Free Republic

AP's objectivity in question amid revelations it shared office space with Hamas The Associated Press's latest hire is an anti-Israel activist who accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing," called the late Jewish donor Sheldon Adelson a "naked mole rat," and helped organize protests against Jewish students traveling to Israel on the Birthright program. Emily Wilder, who previously worked for the Arizona Republic, announced on Twitter that she would join the AP this month as a news associate, according to a screenshot of her tweet posted by the Stanford College Republicans. Wilder has since set her Twitter account to private. It's unclear...

MATTI FRIEDMAN What I find most remarkable, having lived here for the past 23 years, is Israel’s bewildering and fast-moving society, the complexities of which are usually overlooked by observers. The question of what “Israeli” means in 2018, and how that’s changing and why, are particularly important ones at this anniversary. One good way to answer is to listen to pop music. But the singer in a shiny white gown who belted out a cover for a national TV audience was Sarit Hadad, one of Israel’s biggest pop stars and the queen of a genre called “Mizrahi,” or “eastern.” In...