Free Republic

Actor and comedian Joe Piscopo earned nationwide fame with his celebrity impersonations, Saturday Night Live skits, and roles in Hollywood films like the remake of King Kong and Wise Guys. Less well-known, however, is Piscopo’s ardent support for the State of Israel. Now hosting his own daily radio show, Piscopo airs his views on a social and political issues – including what he sees as the trend within the Democratic Party towards abandoning Israel. Earlier this week, Piscopo sat down with Arutz Sheva to discuss the roots of his own pro-Israel views, his frustrations with the Democratic Party, and who...

Donald Trump issued a scathing condemnation of Wednesday's terror rampage in Tel Aviv. "I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the outrageous terrorist shootings that took the lives of at least four innocent civilians and wounded at least twenty others in Tel Aviv yesterday," he wrote. "The Israeli security forces’ investigation is ongoing, but some facts have already emerged — and they are grim. "Just as fast as the condolences arrive from the civilized world is the praise arising out of the uncivilized one. Hamas praised the attack, calling the attackers 'heroes.' Reports out of Hebron indicate that residents of...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot upon the Prime Minister’s return from a state visit to Russia, Wednesday night, to discuss Israel’s response to the terror attack in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market which left four dead and five wounded. In the wake of the attack, the Defense Ministry has frozen work entry visas for some 204 members of the attackers’ extended family. The attackers, identified as Khalid and Muhammad Musa Mehamara, both 21-years old, are cousins from the village of Yatta, south of Hevron. The two terrorists reportedly entered Israel...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday night condemned the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in which four Israelis were murdered. Ban also criticized Hamas for praising the attack. “The Secretary-General condemns tonight’s terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in which at least four Israelis were killed by Palestinian assailants and another four injured. He conveys his condolences to the families of the victims and the Government of Israel,” said a statement issued on behalf of the UN chief’s spokesperson. “The Secretary-General reiterates that there is no justification for terrorism nor for the glorification of those who commit such heinous acts,” added...

An Arab activist of the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem who filmed Elor Azariya shooting a wounded terrorist in Hevron in March testified against the soldier at the Jaffa military court on Wednesday morning. ..... Activist's son arrested by Azariya Azariya's lawyer Eyal Baserglick then questioned the Arab activist, revealing a connection between the shoemaker and Azariya. "Is it true that your 17-year-old son Aouni was arrested by the accused (Azariya) and the deputy platoon commander on 2.2.16, even before the incident?," asked Baserglick, mentioning a date in early February predating the incident by just over a month. Abu Shamsiyeh did...

Despite her comments opposing “settlements”, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice promised Israel that the new military aid agreement between the two countries that is currently being negotiated will constitute “the single largest military assistance package — with any country — in American history,” Haaretz reported Tuesday. The comments came during Rice’s address on Monday to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington. She said the new decade-long aid package, which is expected to provide Israel somewhere between $37.5 billion and $40 billion over the life of the pact, will “constitute a significant increase in support,” providing funding to...

Video;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ABh3tBFTMo Last week in San Jose, California, supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump found themselves surrounded by violent far-left protesters, most of whom were apparently supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders. Several Trump supporters were assaulted amid ugly scenes - but apparently they weren't the only ones "feeling the Bern." In fact, video footage from the day shows how at one point, several Bernie supporters apparently mistook each other for Trump fans, and promptly began a violent brawl - before realizing they were all on the same side. In a somewhat comical scene, as other Sanders supporters...

The Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group burned 19 Yazidi girls alive after they refused to have sex with its fighters, according to reports. The girls were locked in cages before being publicly executed in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, according to the Kurdish ARA news agency. The gruesome spectacle took place in front of hundreds of people, according to local media activist Abdullah al-Malla. "They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants," he told ARA. Mosul is ISIS's de-facto capital in Iraq, and the country's second largest city. ISIS views the Yazidis - members of...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu headed to Moscow this morning, for his third visit to the Kremlin in nine months, as Israel-Russia ties continues to burgeon. The meeting is the fourth one between Netanyahu and Russia President Vladimir Putin during the same period, after the pair also met at the sidelines of the recent UN climate change conference in Paris. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has also met with Putin during that time, even cancelling a trip to Australia to visit the Russian leader at the Kremlin. In an illustration of the growing alliance between their two countries, this time Netanyahu is...

