It’s Friday, February 13. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Ben Shapiro fires back at Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. Abigail Shrier talks to Dennis Prager about why he wakes up grateful every day. Aaron MacLean explains how American forces reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And much more. Plus, ICYMI, catch this morning’s TGIF here.
But first: Jew-hate, at home and abroad.
There were more synagogue attacks this week than days in the week.
Last weekend: There were three shootings at synagogues within a 10-mile radius in Toronto.
On Monday: In Liège, Belgium, a synagogue was bombed.
On Thursday: A man with a rifle and explosives drove into the largest synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
On Thursday afternoon: In Trondheim, Norway, police arrested a man for suspicious behavior outside a synagogue.
On the earliest hours of Friday: There was an arson attack at a Rotterdam synagogue.
And that’s just the last seven days.
To say this is simply “rising antisemitism,” which is typically how the headlines put it, fails to miss the speed and severity of this virus. We are living through an alarming, historic period in which the guardrails that previously kept this hate at bay have fallen away.
It’s happening in places with large Jewish communities, and those with just a handful of Jews. In America, a country once thought of as the best place in the world to be Jewish, 70 percent of all religion-based hate crimes are directed at Jews, a group that makes up less than 3 percent of the population.
It’s our job to keep up with all of it—and even we are struggling. If we can’t, and it’s our job to live and breathe this, how can you?
Today, we’re launching a new, weekly roundup. This Week in Jew-Hate is meant to summarize the speed and severity of the virus. Not exactly the most fun read of the week (but then, you have TGIF for that). But we think it’s work worth doing. By collecting these incidents in one place each week, we hope to restore a sense of perspective that was lost after October 7. To make sure these attacks are shown for what they are. To see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. You can read the first installment here:
Free Press contributor Polina Fradkin grew up in the Detroit suburb where Temple Israel was attacked on Thursday. When she heard the news, she was in a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv. In her dispatch for us today, Polina explains why she felt safer in that shelter than she would have been in her hometown. When Polina moved to Israel, she was running toward, not away from, something. She asks in her piece: Will future generations from West Bloomfield be able to say the same thing?
—The Editors
A year and a half ago, Dennis Prager suffered a fall that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. After the accident, Prager, one of the most prominent defenders of Judeo-Christian values in America, dictated a book from his hospital bed. It’s called “If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil.” Today, Prager talks to The Free Press’s Abigail Shrier about his book, his accident, the miracle of regaining his voice, and why—despite all the adversity he has faced—he is “thrilled to be alive.”
Amid an explosion of conservative antisemitism, Ben Shapiro has issued some of the most clear-eyed warnings about the rot on the right. For criticizing the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Ben has been accused of trying to cancel dissenting voices. That’s nonsense, says Ben. Writing in our pages today, he responds to the attacks he’s faced from Megyn Kelly and other prominent figures and draws a distinction between censorship and criticism.
President Donald Trump faces an important decision about whether to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has shut the vitally important waterway, triggering an oil crisis. The good news, says Free Press columnist Aaron MacLean, is that the U.S. can reopen the strait. The bad news? It will take weeks, or more.
NYC’s “Rental Rip-off” hearings promised to spotlight bad corporate landlords. But at the Bronx stop of the tour, it wasn’t private landlords that bore the brunt of tenants’ complaints. On the contrary: It turns out the landlord tenants hate most is the city’s very own public housing authority, Josh Code reports.
As the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to allow flavored vapes, anti-tobacco groups are trying to stop it with the same arguments used for years about how they could encourage teen vaping. They’re missing the point, writes Joe Nocera. Read his column on a stunning public health triumph the authorities refuse to acknowledge.
Qualified Health used Anthropic’s Claude to screen 1M+ heart failure patients in Texas. It surfaced life-saving interventions buried in the data.
Editors’ Picks
The war in Iran continues to dominate the news, as the Islamic Republic digs in. If you really want to understand how we got here, the very best place to start is Jonathan Rosen’s essay for The Free Press on how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie changed the world forever. For more on the here and now of the conflict, watch the debate between Niall Ferguson and Richard Haass, moderated by Coleman Hughes, on whether regime change is really possible.
Even as the war pushes the Jeffrey Epstein story off the front pages, there is still troubling and startling material to be uncovered. Tanya Lukyanova found the name of a woman briefly mentioned in the files, then tugged on the string to find a terrible story of betrayal and false promises. This week, she told the tale of the Ukrainian actress whose best friend tried to recruit her into Epstein’s world. It’s an extraordinary look into the inner workings of his abuse machine.
For decades, scientists were above reproach. Not anymore. An alarming string of cases have seen some of the most respected scientists in the world being accused of fraud. In a major investigation, Joe Nocera dives into the murky world of fraudulent research, and the sleuths exposing dishonest science.
In New York City, would-be terrorists allegedly inspired by the Islamic State threw bombs into a crowd outside Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence. Mene Ukueberuwa wrote about how the mayor and most of the media tried to ignore, or simply misrepresent, the attacks, down to refusing to call a bomb a bomb. If there was ever a time for Mamdani to take a stand against Muslim extremism, this, wrote Reihan Salam, is it.
Here at The Free Press, we try to go beyond the headlines, and address the questions that transcend the news cycle. There’s arguably no question bigger than the subject of the first of our Things That Matter debates: “Do We Need God?” Duking it out over this one were two stellar thinkers: Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker. Their conversation is perfect weekend viewing.
The Front Page will be back on Monday morning. Until then, look out for The Weekend Press—featuring a special Oscars package, River Page’s Two Drinks with Andrew Yang, and more.
Qualified Health used Anthropic’s Claude to screen 1M+ heart failure patients in Texas. It surfaced lifesaving interventions buried in the data.
Thank you @FP!
Please also track generalized terrorist violence in the US. Although there will be *significant* overlap - your readers should also be able to access numbers on the larger trend - because noone else is doing it! I live in NYC and most of my world is non-Jewish. Because many of my friends follow msm and do not read Jewish affinity sources they are wholly unaware of recent terrorist attacks across the US.
Just One Example: On *Thursday* most felt ‘details were still slowly pouring out’ about the nature of the previous Sunday’s ISIS attempted bombing near the City mayoralty’s residence!!! And their msm-inspired ignorance is putting *all* of us at risk.
If the war in Iran is won it will be due to the technological brilliance of the Israelis. FYI about 20 years ago a friend of mine told me that Putin, who hates jews, allowed those with even 10% of jewish blood, to leave Russia. As Israel had an open door policy they emigrated there. I recall meeting a woman working in the cosmetic section of the old Robinsons in the valley. If the word JEWISH was on your passport she told me, you could not get a job, no matter how many degrees, in Russia. So, Putin's antisemitism was the best thing that ever happened to Israel as they received doctors, engineers, scientists and quickly rose to achieve technological genius. I even recall 60 Minutes doing a special on AI before we knew what it was and it began in Israel. So, one man's curse is another man's genius.