Free Republic

The Turkish Parliament on Wednesday extended the ongoing state of emergency for another three months, the Hurriyet daily newspaper reported. This is the seventh time that the state of emergency has been extended. The last time was in January. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the three-month state of emergency on July 20, 2016, five days after the failed coup that summer, saying it would enable authorities to take swift action against those responsible for the putsch. Wednesday’s extension means the upcoming early elections on June 24 will be held under the emergency rule despite widespread disapproval from opposition parties. The...

A Syrian-born German national accused of helping to plan the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States has been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria, a senior Kurdish commander told AFP on Wednesday. “Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been arrested by Kurdish security forces in northern Syria and is now being interrogated,” the top official said, but did not provide further details. Zammar, who is in his mid-fifties, has been accused of recruiting some of the September 11 hijackers. He was detained in Morocco in December 2001 in an operation involving CIA agents, and was handed over to the Syrian...

French President Emmanuel Macron defended his country’s participation in a massive missile strike over the weekend, which saw more than 100 missiles fired from US, British, and French ships and aircraft at sites used by the Assad regime’s chemical weapon program. The three countries struck eight targets at three separate facilities over the weekend a week after the Syrian government allegedly used sarin nerve gas and chlorine gas to kill dozens of civilians in a suburb of Damascus. The Western allies informed the Kremlin of the attacks ahead of time, allowing Russia to remove its forces from the targeted compounds...

"Israel has still not learned the lessons from the Holocaust. Had it taken the meaning to heart, it would stop the ongoing atrocities in Syria." We've been inundated with such messages every since the Syrian bloodbath commenced in 2011. While these vacuous statements are heard constantly, they reach a fever constantly pitch when Yom Hashoah season rolls around. According to this view, Israel is betraying its Jewish heritage by letting Assad butcher his people unopposed. I've always hated hearing people say this because it's the worst kind of virtue signaling. Imagine you were handed the keys: What would you do?...

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2016 election but lost out to Hillary Clinton, on Monday criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his policies. "As someone who believes absolutely and unequivocally in Israel's right to exist... we must say loudly and clearly, that to oppose the reactionary policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu does not make us anti-Israel," Sanders told the annual conference of the J Street organization. He took issue with Israel’s response to the recent riots along the border with Gaza, claiming Israel "massively overreacted" to the protests. "The presence of Hamas members...

Former FBI Director James Comey gave a no-holds-barred interview on Sunday night in which he called Donald Trump “morally unfit to be president” and a liar who possibly obstructed justice. Comey, speaking to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, touched on many of the scandals that have plagued the Trump administration over the past 16 months, including the Russia dossier and the litany of sexual misconduct allegations leveled at the president. “A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American...

..... She attacked the government's intention to enact the Overrule Clause, saying, "Those who seek to limit the Supreme Court are those who do not accept the value of democracy. It is time to fight for democracy, in Israel, in the United States and throughout the world. To fight against the delegitimization of political opponents, for the right to express positions, even if we disagree with them."

he Defense Ministry declared that Eli resident Yaron Gispin's death in 2009 was terrorism and not a suicide. In 2009, Gispin was found dead in a deserted area near his hometown of Eli, where he lived with his wife and six children. Police had determined that his death was a suicide, noting that he was shot with his own pistol. The decision to classify Gispin's death as a suicide distressed his wife Iris, who launched a protracted legal and battle to convince authorities that he had been killed. According to Iris, Gispin had not had any financial difficulties and did...

Already In: Neither of the following candidates is likely to win the GOP nomination: Nick Polce: Polce is a former Army Green Beret and local businessman who has received little attention so far in his attempt to challenge Ryan in the GOP primary. Paul Nehlen: Nehlen challenged Ryan two years ago in the GOP primary and ran a race-baiting campaign then that attracted national support from Breitbart.com, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but few votes. This year his anti-Semitic rants got him banned from Twitter. The Republican Party has completely disavowed Nehlen’s candidacy. Democrats: Randy Bryce: Bryce is a three-time...

On Holocaust Remembrance Day it was announced that the proceeds of the diary of Anne Frank will be donated to an American-based organization that sends Arab youths to spit on Israeli soldiers and curse their mothers and films them if they display a twinge of resentment. Yes, it's true. Read Edwin Black's Financing the Flames. That book was loaned to me yesterday by a neighbor down the street in Maale Adumim (across the Green Line, technically a settlement, it was founded on a rainy night in '75 by a few families who faced eviction, though now it has grown big...

