The Free Press

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s speech at the 2013 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference, in which he reminded the audience that “Israel is the greatest collective affirmation of life in the whole of Jewish history.” Welcome back to Douglas Murray’s column, “Things Worth Remembering,” in which he presents great speeches that we should commit to heart. Read Murray's latest essay—and listen to him reflect on Sacks’s inspirational address—in The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/4eAcsAO

It’s become fashionable to claim that other countries hate the United States. But having traveled to 30 countries in three years, specifically the parts most tourists won’t venture to, globe-trotting photojournalist Chris Arnade says that’s nonsense. “I don’t want to address here the moral issues around U.S. foreign policy, or even the question of exactly how dominant the U.S. is on the political stage, but I can tell you for a fact that the notion that the U.S. no longer has cultural power is so absolutely wrong it’s laughable,” Arnade writes in The Free Press. “Sure, our culture romanticizes, but I’m not sure that matters. If the U.S.—with the help of Hollywood, Nashville, and Memphis—is offering a distorted spectacle, it’s a distorted spectacle that the rest of the world eagerly wants to look at.” Read more about the world’s ongoing love affair with America: https://thefp.pub/4eC3KBV

“I’m back! Nellie promised that I’d never have to do this again but it’s one of those Jewish holidays where they aren’t allowed to blog (it’s in the Torah), so she scrolled through her phone looking for goys and somehow I was the first. Shana Tova! And TGIF.” —Katie Herzog On the docket this week: Justice for Fat Bear 402, catastrophe in the Southeast, the VP snoozefest, Doug the Dog, and your right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. And so much more in The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/3XQj9ri

On October 26, 2023, less than three weeks after terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 250, Maura Finkelstein tweeted: “ISRAEL DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITS OCCUPATION.” The tenured anthropology professor added: “BUT PALESTINIANS HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION.” The FP’s Peter Savodnik doesn’t agree with the since-terminated educator—but argues Finkelstein should be entitled to share her views on social media. Read more at TheFP.com:

“Rotten states like Qatar think they’ve bought us—and maybe they have.” Today on Honestly, Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray discuss the alarming influence of Qatar in Western media and institutions. “Spit and you will hit someone in this neighborhood on the Qatari payroll." “It’s rot all the way down, rot in the media, supported by rotted institutions of rotten states like Qatar.” Watch: https://thefp.pub/3BqRWUp  Listen: https://thefp.pub/4gS0JPl

Today, a $3,000 drone can take out a $10 million tank. Veteran Elliot Ackerman—who was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Valor, and a Purple Heart after five deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq—asks: When will the American military learn that lesson? “If the United States has to fight a war against a peer-level adversary, quality of systems will matter—but so will quantity, and we have discounted quantity for too long,” the retired Marine writes in The Free Press. “If we fail to reinvest in our military industrial base, and if we continue to rely on a sclerotic, bloated defense acquisition system, we will be unprepared. We will be the Germany of the Third World War.” Read more: https://thefp.pub/3TPDcVC

The International Longshoremen’s Association’s strike is crippling U.S. ports from the Gulf Coast to New England. Yes, it is painful. “But here’s the hard truth: The militancy showcased by the ILA is exactly what is needed to restore a fairer, more balanced economy—the kind that created the middle class in the postwar decades and allowed your grandparents to access reliable healthcare, take vacations, and enjoy disposable incomes,” Sohrab Ahmari writes in The Free Press. “Those who complain that today’s left has come to privilege boutique identity politics over bread-and-butter concerns should cheer the longshoremen. There is nothing ‘woke’ about their exercise of economic power to win material gains for themselves and their industrial brethren.” Read more at TheFP.com:

On today’s Front Page: Make Drones, Not Bombs. Plus. . . —Elliot Ackerman: The U.S. isn’t ready for a modern war. —Sohrab Ahmari: In praise of the dockworkers shutting down our ports. —Peter Savodnik: Why an anti-Israel professor’s firing sets a “very dangerous precedent.” And much more from Madeleine Kearns and The Free Press:

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those journalists treated by the left-of-center establishment more like a prophet than a writer. There are few accolades he hasn’t been granted, few prizes he’s yet to win. However, his new essay collection, "The Message," is a "masterpiece of warped arguments and moral confusion," Coleman Hughes writes in The Free Press. “Coates conspicuously sat out the frenzied period of identity politics that followed George Floyd’s death. That silence has now broken—though this is hardly something to celebrate.” Read more at TheFP.com:

 There are no longer “sundown towns” in America, where black people aren’t safe at night. So why are people using the natural disaster to claim otherwise? The FP’s River Page reports on the “insane liberal myth” exposed by Hurricane Helene: