Free Republic

Dear Freepers After almost 25 years of freerepublic.com being a rare bastion of sanity in this crazy world, I will be ending my time as a member of this once great site. The quality of FR has degraded to the point that I no longer find much usage for the site that I can’t find on other platforms and sources. I have had multiple conversations with many freepers, both in the forum and privately and many of them agree with some of my points of contention: A) The primary reason I am leaving is the failure of FR to address...

Conversation Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy Back in 1994, when Yitzhak Rabin was ready to hand the Palestinians a state on a silver platter, who was the loudest voice against it? Benjamin Netanyahu. And what did the world call him? A radical, an enemy of peace, a warmonger. Even inside Israel, many thought he was being extreme. But was he? Bibi’s argument was simple: You don’t hand a state to people who openly declare that your country has no right to exist and that their ultimate goal is to wipe you off the map. That’s not a “peace process”, that’s national...

Jews seem to generate a lot of negative emotions among non-Jews. While it's become particularly intense since Israel began retaliating against Hamas, it's been going on for a long time.The Romans fought three wars against the Jews, who had been a civilization for over a millennium before the time the Romans touched the sands of the Middle East. The first of those wars, the First Jewish – Roman War 66-73 AD, which ended with the deaths of defenders of Masada resulted in the destruction of the Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, the death of 50,000 Jews and absolute Roman control...

Israel has hinted it is plotting airstrikes to topple the Iranian regime as it seeks retaliation for its missile attack earlier this month. Tel Aviv has been narrowing down its targets to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its volunteer paramilitary force as it consults the US on its response, The Times has reported. Although it is unlikely one round of missile strikes would topple the Iranian regime, it has been suggested by a western official the strength of the attack could encourage opposition from within. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement addressed to the Iranian...

“Not a single Muslim participated in the Holocaust, nor had any responsibility." In 1993, Abbé Pierre gave an interview, saying that it was Catholic Christians who committed the Holocaust, and who gave Palestine to the Jews because they were ashamed of what they did. A staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, Abbé Pierre said Christians made the Muslims, who did nothing to the Jews, pay the price of Hitler’s actions. “Not a single Muslim had participated in the Holocaust, nor had any responsibility. And we deceived the Palestinians,’ he said. ‘We lied to them.’”Let’s take those assertions one by one.First,...

Columbus’ lineage unveiled through DNA analysis The centuries-old mystery of Christopher Columbus’ lineage has been solved. Scientists revealed the explorer’s roots after DNA analysis in a documentary aired on Saturday, October 10th on Spanish television. Researchers, led by forensic pathologist Miguel Llorente, examined microscopic samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral. They compared them to those of his known relatives and descendants. The DNA study confirmed that the remains of Christopher Columbus are indeed buried in Seville. Llorente, briefing reporters on the findings, confirmed this. He specifically stated: “Today it became possible to verify with new technologies, definitively confirming the...

Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on the Israeli crisis. Born in 1948 in French Algeria to a family of Sephardic Jews but raised from infancy in France, where he has spent his long and productive life, Bernard-Henri Lévy has led a distinguished career as a philosopher, war correspondent, and prolific author and commentator. Unlike many members of his generation in France, he was not seduced by Marx, and has in fact spent much of his life criticizing Communism and other forms of tyranny, championing oppressed peoples around the world, and defending Israel and the United States at a time when most of...

Tisha B'Av 2024: August 12-13 Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av, is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, on which we fast, deprive ourselves and pray. It is the culmination of the Three Weeks, a period of time during which we mark the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu delivered a one-hour address to a Joint Session of Congress this afternoon, drawing no fewer than 55 standing ovations, the most of any such speaker in Congressional history. It was the Israeli leader’s fourth address to Congress. ... more than any other foreign leader in history, more even than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II. His speech was brilliant, bipartisan, and electrifying. A true master class in global statesmanship.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to bolster U.S. support for his country's fight against Hamas in a speech to Congress Wednesday that sparked boycotts by some top Democrats and drew thousands of protesters to the nation’s capital.