Five days after the apparent chemical attack on the town of Douma in the Ghouta region near Damascus, Middle East expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar is still trying to figure out what could have caused Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to order such an attack, just when he was about to defeat the rebel resistance in Douma without the use of gas. He is certain of one thing, however: The "false flag" theories being offered by various right wing media figures have no possible basis in reality. ..... "But to take chemical weapons and kill hundreds of children from your own side,...

Hamas spokesperson Hazem Kassem slammed US Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt for saying that Hamas should relinquish control of Gaza. "American envoy Jason Greenblatt's attack on Hamas and its leadership, and its demand that the movement surrender its weapons, are a continuation of the American partnership with the occupation, with aggression against our people," Maariv cited Kassem as saying. "This provides coverage for its crimes, use the terms of the occupation itself, and prove his participation in the Israeli propaganda apparatus, which justifies the continuation of the cruel Israeli siege on Gaza." Kassem's words come in response...

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is an internationally-recognized human rights crime—but those being impacted are harshly punished for not only acts of resistance, but even mere advocacy for their rights. Getting detailed facts about Israel’s imposition of Military Law in the West Bank, Abby Martin visits the the Ramallah offices of Addameer—the most prominent prisoners’ rights organizations in Palestine—for a shocking investigation into the use of Israeli jails and arbitrary laws as a weapon. Chronicling this history of resistance and repression from the First Intifada through the 2015 uprising, this episode shows what brutal lengths the Israeli occupation will...

The International Criminal Court at The Hague may prosecute Israel over the deaths of Arab rioters who clashed with IDF forces on the Gaza-Israel frontier over the past week and a half, a top ICC official warned Sunday. Chief Prosecutor for the ICC Fatou Bensouda issued a statement Sunday demanding an end to the use of violence on the border between Israel and Gaza, and suggested that both Israel and the Hamas terror organization could be held responsible for the deaths of some 30 Arab rioters and terrorists killed since activists launched six weeks of violent protests on the frontier...

Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef commented on reports of the chemical weapons attack in Syria. "I have said before and I repeat, in Syria there is a brutal genocide of both women and children with weapons of mass destruction.” Rabbi Yosef said that “There is a moral obligation not to remain silent and to try to stop the massacre.”

Jerusalem District Commander Yoram Halevi signed an order Thursday forbidding a conference of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party in honor of terrorists. The conference was to be held in the Issawiya neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem to honor the mothers of shaheeds (martyrs) and those wounded while attacking Israelis. Following the issuance of the order and the instructions of the district commander, police forces arrived at the scene and prevented the event from being held. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan stated that "my policy is clear: to prevent any occurrence of incitement and support of terrorism in any way...

Former US President Bill Clinton admitted Tuesday that he intervened in the Israeli elections in 1996 to help then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres defeat rival Binyamin Netanyahu. "It would be fair to say that I tried to help Peres win the elections, and I tried to help him in such a way that I would not be openly involved," Clinton said in an interview with Israel's Channel 10 News. "I tried to help him, because I thought he was a bigger supporter of the peace process, and I tried to do it in a way that served, in my opinion, Israel's...

JTA - Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized Israel’s use of force on the border with Gaza in a tweet. “The killing of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli forces in Gaza is tragic. It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response,” Sanders, who was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and the first Jewish presidential candidate to win nominating contests in a major party, tweeted on Saturday. The tweet garnered 26,000 likes. He also tweeted: “Meanwhile, the situation in Gaza remains a humanitarian disaster. The U.S. must play a...

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=qgdxnFizHpE A seven-year-old girl was sent by Hamas into Israel, to face the IDF forces stationed along the border fence with Gaza. The IDF confirmed that the suspected terrorist was a young girl, received her, and ensured that she returned safely to her parents. "The Hamas terror organization cynically uses women and children, sending them to the border and endangering their lives," an IDF spokesman said. Approximately 17,000 Gazans are protesting in five locations along the Gaza-Israel border. The protest is part of the planned "march of return," and participants are burning tires, and throwing firebombs and stones at...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hit back at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday evening, after the Turkish leader accused Netanyahu of being a ‘terrorist’, and described Israel as a ‘terror state’. Earlier on Sunday, Erdogan gave a televised speech in southern Turkey, during which he denounced Israel for its response to a Hamas-led provocation on the Israel-Gaza border on Friday. "Hey Netanyahu! You are occupier. And it is as an occupier that are you are on those lands. At the same time, you are a terrorist," Erdogan said in a televised speech in Adana, southern Turkey, AFP reported. During his...