Fudging positions on intractable issues where clarity can...

With sleazy hypocrisy practically oozing from his pores, presidential wannabe John Kerry last week sought political gain by exploiting the memories of dead American patriots, saying, “They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong.” What Kerry apparently didn’t explain during his interview with the New York Times was about what exactly Bush and Cheney were wrong, or what would have happened differently for soldiers not to have “lost their lives.” Perhaps Kerry was assuming people would know what he meant, since he timed the remarks to the release of the bipartisan Senate committee report that was...

With sleazy hypocrisy practically oozing from his pores, presidential wannabe John Kerry last week sought political gain by exploiting the memories of dead American patriots, saying, “They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong.”What Kerry apparently didn’t explain during his interview with the New York Times was about what exactly Bush and Cheney were wrong, or what would have happened differently for soldiers not to have “lost their lives.”Perhaps Kerry was assuming people would know what he meant, since he timed the remarks to the release of the bipartisan Senate committee report that was highly critical...