Free Republic

The Israeli lobby in America is under pressure these days. It seems they crossed so many red lines that some hot-blooded Americans felt obliged to protest. The 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner, former US President Jimmy Carter, is not alone with his recent book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” and LA Times and Guardian article, “How I See Palestine.” A recent Harvard study entitled “The Israel Lobby” by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt details the ways of the lobby and its victims. Tellingly, they later joined the victim list. There are similar studies and books exposing the lobby, like “They...

JERUSALEM – A group of prominent rabbinic leaders in Israel and abroad yesterday issued a call for Israeli citizens to launch a democratic uprising to bring down the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "Out of love for each and every Jew, we call on the people of Israel and its leaders to begin a democratic uprising to immediately replace this government, which constitutes an ominous threat to the nation of Israel," the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of over 1,200 rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis, said in a statement. Among the Rabbinical Congress members who signed the statement...

We seem to have tied our future and fate to this tiny nation, Israel, with about the same population as Ireland -- but why? I guess I’m in the minority since even those pillars of conservatism Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are committed, body and soul, to Israel. Maybe I’m missing something here but I just can’t understand why, since that commitment has drawn us into that roiling cesspool of hatred and violence that is the Middle East....I admire Israel’s determination to defeat Hezbollah at all costs and despite world condemnation, something the United States simply refuses to do with...

Israeli warplanes have resumed the bombardment of suspected Hezbollah positions in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, carrying out three strikes overnight, Lebanese police said. It was the first such strikes on the battered city for several days, which has been heavily bombarded by Israel in a 23-day-old war against Hezbollah guerrillas. At least three explosions rocked the city as aircraft circled overhead. No details of casualties were immediately available but the southern parts of Beirut, considered a stronghold of Hezbollah, have been largely reduced to rubble after earlier heavy Israeli raids. One Israeli has been killed as...

TEHRAN, July 29 — These should be heady days for Iran’s leaders. Hezbollah, widely regarded as its proxy force in Lebanon, continues to rain down rockets on Israel despite 17 days of punishing airstrikes. Hezbollah’s leader is a hero of the Arab world, and Iran is basking in the reflected glory. Yet this capital is unusually tense. Officials, former officials and analysts say that it is too dangerous even to discuss the crisis. In newspapers, the slightest questioning of support for Hezbollah has been attacked as unpatriotic, pro-Zionist and anti-Islamic. As the war in Lebanon grinds on, Iranian officials cannot...