The annual statistics on the precise number of Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) have been released by former Knesset Member Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz. Based on the Population Registry of Israel's Interior Ministry, there are 406,302 Jews in Judea and Samaria as of December 31, 2015. As clearly stated in the report, the statistics do not include eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem (e.g. Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlomo, Ramot, Gilo, Ramat Eshkol, etc.) which are technically part of the West Bank and are home to another approximately 360,000 Jews. In the special English report released today, the Jewish...

Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) has attacked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) over their support for a Palestinian state and the need for a political process with the Palestinians. "We will take down the government over anything that would lead to a division of the Land of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state. We will fight it," he said during an interview on Meet the Press. "There will be no Palestinian state here. I will do anything to stop it," he promised. "We are in a government whose basic principles include...

Recent comments by Opposition head Yitzhak Herzog (Zionist Union) and Shelly Yachimovich (Zionist Union) suggest that their party may still join the government coalition. On Saturday, both politicians said that they would reconsider joining a unity government, should there be any diplomatic initiatives. MK Herzog presented new conditions to joining. "If Netanyahu kicks the Jewish Home out of the coalition, we will meet as a party and we will consider the issue," he told Shabbatarbut in Modi'in. "Netanyahu chose to go with the extremists," he added. "It doesn't look like he is breaking up with them. I lead a strong...

Israel on Friday announced a series of gestures to relax restrictions on the movement of Palestinian Arabs during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The measures, similar to those of previous years, were announced by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit which manages civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria under the auspices of newly-appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. Up to 500 people from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to attend Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the holy month, set to begin on Sunday or Monday, according to AFP. In addition, 200 Gaza...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday gave a speech in San Diego in which she reiterated her support for Israel. “Israel’s security is non-negotiable. They are our closest ally in the region and we have a moral obligation to defend them,” she said. In the speech, the former Secretary of State also blasted her Republican rival Donald Trump and especially his foreign policy platform, which she described as "dangerously incoherent". "Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent," she said, according to Reuters. "They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds...

Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Ayyad, a former investigator for the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem, surprised a conference of Judea and Samaria researchers at Ariel University on Thursday when he revealed unofficial Palestinian views. Arutz Sheva got the chance to speak with Ayyad about how Palestinian Arabs view the Palestinian Authority (PA), and learned he thinks most would in fact love to see Israel annex Judea and Samaria. Ayyad explained that "the Palestinians have become frustrated by the attitude and the behavior of the Palestinian Authority." He noted that since the PA was created in the 1994 Oslo Accords, Arabs...

BERLIN, June 2 (UPI) -- Turkey recalled its ambassador in Berlin after German lawmakers approved a resolution declaring the World War I mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide. Ambassador Huseyin Avni Karslioglu is expected to travel back to Turkey on Thursday, after the German Parliament declared the 1915-16 killings of some 1.5 million Armenians a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing. Germany's ambassador to Turkey has also been summoned. The move comes just hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of "repercussions" from the vote. The German resolution is considered a touchy one for long-term relations between...

German lawmakers' planned vote to recognize the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, will test the "friendship" between Berlin and Ankara, Turkey said Thursday, according to AFP. The resolution "will amount to a real test of the friendship" between the two nations, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. "Some nations that we consider friends, when they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy attempt to divert attention from it," he said at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). "This resolution is an example of that." He stopped short of threatening Germany with political and economic retaliation,...

The State Department has admitted that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal, Fox News reported Wednesday. “There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor “excise” the segment. The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013 briefing. At that briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was...

Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Wednesday that the nuclear deal reached last year with world powers can't be renegotiated, despite Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's pledge to do so if elected. Speaking after a lecture in Stockholm and quoted by The Associated Press (AP), Zarif said the deal "is not an Iran-U.S. agreement for the Republican front-runner or anybody else to renegotiate. It's an international understanding annexed to a Security Council resolution." Trump has denounced the deal and said he would seek to renegotiate it if elected president. One of those times came during his speech at...

JTA - Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos called on the Justice Ministry to take action against a neo-Nazi lawmaker after he made anti-Israel comments in parliament. Speaking during a debate in parliament on Monday, Christos Pappas, from the Golden Dawn party, called Israel an “eternal enemy of Greece and Orthodoxy.” Pappas was speaking during a debate on the ratification of Greece’s international agreements with other countries. “The state of Israel implements genocidal methods and is a regional troublemaker,” he said, according to the Kathemirini newspaper, asking how “a state like Israel could possibly have relations with Greece, which is the...