Free Republic

JERUSALEM - Police recommended Sunday that Israeli President Moshe Katsav be charged with rape, sexual assault and fraud, the most serious charges ever to face an Israeli leader. The recommendation came at a meeting between police investigators and Attorney General Meni Mazuz. The final decision on whether to put the president on trial is up to Mazuz. He does not have a deadline for making his decision and is expected to take several weeks to study the evidence. Katsav has denied all wrongdoing. In a statement released by his office, his lawyer, Zion Amir, said police are not authorized to...

Just in time for the High Holy Days, a pair of prominent Jewish leaders are putting the City Council's two Jewish aldermen on notice: They risk incurring the wrath of God if they push to repeal Chicago's foie gras ban. "Beyond the Kosher dietary laws, God has told us to do what is 'good and proper in the eyes of God,'" Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B'Nail Israel Congregation wrote to Aldermen Burton F. Natarus (42nd Ward) and Bernard Stone (50th Ward). Jana Kohl, former director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, accused Natarus and Stone of...

Some hundred haredim were demonstrating outside the Jerusalem police headquarters on Passover eve against the arrest of Yisrael Asher Valis, who was accused of beating his three-month-old son to death. According to the demonstrators, Valis is innocent and has been "humiliated" by the police and the press. The death of the baby on Monday led a leading haredi rabbi to accuse the police and the justice authorities of concocting a Pessah eve blood libel. Rabbi Yitzhak Weiss, halachic authority and spiritual leader for Jerusalem's virulently anti-Zionist Eda Haredit community, said the indictment of the yeshiva student was "identical to the...

The PA doesn't need to smuggle weapons underground to build a well-equipped army. Now, the PA can acquire additional rifles, bullets, and armored personnel carriers with IDF approval. The head of military intelligence, Maj.Gen. Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, told the government at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel’s military establishment will recommend enabling the Palestinian Authority to become equipped with armored personnel carriers (APC’s). American pressure is purportedly behind the IDF’s recommendation. The recommendation represents the first time Israel has allowed PA troops to use APC’s since the PA began fighting Israel with the onset of the Oslo War in...

As students bought lunch and coffee at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) campus, the Islamic call to prayer, "Allahu Akbar," blasted repeatedly through several speakers situated around the student union. "If you want to work for Islam, you must give your heart, if you want to get to heaven, do what the prophet said, peace be upon him," bellowed a melody. SOAS, scene to a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months, has issued a threat to one of its Jewish students to cease his protests against anti-Semitism at the university. Gavin Gross, an American, has...

ZION, Ill. May 9, 2005 — The bodies of two young girls were found in a wooded area Monday morning, not long after two 8-year-olds were reported missing, authorities said. The girls were discovered by a resident walking through the area near Beulah Park in this town north of Chicago, Deputy Chief Clyde Watkins said. A bike path and a ravine run through the area. "We had a complaint of two missing eight-year-olds earlier," Watkins said. But he said authorities had not confirmed whether the dead children were the ones who had been reported missing. He said he couldn't comment...

Chief rabbis Yonah Metzger and Shlomo Moshe Amar, and a number of important rabbinical figures associated with the national religious world, have issued a halakhic ruling reiterating that it is forbidden for Jews to enter any part of the Temple Mount in our times. A similar halakhic ruling was issued a few months after the Six-Day War in 1967. The current ruling was signed also by former chief rabbis Ovadia Yosef, Avraham Shapira, Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, the rabbi of the Western Wall, and heads of well-known national religious-oriented yeshivas. It is seen as a blow to the members of the Temple...

The 'offend-no-one' crowd just doesn't understand the First Amendment: CHARLOTTESVILLE--There seems to be a new code of conduct in American society in which the golden rule is "offend no one." At least that appears to be the case in Riverside, Calif., after city officials gave in to a threat of a lawsuit by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and agreed to cover up a Theodore Roosevelt quote in the Riverside County Historic Courthouse. The quote in question, by an American who was the 26th president of our nation, states that "The true Christian is the true citizen." It is engraved in...

The IDF Spokesperson's Office has released an aerial photograph of the area where a Palestinian girl was killed on October 5. The photograph was published in Maariv today. Contrary to Palestinian claims that the girl was killed on the way to school, the photograph clearly indicates that the Girit outpost, where she was shot and killed, is locate in the opposite direction from her home. The area of the Girit outpost is off limits to civilians. It should be noted that it is a common practice of Palestinian terrorists to send children to both test the security arrrangements in outposts...