America is next. Despite fanatical pro-Hamas protesters who set off fire alarms all night in his hotel, left maggots in the conference room set aside for the Israelis, and tried to block all the roads on the way to the Capitol, the forces of evil did not prevail: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress on Wednesday afternoon as planned and did his best to shore up a U.S./Israel alliance that the Biden-Harris administration, in desperate pursuit of votes from Michigan, has done so much to damage. The signs of that damage were unmistakable as Netanyahu entered the House...

A Vain Battle If there was ever a battle fought in vain, this was it. Or at least, so it seemed at the time. The year is 1924. Vladimir Lenin, the father of the communist revolution, is dead; over 900,000 people pass through the Hall of Columns during the four days and nights that Lenin's body lay exposed to the public. Josef Stalin succeeds him as the new leader of the Soviet Union. During the following thirty years, he would murder 50 million of his own people. Jews and Judaism would be one of his primary targets. He sets up...

Reports are emerging that the IDF hit a significant Hezbollah target in Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon. According to the reports, an Israeli strike in Jouya, in southern Lebanon, killed at least four Hezbollah officials. At least one of the members was a high-ranking field officer.A Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike late on Tuesday on the southern Lebanon town of Joya was the most senior member of the group to be killed in eight months of hostilities with Israel, a security source told Reuters.Hezbollah identified the killed commander by his rank in a statement, naming him as Taleb Abdallah.While...

In the lead up to the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) operation to destroy Hamas and secure the release of over 100 hostages – including 8 Americas – believed to be in and around Rafah, leaders around the world from Joe Biden to the collective leftist leaders of the European Union to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi panicked and ordered Israel to forestall its necessary means to end the war.Why did world leaders clamor for Israel to do nothing?What are they hiding?It turns out they are hiding a lot.Over one million Gazans were said to be sheltering in humanitarian safe areas...

The Biden team’s offer to trade Yahya Sinwar, the man believed to be the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, for guarantees that the Israeli military stay out of Rafah points to two disturbing truths about the current conflict in the Middle East. The first is that the U.S. knows plenty about what the Hamas terror group is doing and has done. The second is that Washington has been keeping key information—like the terror leader’s whereabouts—from the Israelis, thereby prolonging the war that it claims to decry. The implications of the administration’s offer, relayed in a recent Washington Post article,...

On April 29, 1956, two assassins, an Egyptian and a Palestinian, ambushed Ro’i Rothberg, the security officer of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Luring him into the fields, they shot him off his horse, beat him, and shot him again, ending his life. They then dragged his lifeless body as a gruesome trophy back to Gaza, where it was desecrated. Unlike Iran and its proxies today, however, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Gaza at the time, did not ransom Israeli corpses. The day after Rothberg’s murder, the Egyptian authorities transferred his mutilated remains to United Nations mediators who, in turn, passed them...

Ever since October 7, we’ve gotten a steady stream of reminders of just how different life in Israel can be from the rest of the West. No matter how European the architecture or how Americanized its politics have become, Israel’s experience has always been different from that of its allies in crucial ways. For example, the renewed fighting in Gaza’s north is the subject of this lead from the Wall Street Journal: “Seven months into the war, Hamas is far from defeated, stoking fears in Israel that it is walking into a forever war.” This is a very Western, and...

Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed. Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration. Here are ten of their most common untruths about October 7 and the war that followed. “Progressive Hamas”: Gay and transgendered student protestors in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished. Women are segregated...

Headline: “Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich aims to legalize 68 outposts in Judea and Samaria and has instructed various ministries to prepare to provide them with public services.”Although Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir are portrayed as extremist fringe politicians within Israel and by the world for claiming all the land “from the river to the sea,” truth is that this has become the national, centrist consensus in Israel.After October 7, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant that in the future Israel will exercise 100% security control from the river...

… Question 1: On Oct. 7, the terrorist group Hamas slaughtered young Israelis at a music festival as well as other civilians in surrounding communities. They murdered, stabbed, shot, raped, beheaded, burned. They forced children to watch the butchering of parents. They cut off the breasts of women. They killed the defenseless elderly. They abducted and continue to hold innocent civilians hostage. Did you protest that massacre in the days, weeks, months after Oct. 7. At least once? Did you fly flags, wave banners, demand justice? If not, why not? Why do you protest only Israel? Question 2: In the...