Free Republic

Few serious people think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be elected president of the United States in 2024. The nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the namesake of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who was also assassinated (six years later in 1968), is at this moment the main rival for the Democratic nomination to President Joe Biden. The Democratic race is not set up to allow Biden's defeat. There will be no debates, and the primary rules are all geared to ensure that the process will be a coronation of Biden that will not require him to expose himself...

Ilhan Omar can’t seem to help herself when it comes to anti-Semitism. The question is: What are leading Democrats and Never Trumpers, who’ve repeatedly accused the White House of empowering anti-Semitism, prepared to do about the congresswoman from Minnesota? Omar tried to wiggle out of the implications of her earlier tweet about ­Israel “hypnotizing” the world by claiming ignorance about its meaning. She said she didn’t know she was tapping into an anti-Semitic trope when she smeared Israelis defending themselves against Hamas terrorists. But she dug herself in deeper this weekend with tweets in which she ­asserted that the only...

As far as much of the American public is concerned, the timing for U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn't be worse. The indictments of 12 Russian military intelligence officers on Friday renewed the calls for a tougher stance from the administration against Moscow. But with Trump determined to achieve some sort of détente with Russia, the indictments gave ammunition to his critics who see the meeting as appeasement or worse. But while Americans are deeply divided about the highly politicized topic of relations with Russia, many Israelis seem to be taking a very different view...

In a compelling column, George Will – who knows a thing or two about conservatism – makes the conservative case against Donald Trump. Mr. Will refers to Trump as an “unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate” who is coarsening our civic life. He labels Trump “a counterfeit Republican and no conservative.” And he argues that Trump is an affront to anyone devoted to the legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review and a giant in American conservatism. Just as Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society from the conservative movement in the 1960s, so should conservatives today...

This past summer during one of the last episodes of HBO's mega-hit "The Sopranos," A.J., the whiny suicidal son of the show's mafia boss anti-hero, was heard to worry about what he saw as the certain bombing of Iran by President Bush. "You don't know that," his mafia princess sister responded. Though this stray snippet, which was widely noted in reviews of the show, did not offer any clues as to the fate of the fictional leaders of the North Jersey mafia, it may have heralded the beginning of a new twist on what it means to be "anti-war" in...

Washington's fantasies about the Palestinians will waste money and lives With congressional elections not far off, those politicians interested in Jewish votes are now talking about their support for Israel. Fair enough, but for the vast majority of us who weren't looking at events in Washington too closely, the pro-Israel side just received something of a setback. A bill that would have banned direct U.S. funding of the terrorist-controlled Palestinian Authority fell under the bus as Congress adjourned to allow its members to scramble home to fight for re-election. Though the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act was passed in two different versions...

Get Out Your Crystal Ball! Time to take the 5766 Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news - Jonathan S. Tobin Condoleezza Rice Did you enjoy 5765? For Jews around the world, it was the usual mixed bag of bad and even worse news. It was another year of anti-Semitism in Europe, stalemate in Iraq, and ups and downs in Israel's battle for survival as the terror war waxed and then waned, and Israel left Gaza. But if you were looking to avoid controversy this year, even talking about the weather wasn't safe, as President Bush found out to...

The implosion of Israel's leading party will have consequences for the U.S. alliance http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | According to the Israeli media, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had more on his mind in New York last week than just speaking at the United Nations. After addressing the world body in Hebrew, Sharon switched to English to schmooze a group of wealthy American Jews, who attended a private event that was a thinly veiled fundraiser for the premier's coming re-election campaign. As such, the event might generate yet another probe into Sharon's ethics. That's because the alleged $10,000 cover charge for the evening might...

A quarter-century ago, author Bat Ye'or set out to debunk the myth that Jews and other non-Muslim minorities enjoyed a golden age of freedom while living in countries under the sway of Islam. Her ground-breaking book, Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, shined a spotlight on the plight of those who found themselves under Muslim rule. But after several other works that also focused on the concept of the dhimmi — the word used by Muslims to describe those who lived as their legal inferiors — the author has expanded her focus. For Ye'or (a pen name), the question is...

Can a group number as many as 70 million individuals fly under the radar? Outside of the context of politics, Christian evangelicals are virtually invisible in American culture, except to be laughed at or feared. Just as the image of the Jew can be a dangerously misleading generalization, the same is true for the image of the evangelical. Listen to many Jews talk about conservative Christians and you'd think they're discussing the Taliban. This disconnect between image and reality is of no small importance in the aftermath of a presidential election in which evangelicals and "moral values" voters are said...

In much of what we laughingly call the "civilized world," the death of archterrorist and murderer Yasser Arafat was mourned with the usual solemnity given to a distinguished head of state. Indeed, much of the international media gave Arafat's send-off the "Princess Di" treatment, with lengthy biographies in which platitudes about his symbolic value as the leader of the Palestinian cause were augmented by euphemisms about the tactics employed by his henchmen. Even many of those who didn't buy into the nonsense about this Egyptian-born former Soviet satellite being a heroic revolutionary leader were still liable to treat him as...

For those waiting to see if Israel would be any sort of an issue in the first presidential debate last week, the answer was clearly not. With the spotlight on Iraq, it is unlikely that either President George W. Bush or Sen. John Kerry see much point in grandstanding on the Israeli-Arab conflict. The obsessive focus on Israel seems to be fading from the foreground of American public opinion. There is something to be said for this, in and of itself, but it might be wise for American policymakers to use this point to reassess some of our basic assumptions...

Benny Morris' transformation highlights chilling truths about the conflict http://www.jewishworldreview.com | If war is the "continuation of politics ... by other means," as German strategist Karl von Clausewitz famously wrote, then it must be said with equal certainty that the study of history in our day has become another form of warfare. No conflict better exemplifies this maxim than that between Arabs and Israelis. For the last 55 years and more, Zionist and anti-Zionist historians have waged war in the pages of their books. Pro-Israel writers look to the past to justify by legal, historic and moral grounds the rebirth...

Even good ideas have their limits. The belief in a strong American foreign policy whose purpose is to spread our values of freedom and democracy to the Middle East is one I subscribe to. But should the rationale that led to the American liberation of Iraq necessarily lead us to support the idea of sending American troops into "Palestine"? According to a lot of the talking heads on television it should. The armed might of the United States can, they think, solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and simultaneously burnish America's reputation in the Muslim world while guaranteeing Israel's security. They argue...