Free Republic

Some 200,000 ultra-Orthodox men blocked the entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon for a “million man” protest against military conscription. The gathering saw protesters attack journalists, and hundreds clashed with police as the event came to an end. A 20-year-old man fell to his death from an unfinished high-rise building in the city center, where several ultra-Orthodox youths had gathered on several floors. Police later said they were investigating the death as a possible suicide. The fall victim was later identified by Hebrew media outlets as Menachem Mendel Litzman. As word of his death spread, the rally organizers declared the...

This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. His death on April 4, 1968, found my country in the midst of one of its darkest hours, as the one year anniversary of an oppressive military dictatorship neared. With my fellow citizens living under military rule and deprived of the very basic freedoms, I was inspired by the people of Birmingham, Ala., of Memphis and Atlanta, who, in a most dignified way, poured into the streets, standing up for what was rightly theirs. Across the Atlantic, the civil-rights movement reached us in the clarion...